IRONWOOD, MI -- Josh Suzik tried to kill himself on a sunny afternoon last fall.

He didn't succeed, but he shot off part of his face.

A strapping, handsome 19-year-old, Suzik seemed an unlikely suicide victim. He was a mellow kid. Quiet, with a shy smile. A laidback Yooper who grew up near Ironwood in the Upper Peninsula's Gogebic County.

But in the months after graduating from high school, Suzik had a string of bad luck.

His dream of enlisting in the Navy was put on hold until he lost weight. He was exhausted from working seven days a week at two jobs. He bought a used car with his graduation money, only to have it totaled in an accident. To replace it, he bought a junker of a pickup. It kept breaking down, but it was the only vehicle he could afford.

On the third weekend of October 2015, Suzik went off by himself to the family cabin to go bird hunting. But what was intended as a respite from his troubles became another exercise in frustration.

That Sunday afternoon, he drank some of the beers he brought along, which may have been why he rolled his father's four-wheeler. Then when trying to retrieve the four-wheeler, his pickup broke down yet again.

Drunk and despondent, Suzik impulsively wrote a suicide note, stuck a shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger. The blast shattered his jaw, blew away his lips and split his nose in three, but it didn't kill him. Suzik staggered to a neighboring house several hundred yards away. He collapsed in the yard as the homeowners called for help.

Nearly a year later, Suzik is still undergoing reconstructive surgeries at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Despite the considerable medical challenges, Suzik's mother Crystal says she is "extremely grateful every single day" her son is alive.

"I'm well aware of the statistics" in which nine out of 10 suicide attempts by gun end in death, Crystal Suzik said.

Suicides explain why Gogebic County has among the highest gun fatality rates in Michigan, based on 1999-2014 data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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. Those two regions collectively contain about 1 million people or 10 percent of the state's population.

But unlike crime-ridden areas such as Detroit or Flint, 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 CDC data.

"There are lots of different reasons" suicide is so prevalent in northern Michigan, said Pat Gallinagh, a retired teacher and head of a suicide survivor support group in Ironwood.

"One is the scarcity of mental health care," Gallinagh said. "Another is there's a lot of alcohol abuse. And we love our guns up here."

Multiple studies show communities with high rates of gun ownership tend to have higher suicide rates. The reason: While gun owners aren't more suicidal, they have easy access to the most lethal method of suicide. While only 5 percent of suicide attempts involve a gun, they account for about half of the deaths, a 2001 Harvard study found.

Yet the role of guns in the high suicide rate tends to be downplayed in communities such as Ironwood, where guns are viewed with far more affection than fear.

The Suziks, for instance, make it clear they are not anti-gun. They are part of an extended family of hunting enthusiasts, and while Josh hasn't touched a gun since his suicide attempt, his situation hasn't dulled their appreciation for sports shooting.

For the most part, northern Michigan residents have a healthy relationship with guns, Crystal Suzik said.

"You know that expression, 'Born with a gun in hand'? That's Josh," she said.

While Josh grew up surrounded by firearms, the family also was conscientious about gun safety, she said. When not in use, the guns were kept locked in a gun safe. Josh and his younger brother were drilled on the dos and don'ts of handling firearms.

"The way people are raised around here, there is a conscious respect for firearms," Crystal Suzik said.

Gun rights and gun control

Outside of Ironwood at the Superior Range Shooters Club, 11 school-age children take turns practicing with a .22 rifle under the watchful eye of instructor Gary Kusz.

One of them is 6-year-old Adrianne Balchik, who confidently pulls the trigger.

"I think I hit the target!" she tells Kusz, a retired firearms instructor for the Ironwood Department of Public Safety.

Adrianne and her 10-year-old brother John were told by their parents that taking the 4-H firearms class was a mandatory summer activity.

"We're a hunting family, and they need to learn respect for guns and gun safety," said Judy Balchik, the children's mother.

Gogebic County's gun culture is only one way in which Ironwood and its environs are an apt microcosm of northern Michigan.

Located at the western edge of Michigan between Lake Superior and the Wisconsin border, Gogebic was part of the U.P.'s once-prosperous mining industry. But Gogebic's last mine closed in 1967. The biggest legacy now of the mine-boom era is the plethora of Finnish surnames. The county population - now a little under 16,000 - is half of what it was in the 1920s and '30s. About a third of the people live in Ironwood, the county's biggest city.

