Let’s Talk About Your Guns
Episode 105: I’ve Got Your Back Buddy
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NOTES

SCRIPTJAY ZIMMERMAN: On February 13th of 2010 I got acall from my friend Vic.

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: Vic and I were deployed four times.
Not all of those were Iraq or Afghanistan.

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: Vic was a was a Hispanic guy.
Grew up in South Texas. I am from rural Appalachia. I
was a medic and Vic was in the infantry. We were justpretty much inseparable.

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: He from day one was just like, thetoughest guy that I ever met. I could have looked at him
and been like, Hey, man, Vic, that tree is giving me ahard time. And he would went over and just beat thebark off the tree.

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: I often felt like, you know, I wanted
to be more involved and see more of the up front, youknow, if you want to call it the blood and guts kind of
stuff. And every time I'd be like, Hey, I want to be up
front Vic was the first one to be like, You get your tail tothe back. You know, we need you in case something
goes wrong. He would reiterate to me, like, you're the1guy that's here to take care of us if something goessideways. So I'm going to make sure that I take care of
you so you can take care of us.
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transition to new beat
JAY ZIMMERMAN: After we separated from theservice, Vic moved out to the Midwest, got married, had
his kids settle down. I came back to my mountains here
in northeast Tennessee, got married, had my daughter.
But we never lost contact. We still talked every day.

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: One day we had exchanged a few
messages back and forth and I was like, hey, youknow, just hit me up when you get in and I remember
the phone rang and it was Vic. And I answered thephone and I immediately told him I was like, Hey, boss,
I'm not going to be much good to you after about 30
minutes because I've already taken my meds to go tosleep.

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: We talked for a few minutes. He
was telling me about T-ball season coming up in thespring and the plans he had for Eli. That was his son,so I was like, yeah, yeah, he's good, he’s good.

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: I recognized that my thoughts werestarting to get cloudy. So I told him I loved him and I’dtalk to him tomorrow. I ended the call, put the phone
down on the coffee table, rolled over on the couch,drifted off to sleep.
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JAY ZIMMERMAN: A few hours later, you know, phonerings and I roll over and I see his name and I was like,
What are you calling me in the middle of the night man,
I got to get up early and go to work in the morning.

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: I pull the phone back up to my ear
and I start to shake my head and begin to come to mysenses. And I hear, Doc, what did he say to you, Doc?
What did he say? What did he say? Doc? And I realizein that moment, you know, it's not Vic, it's his wife,
Whitney.

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: I immediately pop up off the couch
and, I'm like, Whitney, what's going on? And I learnedin that moment that at the conclusion of the call that I
had with Vic, he had sent his wife and his child, youknow, told her to go put him to bed. She had taken
their son to bed to lay down, to go to sleep. And she
had dozed off with her son. And she had woke up to mybuddy placing his pistol in his mouth and taking his life.

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DR WEST: Vic was one of the more than 6500
veterans that die by suicide each year. Firearms areused in nearly 70% of those deaths. For Jay
Zimmerman, Vic’s suicide changed his life.

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: To be honest, that rocked my world
as much as probably anything that I have experienced3

in my life. I went through all these things, you know,what did I miss? What did I miss? Maybe not only inthat conversation, but in every previous conversationthat I have had with him for the last three months. Six
months. How did he hide this for me? What could I
have done differently? Why did I not think to ask him
about like, flat out, are you having thoughts of suicide?
Man are you thinking about killing yourself?
You know, I kicked myself in the backside for years.
Even in that moment where I was feeling cloudy if I had
just asked that question, what would he have said?
Would he have been like, yeah, Doc, I am.
Would that have woke me up in that moment, wouldthat have prompted me to say, Where's your fricking
gun, man? Where's your gun right now?
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DR WEST: I’m Curt West: Associate Professor of
Psychiatry and Scientist at the Center for the Study ofTraumatic Stress.

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DR WEST: In this episode of Let’s Talk About Your
Guns, we talk to Jay Zimmerman, a former Army
Sergeant and medic and now a Supervisory Peer
Support Specialist with the Veteran’s HealthAdministration. Jay will talk about how his friend’s
suicide motivated him to have open and honest
conversations about safe storage with his peers.

