I remember back in high school thinking this was a good webpage: http://www.palace.net/~llama/psych/injury.html. It's still up now and judging by its Google ranking seems to be getting a lot of traffic.

I think it's important if you come across a cutter to acknowledge the merits of the coping mechanism as well as its obvious disadvantages. People wouldn't do it if it wasn't helpful in some way.

Also while I guess self-injury and suicide are somewhat related concepts in a way, the "getting careless and being shot suicide alternative" is not really directly comparable since self-injury is generally not a life-negating act and not a suicide attempt. Really the Northern rural equivalent to that "shameless suicide" is people who commit suicide while hunting and make it look like a hunting accident, to spare their families the shame.