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Ralph Demicco still remembers the "sinking feeling" nine years ago when he learned that three customers who had purchased guns from his Hooksett shop had used them to kill themselves -- all unrelated deaths and all within a six-day period.

"It was just shocking," he said. 

In the years since, Demicco, former owner of Riley's Sport Shop, has been part of a band of strange bedfellows dedicated to improving gun safety. The New Hampshire Firearm Safety Coalition has promoted trigger locks, and created a suicide prevention campaign for gun shops that has become a model for the nation.

Now they want to enlist firearms instructors to promote suicide awareness.

The coalition, which includes public health and firearms experts, put together a video for instructors to use in their classes. It depicts a despondent man whose wife has left him and taken his beloved dog. When family members come to his home to check on him, they convince him to let them hold onto his gun for a time -- and to call a suicide hotline together.

The group hopes the video will prompt important conversations about gun safety.

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