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We’ll also talk to Dr Adam Walsh about why theseconversations between peers can be so effective inpromoting firearm safety.
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DR WEST: Firearm safety in the home is built aroundfive principles. Weapons should be stored unloaded.
They should be taken apart or stored with a disabling
device engaged. They should be stored in locked
containers, and ammunition should be stored in a
separate locked container. Finally, firearm safety in thehome involves having a plan in advance for storingguns in an alternate location during times of crisis.

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DR WEST: Today’s conversation is about how peers
can promote these principles and hold each otheraccountable.
Because this podcast isn’t about whether you are for oragainst firearms. It’s about how to have open andhonest conversations about safe
storage. Conversations that may save a life.

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DR WEST: Jay, you’ve had guns all your life, right?

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: Oh, absolutely and not just in asmall way. The running joke is among all my friends
now is that I am my own militia.
Growing up in Appalachia, you look forward to your first
shotgun or your first rifle more than your first kiss or5

your first car. You have a respect that's ingrained to you
from an early age for what a firearm is and what it cando. And then to be in the infantry was just reinforced
and then even now, as a grown man, it's a healthy
respect that I have passed down to my children.
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DR WEST: And what did you know about Vic’s
relationship with firearms?

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: Well, I mean, I knew his
relationship did not begin as early as mine, but I knewthat after our time in service, he was a pretty avid
firearm owner.
I knew that his wife was not as big a fan, so to speak,as he was. I knew he had somewhat downsized hiscollection after getting married and especially after theirson was born. But he always kept his Beretta in thenightstand table, and that was always like a bone ofcontention between him and his wife.
It's one of those things that you look back in hindsight.
That was one of those discussions that I always tried to
not get pulled into because he's your best friend andshe's your best friend's wife and you're just trying to
avoid the crossfire, so to speak. You're trying to walklightly because you don't want to cause waves in thehousehold.

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29.

DR WEST: Researcher and clinical social worker Dr
Adam Walsh has worked in suicide prevention among
U.S. military service members for more than a decade.

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DR CURT WEST: Dr Walsh, when people think ofservice members and guns, they probably think that
their service weapon puts them at risk. But Vic took hislife with his personal firearm - the one he kept at home.
Is that unusual?

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DR ADAM WALSH: It's very rare for a person or a
military issued firearm to be used in a suicide death due
to some of the protocols of having to store it on base.
And we also know that most firearm suicide deaths
occur off base in a home or in a car. What we're findingout is that there is a portion of service members that
store their firearms in their glove box in their car. The
most recent data is about 67% of all suicide deaths in
the active-duty population are done with a personallyown firearm, a handgun. 67% in active duty and then as
close to 75% in the reserve component, where people
use a personally owned firearm to die by suicide.

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DR CURT WEST: What percentage of suicide attempts
with a firearm actually end in death?

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DR ADAM WALSH: I think it's close to about 87% can
be a little bit lower or higher. So it's very lethal.
If you think about medications, medications are about
2% lethal and firearms are 87%. And you know,
7hangings about, I think around 30%, 25 to 30%. So you
want you know, you want to have a second chance,
because we know that most people, if they survive anattempt or are interrupted and attempting suicide, mostof those people will never go on to attempt suicide
again and then they will live.
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DR WEST: So what you’re saying is that there are
actually a substantial number of suicides that are
impulsive.

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DR ADAM WALSH: Yes.
We know that when you start thinking about suicide toactually attempting suicide, 25 to 40% of attempts
happened under 5 minutes of thinking about suicide toattempting suicide, and almost 70% happen under anhour.
So if you think about that, you know, that transition ispretty quick.
And then, of course, if you have a firearm that you'refamiliar with and it's not locked and it's loaded, that's avery quick transition from thinking about suicide andthen grabbing something that's probably the most lethal
method of suicide. So you want to create more timeand space between somebody is going through a toughtime and a lethal means of suicide.

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DR CURT WEST: Exactly, we’ve said before, one way
to prevent suicides is to put that time and space8

between an impulsive thought and a fatal act with afirearm. Basically, give the person a chance to change
their mind.
I think it’s safe to say any of us would want that for afriend, but what about barriers to having thoseconversations about safe storage? What makes it hard
to approach a peer and talk to them about their guns
and safety?
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DR ADAM WALSH: I think for some people it's still
hard to really accept that suicide risk is associated withgun ownership. In previous studies and interviews that
we've done with people is that, you know, I know whensomebody is mentally ill and I know when somebody is
at risk, I know that. So then maybe I would practicesafe storage. But, you know, I would never be at risk forsuicide. I'm not I'm not mentally ill. I don't have a
disease. So I'm okay. I don't need to store my firearm
safely. So I think when you go away from that and justsay, hey, you know what? We don't know what's goingto happen, just let's focus on the safety I think thathelps bust through the barrier. People still kind of holdon to that idea that I know when somebody is at risk forsuicide so I will just practice maybe safe storage then inthat moment. But then sometimes, unfortunately, it's toolate because we don't know when that's going tohappen.
There's now new research that shows that gun owners
actually think about suicide differently than people who