Today, the region's dominant industry is tourism. Unemployment is high. Even for people who find work, "it usually pays minimum wage and you need two jobs" to pay the bills, said Brenda Salo, an Ironwood resident.

Still, Gogebic County has its charms - the friendly warmth of the people with their lilting Yooper accent; the beauty of the rolling, rugged landscape; the distance from the pace and problems of urban America. When people here talk about owning guns for protection, they're often referring to predatory bears or wolves.

But what really drives gun ownership in this part of the world is hunting - an activity that mixes outdoor recreation, a deep appreciation for nature, the pragmatic aspect of providing meat for the family and a rich sense of generational tradition. Especially for boys, shooting a gun for the first time, getting a gun of their own and joining the adults at hunting camp are each treasured rites of passage.

"It's an in-your-face gun culture," although not in a bad way, said Alex Larson, 34, who moved to Ironwood four years ago from Minneapolis. While big-city residents are often furtive about whether they own a firearm, gun ownership in Ironwood is assumed. Asking people here why they own a gun is like asking an experienced cook the point of owning razor-sharp kitchen knives.

No surprise, "a lot of people here get super, super defensive about gun control," said Daniel Freeman a 19-year-old who works at Brewster's Northwoods Bar in downtown Ironwood.

Yet the conversations are not as one-sided as one might think. While the National Rifle Association has plenty of fans here, Gogebic also has voted for the Democrat in every presidential election since at least 1980.

The contradictions are reflected by Angelica Larson, 28, the wife of Alex Larson and a self-described staunch supporter of the Second Amendment.

But after making an impassioned defense of the "constitutional right to bear arms," Larson adds that guns aren't a good idea for people who are impulsive and are quick to anger - people, in fact, like herself.

"I know myself well enough to know that I shouldn't have a gun," Larson says. "If I had a gun, (my husband) would be dead by now."

If the government wanted to mandate a mental evaluation for prospective gun buyers, "I'd be fine with that," Larson said.

At Hautala's Bar in Ironwood Township on a recent weekday, plenty of heads nod when Jim Wamhoff says: "Don't even talk to me about giving up my guns."

This is an afternoon crowd of mainly retired men, most of them hunters, and they're highly suspicious of government. A husband and wife at the end of the bar theorize that medical screenings for depression are really a government plot to compile a list of people who shouldn't have guns.

But those gathered around the bar also agree some restrictions on gun sales aren't a bad idea, at least in principle. Perhaps a mandatory gun-safety class for gun purchases. Better background checks. Banning assault rifles is mentioned by several.

"I believe in having a gun, but I'm against these AK 47s," says Bob Brown, 82. "There's no reason for it."

But Brown and others at Hautala's Bar also see a major downside to enacting those restrictions.

"You don't want to give an inch" to the government when it comes to gun control, Brown says. "They say they don't want to take our guns but they can set up laws where you might as well hand them in."

When the conversation turns to mass shootings, Brown casually notes he once witnessed a mass shooting, almost 50 years ago. The shooting spree was one of Ironwood's most notorious crimes and one that partially unfolded in Hautala's.

The shooter was Eric Pearson, a backwoods bachelor bitter about the end of a romantic relationship. On March 16, 1968, Pearson shot and killed his former love and four others in Ironwood Township before heading to the tavern, according to old news accounts.

Brown said he was sitting a few seats down at the bar when Pearson walked in and fatally shot the man rumored to be dating Pearson's ex-girlfriend. Another patron grabbed for Pearson's rifle, which then went off again, fatally injuring a woman bystander. Pearson was finally subdued when he was whacked over the head with a whiskey bottle.

"It happened so fast," all he could do was watch, Brown said.

Unable to convince a jury that he was too drunk to be held responsible, Pearson was convicted of murder and died in prison.

There's still a bullet hole in the bar.

Murder-suicide in Bessemer

Guns, alcohol and romance gone bad have a toxic history in Gogebic County.

Three of his former football players have died in murder-suicides in which they were the shooters, said Gallinagh, a retired history teacher who coached in Bessemer and then Ironwood.

One of those murder-suicides involved Ladd Honkala II, who killed his pregnant girlfriend in November 2007 and then killed himself at the couple's home in Bessemer, Gogebic's county seat.

"It was horrible," said Sue Honkala, Ladd's mother. "I don't remember the first two years after it happened."

