Rural counties aren’t escaping gun violence

(INDIANA CAPITAL CHRONICLE) — The wedding reception of Corey Parker and Bethany Lowe ended in a drunken brawl with a guest wounded from a gunshot outside Cornerstone Hall, advertised as “the perfect destination for a close-to-home and close-to-friends event” in Salem, Indiana, population 6,547.

It began as an evening of celebration on May 18, 2024, but devolved into melee when wedding guest Jonathan Goff and his wife began arguing in the parking lot over whether Goff’s wife had been flirting with another wedding guest.

The groom later told police “everybody knew” he kept a handgun in his car’s center console. So, when an angry, intoxicated Goff bolted for Parker’s car, Parker followed and the two struggled for the gun. Patrick McIntosh tried to intervene but was wounded in the hand as the gun went off. He spent the night in the hospital.

Gun violence in rural America seldom receives the media attention of shootings in larger urban areas. But the problem in rural towns like Salem is more prevalent — and growing faster — than many people realize, gun control advocates say. 

“There’s this myth that all gun violence is in big urban cities and it’s just suicides in rural areas and homicides in cities,” said Nick Wilson, senior director of the gun violence prevention program at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning policy institute in Washington, D.C. “We wanted to see if that assumption was true.”

Compiling Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from 2016 to 2020, the think tank found that 13 of the 20 U.S. counties with the most gun homicides per capita were in rural areas.

Of those 20 counties, 80% were in states that received an “F” grade for their weak gun laws in the 2021 annual state scorecard from Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. For all gun deaths — homicides, suicides and accidents — the rate in rural communities was 40% higher than it was for metropolitan areas. The study defined as rural any county with fewer than 50,000 people.

Southern Indiana statistics

Several rural counties in southern Indiana have surprisingly high rates of gun homicides.

Based on CDC statistics compiled by Giffords from 1999 to 2023, Washington County ranked 23rd in the state for gun homicides while placing 57th in population among all 92 counties. More dramatic were findings in Scott County, which was ninth in gun homicides but 62nd in population, and Owen County, which ranked 13th in gun homicides and 68th for population.

Rural counties in every state traditionally have a higher rate of gun suicides than larger metropolitan counties. In Indiana, the top five counties for gun suicide rates are all rural – with Washington County ranked highest followed, in order, by Crawford, Brown, Jennings and Scott counties.

Given the tradition of hunting and shooting in rural areas, “we see more people carrying their guns out and about,” Wilson said. “Then they get into an argument, they get road rage, they get in a minor dispute that might have been just people shouting or maybe a fistfight before. Now with so many people carrying guns, they can escalate to shootings. And as more people carry their guns with them, they leave them in their car.”

Adding to the problem is “the loosening of concealed carry laws” in states like Indiana, he said.

Indiana received a D- rating from Giffords for its weak gun laws. The state has no universal background checks, no gun owner licensing, no restrictions on assault weapons, no ban on large capacity magazines, no waiting period to purchase firearms, no permits for carrying concealed handguns, no funding for community violence intervention, and only a few laws addressing the problem of guns and domestic violence.

Indiana’s lawmakers also declined to pass a safe storage bill in 2024 that would have imposed criminal penalties on gun owners who failed to secure firearms used by children to injure or kill.

Pushback

Gun rights advocates, however, say the real blame is the failure of states like Indiana to address the underlying issues of mental health and crime.

“The Giffords organization takes an amalgamation of data from a few very serious public health issues, and they label it all as gun violence,” said Charlie Hiltunen, president of the Indiana Rifle and Pistol Association and a board member of the National Rifle Association.

“Unfortunately, it distracts from the underlying problems” associated with homicide and suicide, he said, including the lack of mental health services and especially in rural areas.

Scott County Sheriff Jerry Goodin called the CDC data “not accurate to us because it appears to use gun deaths no matter what kind.”

The CDC’s homicide data reflects the intentional taking of a life with a gun by another person, including victims killed in cases of self-defense. 

The agency’s tally includes cases like the 2024 death of Scottsburg resident Edward Calton, 49, who was shot by his brother during a fight in their mother’s apartment, as well as the 2023 death of Michael Chastain, 45, who was shot by his ex-girlfriend’s mother as Chastain held the father at gunpoint in the front yard of their home. Both cases were considered self-defense and the shooters weren’t charged.

“I’m not saying that people shouldn’t have firearms or that we should take guns away from people,” said Beth Keeney, chief executive of LifeSpring Health Systems, the state-appointed nonprofit offering medical and behavioral services at 27 facilities in southern Indiana. “But we should absolutely try to limit access to them when we know that people are experiencing behavioral health crises or concerns.” 

Keeney added that “families can do that through their local law enforcement using the Red Flag provisions and statute.”

In 2005, Indiana became one of the earliest states to enact a Red Flag law that allows local courts to temporarily suspend a person’s access to firearms if they demonstrate significant risk of violence to others or self-harm. 

In reality, however, rural counties seldom issue such protective orders.

In 2023 and 2024, court records show that Washington County didn’t issue a single Red Flag order and Scott County issued just one in each of those years. By comparison, Marion County recorded 82 in 2023 and 145 in 2024.

Residents of rural communities often don’t give mental health issues the serious consideration they deserve, said Jessica Staley, a LifeSpring employee and Floyd County volunteer for the Indiana LOSS Team, a support group for those who have lost loved ones to suicide.

“Farming communities have always had the reputation of (thinking) ‘we’re strong, we take care of our own and we keep it in-house,’” Staley said. “Nobody really talks about (suicide) in those families.”

When rural residents do talk about people with mental health problems, it’s not with any urgency, she said. “It’s like, ‘You know, there’s just something wrong with so and so.’ But nobody ever talks about it other than gossiping.”

Hiltunen of the NRA pointed out that the Indiana Legislature continues to underfund mental health services, especially in rural areas. The state budget provides only $50 million of the $130 million that the Behavioral Health Commission says is needed each year to adequately serve the mental health needs of Hoosiers.

Staley agreed that mental health services are lacking in many rural communities in Indiana, “but LifeSpring is working to change that.” The group offers walk-in behavioral services at all 27 of its facilities. Anyone with concerns can also call 833-SAFE-988 to access support at any time.

Staley, 44, is familiar with mental health issues from her own family. For 15 years, she took care of her bipolar and schizophrenic mother until she died in 2022. 

That same year, her older brother Aaron, who was struggling with addiction, died from an intentional overdose at age 53.

“His mother, my stepmother, had passed away a couple years before, and that devastated him mentally,” she said. “He himself was kind of a good old boy. And they don’t talk about mental health — that’s for, you know, sissies and pansies.” 

Staley urges every rural resident to overcome the stigma of seeking behavioral help and not wait until it’s too late.

“It’s okay to not be okay. That’s such a huge thing that we all have to give ourselves,” she said. 

And that goes for anyone else we see in mental anguish, she said: “Don’t hesitate to tell them, ‘You might want to talk to someone. Have you thought about it?’”

This story was originally published by Indiana Capital Chronicle on July 7, 2025.

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