Access to Guns Increase Risk of Suicide
It is unfortunate and deeply troubling that the gun lobby does not accurately cite the mountain of available research that the easy access to firearms leads to more suicides. Hard data and numerous research studies strongly refute the gun lobby's spin that suicidal persons will simply find another way to take their own life.
The truth is that the “means” by which an individual chooses to end his or her life matters a great deal. The combination of impulse, access to guns, and the lethality of firearms results in higher suicides rates. Whereas other suicide methods are less fatal and often require more time and skill in order to complete, easy access to lethal firearms strips away the precious seconds and minutes that can interrupt a suicide attempt.
According to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, firearms are used in 52% of all suicides, more than every other method combined. In comparison, hanging accounts for 23% of suicides, overdose for 18%, and jumping and cutting both account for 2% (see link below).
Someone who attempts suicide with a firearm is more likely, and tragically, to succeed in ending his or her life. Most striking is that less than 1% of nonfatal suicide attempts are with a gun. The far majority of nonfatal suicide attempts treated in emergency rooms result from overdose, 64%, followed by cutting at 19%. In other words, suicide methods, besides using a gun, greatly increase the chances of surviving.
Most troubling is the gun lobby's callous view that access to guns or gun suicides aren’t a big deal, even if new research indicates that higher rates of gun ownership increases suicides. We strongly disagree with the gun lobby -- we think gun suicides remain a critical public health and public safety problem.
Freedom States Alliance and our fellow gun violence prevention advocates, along with mental health advocates, fervently believe that to prevent suicides we must educate families about the risks of keeping guns at home. One of the keys to preventing suicides is better information about the risks of easy access to firearms. Understanding that “means matter,” with respect to guns, is an important step to saving lives.
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If someone builds a bridge, would that mean I'm more likely to jump off it.
Why should we really care if people kill THEMSELVES with firearms if they're not harming the general public? If you killing yourself, you're not killing me and that's all I care about. Aside from that, if they're suicidal removing one means of suicide ain't gonna stop them? What if you live near train tracks? Or have Bleach in your house? Those things kill people every day and nobody is talking about banning them? Access to guns increase risk of suicide...and I care because? Skydiving increases the risk of suicide too. But if fools wanna jump out of planes or shoot themselves in the head, that's THEIR business.
Do those people really think that I am going to suddenly decide to kill myself because I have guns . Are the guns subliminally playing the theme song from M*A*S*H - (Suicide is Painless)? People have been committing suicide since long before guns were invented, and in countries where guns are outlawed.
Access to guns may increase the likelihood that a committed suicidal person will choose that method over another, but it does not affect the suicide rate over all. An example is Japan, where the rate of gun ownership is less than 1% but the suicide rate per 100,000 population in 2005 was more than double that of the US.
Source: World Health Organization
http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/country_reports/en/index.html
Many suicide attempts are not really meant to end a life, rather they are a call for help. These people typically don't pick a reliable method. Most people who pick a gun mean to die--If a firearm were not easily available, they would pick another effective method.
Another aspect of this is a fairly significant difference in philosophy, separate from the gun issue--Self-reliance vs. dependence on authority. The idea that because I may harm myself I should be prevented from doing something reinforces dependence. Letting me judge the risks myself and make my own decisions is self-reliance.
Not really. While the success rate of different suicide methods is not in doubt the fact remains that if you are using pills or cutting to try and kill yourself, you're not all that serious about suicide. I would love to see a link the the research that actually shows even a medium correlation between gun ownership and suicide risk. The biggest study on this at your means matter site classifies New Hampshire as being a low gun prevalence state. This shows that their method of collecting data was flawed, to say the least.