Ladd Honkala and his girlfriend Amy Green had a volatile relationship fueled by drugs and alcohol, Sue Honkala recalled.

Then Green, 25, became pregnant, which thrilled Ladd Honkala, 34, who already had an 8-year-old son.

On the day of Nov. 29, 2007, Honkala was drinking with a friend when he heard rumors another man may have fathered Green's baby, Sue Honkala said.

Ladd Honkala went to Green, enraged. Green called 911.

Gogebic County sheriff deputies arrived at the house just as Green's 6-year-old son was returning from school. When nobody inside came to the door, deputies broke the door down - only to find Ladd Honkala half-naked and aiming a shotgun at them, according to the sheriff's department's report of the incident.

Honkala got off a shot, which ricocheted and hit the 6-year-old boy, who was standing behind the deputies. The boy was taken to the hospital with a leg injury. When police finally entered the home, they found the bodies of Green and Honkala.

Sue Honkala and her husband are raising the grandson who was left behind. The boy is now 17 and a "great kid," his grandmother says.

But she worries.

Like many households in Gogebic County, the Honkalas have an extensive collection of guns "although my husband hasn't hunted in years," Sue Honkala said.

She would like to get rid of them, fearful of another gun tragedy.

"Why do we need 40 guns? Something is going to happen," she said.

She knows that suicides can run in families, and she's especially concerned about her surviving son, who has struggled with alcohol abuse.

"I fear for my son," she said. "I fear for my grandson."

Two sons lost to suicide

Geri Tiziani doesn't have guns in her house anymore.

The 76-year-old Ironwood resident can barely stand the sight of firearms, she says, after losing her youngest and oldest sons to gun suicides. The deaths occurred five years apart.

The first to die was her youngest son, Brian, 27, who killed himself in October 2001.

At the time, he was involved in a stormy relationship with a woman, Geri Tiziani said. There was a lot of fighting. A lot of drinking.

The woman obtained a personal protection order against Brian, according to the Gogebic County Sheriff's Office report on the suicide. Despite the PPO, when Brian heard the woman was spending time with one of his close friends, he went to the man's house in Ironwood Township and confronted the two together.

Then, Geri Tiziani said, "He killed himself right in front of them."

Sheriff deputies, who had just arrived on the scene, witnessed the suicide. Just before Brian shot himself, he yelled "I love you and you made me do this," the report said.

It was a devastating loss, Geri Tiziani said, and the circumstances made it even worse.

"I was so ashamed," she said. "I thought people would look at me and think I didn't do a good job as a mother. I couldn't even talk about it."

In 2006, Tiziani's oldest son Barry went through a series of life crises.

He was struggling with a serious drinking problem. He and his wife divorced, and she moved to Ohio along with the couple's two children. Because of the alcoholism, he lost his job and then his house.

In September 2006, Barry Tiziani went to the cemetery where his father was buried. He killed himself next to the grave.

Geri Tiziani said she couldn't believe she lost another son to suicide. Barry "knew what I went through with his brother," she said.

"To lose them that way," she said, "I couldn't even say goodbye."

Glad to survive

Between 1999 and 2014, 44 people in Gogebic County died of gunshot wounds and suicides account for 86 percent of those deaths, according to CDC data.

Based on the county's population, that's more than two and a half times the national rate for gun suicides.

There are so many suicides that the local Suicide Prevention Council has created memorial quilts, with each square representing a suicide victim, most from the western U.P. The project began in 2001 and the group is now on its sixth quilt, Gallinagh said.

There are memorial squares for Brian and Barry Tiziani as well as Ladd Honkala II. One square is for Gallinagh's sister, who died in 1967.

There are plenty of theories among Ironwood residents about the high suicide rate.

They point to the long, dark winters. The lackluster job market and the difficulty of getting a good-paying job. The drinking.

"I don't think I ever handled a suicide where alcohol wasn't involved," said Kusz, an Ironwood public safety officer for 30 years.

About 28 percent of Upper Peninsula adults fit the definition of binge drinkers, compared to a national average of 18 percent, according to data collected by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. A binge drinker is a man who has five drinks or a woman who has four drinks in one sitting at least once a month.

Ironwood residents also talk about the reluctance of people here to get help for mental health problems and, even when they seek help, the difficulty in obtaining services.