9don't own a gun. They don't necessarily talk aboutsuicide or thoughts before they die, maybe compared topeople who don't own a gun. So there's an interesting
connection between people who own guns, carry guns,
and then the way that they may think about or behave
around a crisis.
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DR CURT WEST: You’re currently doing research on
peer-to-peer conversations about safe storage toprevent suicide. Can you tell me why thoseconversations are so crucial to suicide prevention?

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DR ADAM WALSH: What we know from the researchis that people are a little hesitant to speak with mental
health professionals.
It's much easier sometimes to talk to a peer, somebody
that we know kind of on a personal friendship level
about safe storage than a professional.

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DR CURT WEST: And why do you think that is?

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DR ADAM WALSH: Could be trust. It could be just theunknown of what is mental health, psychiatry or
therapy. And are there consequences of you talking tosomebody who is documenting what you're saying?

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DR ADAM WALSH: As a peer you can have some very
in-depth conversations and get to know people at avery close level that is different than a relationship thatyou might have with a therapist or a health provider.

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conversations with people about their life where you
feel like that other person really feels like you careabout them. That's a really important ingredient for anyof these conversations, is that you feel like somebody
does care about you, really genuinely cares about you.
And so when that person does feel like you care about
them, then you can have those tough conversations
about are you okay? Are you safe? Let's talk about yourfirearms. Lots of different things.
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DR ADAM WALSH: I just got back from Georgia,
where we're talking about firearm safety and teachingpeers in the National Guard to do it. Close to 50 peersin the National Guard learned to do this 15-minutecounseling session, and they were able to just to roleplay and have a conversation about, you know, let's try
to keep you safe. Tell me a little bit about yourfirearms? How do you store them? And so peers areable to have those conversations with each other about
let's keep our home safe, not just for ourselves, but ourfamily members, our children, whoever might comeover. We want to make sure that that environment issafe. Peers can have those conversations and it can bepretty casual. He can bring it up in regularconversation. And what's really neat is this approachthat is definitely kind of the trend. And what the scienceis showing is we need to do this every day.
This isn't, you know, somehow I can magically know
when somebody is going to be at risk or die by suicide.
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This is an everyday practice. Every time you go in thecar, try to put a seatbelt on, hopefully. Right. You see
somebody who might be at risk for maybe drinking too
much. You could go and say, Hey, I think you've had
too much. Let me have your keys. Same thing here withthis every day. How can you store your firearm safely
so that we can keep you and your family safe at home?
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DR CURT WEST: After his friend Vic’s suicide, Jay
struggled with all the things he could have said, all theconversations he could have had - including
conversations about Vic’s guns. Jay remembers going
into a very dark place.

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: I begin to really withdraw fromeverybody. I would go to work. I would come home.
I built essentially a bunker within the main floor of myhome to where when I would position myself on the
couch, there was one line of fire between me and thedoor so that I could protect not only myself but
everyone in my home.
I would put my daughter to bed at night and then I
would assume my position where the only thing
between me and my daughter was that door. And I
would essentially start to stand guard.
But really what was happening was I was spiraling into
this place of chaos within my own head because I was

12like, I cannot lose the only other person that means
anything to me. And that was my daughter.
I began to position throughout my home what I thought
was pretty strategically. Like I mounted a pistol under
the coffee table, hot. I had a pistol under the ficus tree. I
had a pistol strapped to the back of the toilet. I know itsounds crazy because it is crazy or let's just call it
irrational thinking. At the time, it made total sense to me
that I was protecting my child.
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JAY ZIMMERMAN: And then one day my dad stopped
by and he said, I think we need to talk. And he said,
Boy, I think you're about a half bubble off plum, and weneed to address that.
My father had also been married previously and lost awife to suicide. And he said, I've, I lost a wife to this.
And I don't think I could stand to bury my child. And I
felt like I had been just kicked right in the gut.
It served as almost like a wakeup call. I thought I was
protecting my kid. But it also helped me to realize, like,not only was I not protecting her, I was putting her at
risk. But I was also putting myself at risk because I wasin a really dark place. And just the sheer amount offirearms that I had access to in the blink of an eye. Like,
it made me think, What if I have one of those thoughts?
How quickly could I have gotten to any of them? Whatwould have stopped me? And then who am I
protecting? Who am I hurting? Not hurting myself.

