Ft. Cavazos Tx–Troopers from the 1st Cavalry Division, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT) “Black Jack,” participated in a week of unique events focused on firearms suicide prevention, on Fort Cavazos TX, March 18, 2024.

These events culminate a two-month training and education initiative with the Overwatch Project, a military and veteran suicide prevention program. These events provided an interactive, educational experience that enabled Soldiers to reinforce peer intervention skills on suicide prevention simultaneously, learn about firearms safety, and improve their marksmanship skills through a competitive shooting event.

“Our goal with these events is to support our Troopers with information and tools that support all aspects of safe firearms handling and ownership, including suicide prevention and firearms safety,” said Col. C.J. Kirkpatrick, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team commander.

The Overwatch Project is a peer intervention training and education program focused on firearms suicide prevention specifically tailored to a military and veteran audience. Essentially, they are building the equivalent of the “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” campaign for service members and veterans only. Instead of talking about alcohol and vehicles, their focus is on guns and suicide.

Through their training programs, they equip service members and veterans to intervene with at-risk buddies, asking them to hold onto their firearms temporarily or to take other protective storage measures to prevent suicide. The program also focuses on building proactive norms for firearms suicide prevention so that service members and veterans develop plans prior to a potential crisis. Through a III Armored Corps partnership, the Overwatch Project has trained 6,500 1st Cavalry Division Soldiers in the past five months.

“We believe in the power of helping service members help each other to prevent suicide and save lives, through creative peer intervention approaches that are specifically focused on firearms suicide prevention,” said Casey Woods, Executive Director of Overwatch Project / FORGE, a nonprofit organization. “Events like these with 2ABCT provide an opportunity to engage outside of traditional training settings and help Soldiers apply these peer intervention skills in other environments.”

The Overwatch Project’s suicide prevention activities at the event included an immersive suicide prevention exercise where Soldiers got to apply peer-intervention skills in an immersive scenario designed to build confidence in their ability to intervene in a crisis situation and to equip them to prevent suicide through proactive planning and discussions with their peers.

Additionally, SIG SAUER, an Overwatch Project partner, supported the suicide prevention event by providing additional safety and firearms education to Soldiers through their Shoot SIG program, which is an intro to competitive shooting.

“It’s important to our team to support our service members on initiatives that strengthen and expand efforts to reduce military and veteran suicide, and that’s why we’re honored to be partnering with the Overwatch Project on these events at Fort Cavazos,” said Tom Taylor, Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President, SIG SAUER.

The 2ABCT events were the first time SIG hosted a version of the Shoot SIG program exclusively for active-duty service members. In an exciting close to the week’s events, the 2ABCT shooting competition winners had the opportunity to compete against Daniel Horner, a member of SIG SAUER’s professional shooting team, TEAM SIG. Horner is a world-champion shooter and a veteran who served in the Army Marksmanship Unit. The 2ABCT winners were Pfc. Kim, Staff Sgt. Otis, and Sgt. Rocha. (U.S. Army article by members of the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team).