The current gun control debate is focused, not surprisingly, on the carnage from rapid-firing assault weapons, like the one used in the Connecticut school massacre. But beneath the surface lies a disturbing reality: nearly two-thirds of the 30,000 gun deaths each year are not the work of deranged mass shooters but the suicides of troubled individuals with easy access to firearms, often in quiet family homes.

Banning assault weapons and requiring comprehensive gun registration can help reduce the scourge of guns; but suicides are also an issue of self-responsibility, resting in the hands of largely law-abiding yet careless citizens who make their weapons all too accessible. Firearms are a far more lethal means of suicide than other options. They are fatally effective in 85 percent of cases, while pill overdoses succeed only 2 percent of the time, according to the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.

Another Harvard study, from 2007, found that on average states with the highest firearms ownership rates suffered twice as many suicides as states with the lowest gun ownership. Small wonder that states with some of the highest rates, like Wyoming, have been providing gun locks through their health departments as a public safety measure, according to a Times report by Sabrina Tavernise. Gun shop owners in other states have begun using posters and fliers to alert gun owners to the warning signs of suicide.

More precaution is certainly needed. Firearms should be left at the gun range and locked up there, or at least secured under lock and key at home, firmly beyond the hands of children and potentially troubled individuals. The shooter in the schoolhouse massacre two months ago in Newtown, Conn., found no problem in using his mother’s legally obtained, woefully available weapons.