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Thank the good Lord, that my dad was able to talk tome and get me to realize, like, this is not OK. Like, lookat all the people that you are putting at risk.
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DR CURT WEST: What’s different about receiving that
advice from your dad versus receiving it from yourdoctor?

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: I like the fact that you use the word
different versus better, because I don't want to say thata peer does anything better than a provider. I think wejust bring something different.
The moment that a lot of folks hear, you know, myname is Dr. West. They lose sight of the fact that you'realso a human being. When I walk into the room and I'mlike, Hey, man, I'm Jay. What's. What's happening?
They don't know anything about my background. They
don't know anything about my education. They know
I'm a vet. And they either see my combat medical
badge or my jump wings. And immediately they're like,
This guy's a vet. They don't need to know that I've got
a degree in history and philosophy, and I could talk to
him all day about that if they wanted to. It's pointless.
I'm here to help you get the most traction that you can
get to move forward with your recovery.

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DR CURT WEST: Who else do you think could have
had that conversation with you?

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: You know, I've got some friends.
I've got a group of veteran buddies that I run with and
we all have to this day an agreement with each other.
It's just a pretty open discussion. We all own firearms.
And if you ever for a moment think somebody's
struggling, feelings are going out the window, you'regoing to get called on the carpet. We're going to havethese discussions with you. We're going to have these
discussions with your spouse. If you think I'm
struggling, you're going to have these discussions withme. You're going to have these discussions with myspouse. Like, hey, Jay’s he looks like he's a half bubble
off plum. Do we need to show up and, like, talk to him
about holding his firearms for a while? Do we need totake the key to the safe? W723hat do we need to do to
make sure he's safe?

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DR CURT WEST: Is that a conversation that’schallenging for you?

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JAY ZIMMERMAN: It's all about planning ahead andhaving open and honest conversations and knowingthat you've got people around you that are not going tojudge you for having open and honest conversations
about the fact that you are human and you may
struggle from time to time. I can either say, Look, I
entered into this agreement willingly. And it sucks thatyou're sitting here having to have it with me. But I caneither accept that you're doing this because you careabout me, because you love me, and then I can act

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with integrity and be like, You know what? I trust thatyou're doing this because you care about me. Or I canthrow a baby fit and be like, No, no, you're not taking
my pistols. You're not taking my firearms. But I enteredinto this like verbal contract or this verbal agreementwith these men because I know they have my bestinterests at heart.
I don't want to I don't want another Vic, not for me. I
don't want another Vic for anybody, but we have to bewilling to have those conversations in a rational,
reasonable, calm way where we can sit down at a tableand just talk.
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55.

DR WEST: Today, on Let’s Talk about Your Guns, weheard about the importance of friends talking to friends
about safety. If you think about the fact that there areso many suicides that are impulsive without warning, it
makes sense that you would want to create anenvironment in which your friends could survive such acrisis. It’s about putting time and space between an
impulsive thought and a fatal act. Storing guns safely athome is one way to do that. As we’ve heard, peers andfriends can have an impact on those decisions. So ask
yourself, who might I have that conversation with.

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DR WEST: Thank you to Jay Zimmerman and Dr.
Adam Walsh for participating in today’s discussion.

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57.

DR WEST: You’ve been listening to Let’s Talk aboutYour Guns. This podcast is made possible by The
Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement ofMilitary Medicine. It’s produced by Podville Media for
the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the
Uniformed Services University.

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DR WEST: To learn more about our mission and for
additional resources, please visit cstsonline.org.

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DR WEST: Be sure to subscribe to the show on yourfavorite podcast app and leave a five-star review.
Thanks for listening.

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PRESENTER: The views expressed are those of the
speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views,
opinions, or policies of the Uniformed Services
University, the Department of Defense, the US
Government, or The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for
the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc.

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PRESENTER: Mention of trade names, commercial
products, or organizations does not necessarily
constitute or imply endorsement by the Uniformed
Services University, the Department of Defense, or the
US Government or The Henry M. Jackson Foundation
for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc.

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