What We’ve Learned
We focus on suicides
Originally, Walk the Talk America was founded with the idea of stopping the next mass shooter. However, as we got more connected with the mental health community we were guided toward suicide prevention. Why? We lose 67 people a day to suicide by firearm. There is a big opportunity to save a lot of friends, parents, and family before it is too late. Gun owners don’t deserve to be stigmatized and have possible consequences for doing the right thing and seeking professional help. Mental Health America uses “B4Stage4” which points out that our best way of preventing death from cancers and other diseases is with early prevention efforts. What if mental illness was approached the same way? If we were able to get people the help they need before stage four, we could save a lot of lives.
There isn’t another existing solution to just throw money at
Originally, we thought we could raise money to mental health initiatives targeting suicide prevention by firearm. Those initiatives don’t exist, we are that initiative.
“After I got it set up and found that the mental health community was open to working with us, I was convinced that we would stop the next mass shooter. Hell, I thought we would probably stop all mass shootings. In my mind, I was Superman and all I had to do was raise the money to throw at the mental health professionals, who were going to work their magic.” — Mike Sodini