Like many men in the mountainous California county of Shasta, about 200 miles north of San Francisco, Bill Rocha loved to hunt and fish, spending the infernal summers out on the lake in his boat. For decades he made his living as a contractor, working hard with his hands every day. And like many men in rural parts of the state, Bill was a gun owner. He had several hunting rifles, some of which he kept locked in a safe, and another firearm that he kept unlocked in his car.
Kelly Rocha, his daughter, described him as extremely sociable, but in private things were starting to fray. She didn’t know the extent of what her father was struggling with until she got a call one night in 2019. She had slept through two voicemails from her father’s wife, but finally picked up when her own mother called. “It was after midnight,” recalled Kelly, who was then 43. “She told me that my dad went out to his truck and killed himself.”
At the time, Kelly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. But she said that looking back, the signs were there. Anxiety, depression and alcoholism run in the family; her father was the third man in the Rocha line to die by suicide. And he was a gun owner.
Kelly Rocha at her home in Redding, California. Her father, Bill Rocha, died by gun suicide in 2019. Photograph: Ryan Christopher Jones/The Guardian
His death is emblematic of an endemic problem in the northern part of California, which has both the state’s highest rates of suicide and highest rates of gun ownership. In Shasta county, three-quarters of the people who died by suicide in 2024 were men, and nearly every one of them used a firearm. It’s something that clinicians, local politicians, county workers – and most of all, bereaved families – are attempting to grapple with and work toward preventing.
“I know my kids are gonna have a tendency to become alcoholics. From here on out, my goal is to stop that. Suicide should stop with my dad,” Kelly said. “I think we need to talk about it more.”
The California counties north and inland of the San Francisco Bay Area have the highest rates of gun ownership per household in the state.
According to the UC Davis BulletPoints Project, in 2024, 41% of households along the northern coast owned firearms; 35% in and around the upper Sierra mountain range; and 44% in the north San Joaquin valley, a major agricultural epicenter that feeds the entire nation. By comparison, just 22% of households in urban areas including Los Angeles and the Bay Area had firearms that year.
Regions with high gun ownership also have higher rates of suicide and other health disparities than the rest of the state.
In 2022, Shasta’s suicides reached an all-time high of 33.3 per 100,000, triple California’s average. Guns were the most common method. That number has decreased, but the county’s rate has remained significantly higher than the statewide average.
In the past two years, more than half of Shasta’s suicides have been due to gunshot wounds. The numbers for 2025 are still provisional, but the 43 suicides in 2024 show an increase of about a quarter from the previous year.
Based on these numbers, it’s tempting to conclude that if California further restricted firearms, the suicide rate would dip. (Public health data has shown that interventions such as extreme risk protect orders, or gun violence restraining orders – which allow family and law enforcement to petition for a temporary restriction on someone’s ability to buy or possession a gun if they pose a danger to themselves or others – have been successful at preventing suicides.)
A view of Mount Shasta from the Shasta dam in Shasta county, California. Photograph: Ryan Christopher Jones/The Guardian
But in Shasta, gun ownership is so deeply ingrained into local political and cultural identity that public health officials worry that simply discouraging gun ownership is unlikely to be effective, and would only deter people from seeking help.
Instead Shasta’s public health team has been focusing on a different kind of strategy called “means safety”. The idea is to distance a potentially suicidal person from “lethal means”, such as large amounts of medication that can lead to an overdose, or easy access to a loaded and unlocked gun.
double quotation markAccess [to safety devices] can be uneven, especially in a rural county like oursLindsay Heuer, education specialist with Shasta county
One way the Shasta health and human services agency has done this is through free lockbox giveaways and an awareness campaign, including ads on city buses around Redding encouraging people to safely store firearms and medication as a means of stopping suicide.
Means safety is meant to fit the realities of living in Shasta that can’t be easily mitigated: geographic isolation, a lack of mental health infrastructure, disproportionate levels of poverty and poorly funded social services – and a high rate of gun ownership. It also fits local values of self-sufficiency – an attitude at odds with calling a suicide hotline or going to counseling.
“That white American self-reliant, rural firearm owner persona is also going to have a self-reliant attitude towards their mental health problems and end-of-life choices,” said Amy Barnhorst, the associate director of the Centers for Violence Prevention at the University of California, Davis. As a psychiatrist and researcher, Barnhorst has treated and studied people affected by gun violence across California. Her work in many different communities has taught her that cultural sensitivity matters, especially in places like Shasta.
A gun store in Redding, California. Photograph: Ryan Christopher Jones/The Guardian
Since her father’s death, Kelly Rocha said she learned she is far from alone in Shasta county – two of her co-workers also had fathers who died by firearm suicide.
In the aftermath of his death she did what many others have done: reach out to Marcia Ramstrom, a local suicide crisis counselor who also supports the surviving family members, something she refers to as “suicide postvention”.
Ramstrom took up this work after her own family’s tragedy. One night in 2013, her older brother, who she now knows was struggling with untreated bipolar disorder, called 911. He pleaded with the dispatcher to send the police to kill him. When officers responded to the scene, he drew a loaded firearm and the police responded with gunfire. Ramstrom said that her brother, who was raised Catholic, believed suicide was a sin, so he figured out a way to take his own life without pulling the trigger himself.