Pat Gallinagh is a retired teacher and football coach, and is head of a suicide survivor support group in Ironwood. "There are lots of different reasons" suicide is so prevalent in northern Michigan, said Gallinagh."One is the scarcity of mental health care," Gallinagh said. "Another is there's a lot of alcohol abuse. And we love our guns up here." (Emily Rose Bennett | MLive.com)

To see a psychiatrist, Gogebic County residents need to travel several hours to Marquette or Rhineland, Wis., Gallinagh said. There are therapists in the county, but not enough. People in crisis may call around for professional help only to find a months-long wait for the first open appointment.

Gogebic has one mental-health professional for every 629 residents, and the ratio is even worse in adjoining Michigan counties, according to an analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The state average is a ratio of 1-to-450.

When it comes to suicide, one factor most Ironwood residents don't mention is guns.

"Guns aren't so much the concern," Geri Tiziani said. "It's the other things, like the alcohol and the financial conditions, the depression."

Gallinagh said he hears that a lot.

People think "if they're going to do, they're going to do it," and the use of a gun is an insignificant factor in suicide attempts, he said.

"But that's just not true," Gallinagh said.

The fact is, suicide is often an impulsive act - and if a convenient means of suicide isn't readily available, the impulse will pass, Gallinagh said.

Moreover, more than nine out of 10 Americans who attempt suicide survive, according to CDC data. The exceptions are suicide attempts by gun, in which nine out of 10 end in death. That's an important distinction, Gallinagh said, because suicide survivors often get the help they need to address their despair.

Most people who attempt suicide "really don't want to die. They just want to relieve the pain," Gallinagh said.

He points to himself as an example.

As a young man, Gallinagh struggled with alcoholism and manic depression, although for a time he kept his demons at bay by playing football. An All-American defensive tackle at Michigan State University, he was a member of Duffy Daugherty's 1965 team that won the national championship.

"When I was on a manic high, I was unstoppable," he said.

Life became harder after Gallinagh graduated from MSU, and he attempted suicide twice - once by trying to hang himself and once by crashing his car.

Fortunately, Gallianagh said, "I didn't have access to weapons. If I had a gun, I probably wouldn't be here."

'I felt lucky'

Josh Suzik says he feels lucky to have survived that October shooting - a feeling of luck mixed with regret for having done such damage to his body and putting his family through such trauma.

"Looking back, I can see I wasn't thinking straight," he said. "If I hadn't been drinking, I wouldn't have done it."

Crystal Suzik said undiagnosed depression and anxiety contributed to her son's suicide attempt. She and Josh now are using their story to advocate for more mental health services, and the importance of teaching children and adults how to cope with stress and recognize when to seek help.

"I want the take-away to be that mental health is an issue that can't be ignored," Crystal Suzik said.

As a local leader in suicide prevention, Gallinagh is convinced that "99 percent" of suicide attempts involve mental illness, including substance abuse. Even when the attempt seems to be triggered by a romantic breakup or job loss, Gallinagh sees mental health issues as typically the underlying cause that precipitated the chain of events.

For that reason, he's vocal about the importance of improving access to mental health services, especially in rural America, and to remove the "shame, stigma and silence" that surrounds depression and related syndromes.

"You read obituaries all the time about people who fought a courageous battle with cancer, but you don't read obituaries about people who fought a courageous battle with depression," he said.

But while addressing mental health and substance abuse issues are key in reducing suicides, he said, so is addressing the culture that provides such ready access to guns.

"Firearms make it much more easy to finish the act," Gallinagh said. "It's logical that if we had fewer guns, we'd have fewer suicides. You don't have to be a genius to figure that out."

But that's a hard argument to make in Ironwood.

"Some people don't want to hear that," Gallinagh said.

It's a hard argument, in fact, for Josh Suzik, who yearns to return to hunting, to once again be alone in the woods with his gun and his thoughts, to take in the wonder of the Upper Peninsula while feeling that elemental connection with nature.

That's just a dream for now. Suzik's parents have removed all their guns from their house along with Josh's extensive collection of hunting knives. There's no reason to tempt fate, the parents figure, as their son works to recover from his physical injuries and regain his mental health.

But Crystal Suzik foresees a day when the family will be hunting together again.

"Josh has to go through these steps with us," she said. "He'll have to watch himself for the rest of his life, in terms of drinking, in terms of stress, in terms of dealing with the PTSD that he has.

"But I'm not going to tell him that he'll never hold a gun again."