Title: Gun ownership causes higher suicide rates, study shows.
Headings: It’s Simple: Fewer Guns, Fewer Suicides
It’s Simple: Fewer Guns, Fewer Suicides
Two scientists explore a decade of data to find the tie between gun ownership and suicide in America.
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Content: Suicide is neglected compared with the large quantity of research on the relationship between homicides and guns, a relationship which remains controversial because it’s difficult to demonstrate causality. Places with lots of guns may have high homicide rates, but is this because guns cause homicide or because homicides cause people to buy guns? Or could a third factor—say, a general lack of social trust or high violence in a region—be causing both homicides and gun possession? The relationship between suicides and guns is much easier to tackle because it’s unlikely that an increase in the number of suicides in a community would cause an increase in local gun ownership. Advertisement
So in a new paper published in the International Review of Law and Economics, we studied the relationship between guns and suicide in the U.S. from 2000 to 2009. Using five measures of gun ownership and controlling for other factors associated with suicide, such as mental illness, we consistently found that each 1 percentage-point increase in household gun ownership rates leads to between 0.5 and 0.9 percent more suicides. Or, to put it the other way, a percentage-point decrease in household gun ownership leads to between 0.5 and 0.9 percent fewer suicides. Advertisement
Are the people not killing themselves with guns simply committing suicide by other means? Some are—but not all. While reduced household gun ownership did lead to more suicides by other means, suicides went down overall.