“Most of the time when you get to that place when you’re convinced suicide is the answer, you’ve got tunnel vision,” Ramstrom said. Seeing the perspective of someone in this heightened state, she said, is critical for prevention efforts.
Marcia Ramstrom, the founder and director of Lotus Educational Services, at her office in Redding, California. Photograph: Ryan Christopher Jones/The Guardian
During this temporary window of heightened despair, a person may feel the impulse to act. According to research by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, many suicide survivors said they spent less than 20 minutes deliberating before trying to take their own lives. This short timeline is why accessibility is key, and why Shasta’s public health team has focused on teaching the importance of safely storing firearms, and increasing access to safety equipment.
double quotation markSuicide should stop with my dad. I think we need to talk about it moreKelly Rocha
You Matter Shasta, the county’s suicide prevention initiative, has organized free gun safe and lock giveaways at gun ranges over the past several years and has also coordinated a similar event among the county’s Spanish and Mien-speaking communities.
But progress is slow. According to staff, the county has only distributed about 200 safes. Meanwhile, the county approved about 4,688 active concealed carry gun permits over the past two years.
Lindsay Heuer, an education specialist with the county’s public health team, said the discrepancy reflects “broader structural challenges, not a lack of need or effort. Access can be uneven, especially in a rural county like ours, where not everyone attends community events or knows where to get a safety device.”
While they’re working on future events, Heuer added, the department has been hampered by state cuts to funding and staffing.
On the left, a photo of Eric Walters from 2009, and on the right, a photo of Marcia Ramstrom and Eric from 1966. Photograph: Ryan Christopher Jones/The Guardian
Another part of the puzzle, she said, is that people often have misguided understandings of safety, such as the idea that being able to reach a firearm quickly to protect their family against an intruder is more important than storing it in a lockbox. (Studies have suggested that Californians who live in homes with a firearm were significantly more likely to be the victims of homicide in their homes.)
Heuer said when people bring up this scenario to her, she suggests a compromise – that they lock up a firearm or ammunition if someone in the household is experiencing acute depression. “Safe storage conversations are most effective when they come from trusted sources and are framed around safety and care,” she said, “not judgment or regulation.”
When Matt Plummer, 39, began his political career as a county supervisor last year, he quickly became known for his data-driven approach to voting on agenda items at weekly public meetings. When the board deliberates over the county’s infrastructure, public safety or housing problems, he often couches his decisions in financial and logistical analysis, rather than framing issues in ideological terms, as some of his colleagues do.
After he was elected, he studied the metrics that made Shasta an outlier in the state as a way to determine what his priorities would be. What stood out to him most was Shasta’s suicide rate.
Matt Plummer, a Shasta county supervisor, in Sacramento, California, near the state capitol. Photograph: Ryan Christopher Jones/The Guardian
Shasta’s suicide rate has been about double or more than California’s, so he’s dedicated to “cutting the suicide rate in half”, he said. “I would like to see us bring our suicide rate into line with the state average.”
To do this, Plummer came up with a three-phase vision, parts of which he has started to implement: connecting with high-risk patients, continuing safety measures such as distributing gunlocks and safes that disrupt the means of access, then starting to tackle some of the bigger, more structural factors, including social isolation.
double quotation mark[Suicide] is the last sign that things upstream are probably not working quite rightMatt Plummer, a Shasta county supervisor
Some of this work, such as establishing patterns of behaviors between people who have died by suicide, has begun as part of Shasta county’s newly formed suicide fatality review team. Other California counties, including nearby Glenn, have set up similar teams made up of the law enforcement, public health officials, coroners and medical examiners to perform an interdisciplinary and postmortem examination of suicides, with the family’s permission. Doing this will help the county understand the gaps in suicide prevention policies and resources.
“[Suicide] is the last sign that things upstream are probably not working quite right,” Plummer said. “I see it as this blaring, flashing, red light that things are broken.” In April, he and the county’s public health director were selected to participate in an initiative with the National Association of Counties to strategize on how to prevent suicide in Shasta county.
Kelly Rocha agrees that things are broken.
Kelly Rocha at her home in Redding, California. Photograph: Ryan Christopher Jones/The Guardian
She is happy that the county is discussing different types of interventions, including trying to break through cultural barriers that prevent Shasta county residents from seeking mental health services. But she’s not sure any of them could have saved her father.
As a nurse, she said that she asks all her patients if they have felt suicidal. “Easily, somebody can deny it and say no,” she said. Kelly described her father, Bill, as one of those people, who likely would have never asked for help or admitted his feelings of despair.
Tackling this mental health stigma is the first step.
“Somebody like my dad, he didn’t talk about feelings or emotions,” she said. “He had all these guy friends, and the last thing I would ever imagine he would do is admit he was depressed, or seek help.”
This story was produced in partnership with the California Local News Fellowship. Another version of this story was published by Shasta Scout.
In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
