On a recent trip to the Campbell Hall station, I noticed that among the schedules and information posted in the kiosk was a small poster promoting the new continent-wide 988 suicide-prevention hotline number. This makes sense given the location. The digital signboards at the approaches to the bridges over the Hudson have also been putting this information out in recent months. Another good place to put it.

This does, however, point to a place where those notices should be but are glaringly absent: gun stores, at least in my limited experience. It should not be surprising that a nation awash in firearms has the developed world’s highest rate of suicide by that method. Yet, conversely, while we have one of the lowest rates of rail suicide in the developed world, we increasingly have these signs up at stations and sometimes even grade crossings.

It is true, I would agree, that a very low percentage of gun buyers are doing so with suicide in mind. But research has suggested that suicide-hotline signs at locations associated with particular methods of suicide, especially those that are common in a particular society, can help prevention as potential suicides may decide to take the opportunity and seek help long before they actually begin carrying out their plans.

I can’t really imagine anyone finding this objectionable. Certainly putting 988 posters (as well as those with Cooper’s Four Laws of Firearm Safety) in gun shops near the point of purchase, or somewhere in the store where they could not fail to be seen, would neither unduly burden gun owners nor conflict with “the historical tradition of American firearms regulation” as Justice Thomas put it a couple of years ago.

We should not even have to initiate this through law or regulation. Most gun store owners and the people who frequent their establishments, in my experience, are the sort of people who practice and advocate for responsible gun ownership, and I believe they would be open to working together on this on a voluntary basis, as it would help reduce the toll gun violence takes on our society without inspiring calls for further restrictions on gun sales or ownership. This is an opportunity for cooperation by political opposites our society badly needs right now.