160628_SuicideQuilt_24ERB

In 1997 Sandy Martin started the national Life Keeper Quilts. The purpose was to raise awareness and prevent suicides with a visual image of the thousands of suicides that happen every year in America. As of today there are six quilts in Gogebic County dedicated to the memory of those who have committed suicide. (Emily Rose Bennett | MLive.com)

(Emily Rose Bennett)

For all the talk about gun violence in Detroit and Flint, Michigan's biggest gun problem is not in its inner cities.

It's in the scenic vistas around Baldwin. The communities along the northern shores of Lake Huron. The homes tucked in the rugged landscape of the Upper Peninsula.

Of Michigan counties with the highest per capita gun deaths, nine of the top 10 are in the Upper Peninsula or north of Mount Pleasant in the Lower Peninsula.

But unlike crime-ridden cities in Michigan's urban areas, the gun violence in northern Michigan tends to go under the radar. Of the 1,689 gun deaths in northern Michigan between 1999 and 2014, 1,514 - 90 percent - were suicides.

Northern Michigan's suicide rate by gun is twice that of Washtenaw and Kent counties and more than a third higher than Oakland, Macomb, Ingham and Kalamazoo counties, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control.

Read MLive's investigation and join the conversation.