Yes of course. People on psychiatric hold shouldn't have access to firearms any more than they should have access to cutlery or shoelaces.
> The reducing access to means and methods is equivalent in your metaphor to "as you're leaving this gas filled house do not strike any matches".
Leaving the house is equivalent to a psychiatric hold.
> If you have tens of thousands of people dying each year from one method of suicide you need to reduce access to that method while you're putting in place other stuff to reduce suicidality in the population.
We already do this for anyone known to be at immediate risk, the problem is in accurately identifying who that is.
There is also a real risk that if you do things like condition voluntary outpatient psychiatric treatment on losing access to firearms, that would deter people who own firearms from seeking treatment. Then the choice isn't between treatment and firearms or treatment and no firearms, it's between firearms and treatment or firearms and no treatment.
> In your analogy "doing something about the gas leak" (fixing suicidality across a population) is something that takes years of concerted effort across national and local government agencies, see the linked CDC report above for examples.
Which is, nonetheless, still the only real solution.
What are you suggesting that we do? Declare a state of emergency and confiscate all firearms, but then give them back in a few years once we better address the root causes of suicide? Considering that firearms are used in about half of US suicide deaths and some non-zero number those would only switch to another method, that seems rather extreme for a temporary solution that would solve less than half of the problem, even if it wasn't politically infeasible.
And spending time fighting over that instead of starting to address the root causes right now means that the same number of people die in the short term (as we do nothing but argue) and more die in the long term because it's that much longer before a real solution that addresses the problem independent of method is actually implemented.
We know that there is a large contingent of people who oppose restricting firearms, but who is it in opposition to getting underway with this "concerted effort across national and local government agencies" right away?
First of all, here's the US CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicideTechnicalP...
Page 12 says "Reduce access to lethal means among persons at risk of suicide"
Here's the World Health Organisation: https://www.who.int/mental_health/mhgap/evidence/suicide/q7/...
> At the population level, restricting access to means of self-harm (such as pesticides, firearms, high places) is recommended.
> Strength of recommendation: STRONG
> Quality of the evidence: MODERATE
> Collaboration between health and other relevant sectors should be established and the community should be involved actively to find locally feasible ways to implement interventions at the population level to reduce access to means of suicide to decrease deaths from suicide, suicide attempts and acts of self-harm.
> Strength of recommendation: STRONG
> Quality of the evidence: MODERATE
If you have tens of thousands of people dying each year from one method of suicide you need to reduce access to that method while you're putting in place other stuff to reduce suicidality in the population.
The reducing access to means and methods is equivalent in your metaphor to "as you're leaving this gas filled house do not strike any matches".
In your analogy "doing something about the gas leak" (fixing suicidality across a population) is something that takes years of concerted effort across national and local government agencies, see the linked CDC report above for examples.
By not reducing access to means and methods you're saying you're content for people to die a painful death in gas explosions because you think the gas leaks should be fixed quicker, even though everyone who knows anything about gas leaks is telling that's not how it works.