And that is for a really interesting reason: The vast majority of Wyomingites appear to be, looked at closely, pro-suicide.
I mean, think about it. You don’t get Wyoming’s astounding number of suicides year after year unless you’re practically advocating for it.
Here’s a local commentator:
Like most good ol’ boys, [Wyoming St. Sen.] Kolb hemmed and hawed and found an excuse to do nothing, even while kids in his community kill themselves… [Kolb says:] “As soon as we start dragging [suicide] down the emotional road, we’ve lost… ”
Kolb’s attitude about suicide — that we shouldn’t get emotional about it, that we don’t really need to take action — reflects the cold-hearted stubbornness that has kept Wyoming from dealing with [the state’s suicide] crisis in any real way… [A]s long as people running the state maintain the same harmful and lazy attitude that caused our state to become the worst in the nation for suicide in the first place, we won’t see anywhere near the progress we need against this issue that tears so many of Wyoming’s families and communities apart.
Don’t get all boohoo. Don’t take action. Guns are there to kill people, including yourself if you feel like it.
Cowboy nihilism is super-chic. The macho charisma of killing yourself with Marlboros, Wyoming Whiskey, and a Kahr CM9 Polymer 9mm.
The state’s most popular book.
Second highest rate of car crashes in America, even though no one lives there. Most guns per capita in the nation. One psychiatrist every whatever … every five thousand miles…