International Review of Law and Economics Guns Increase Suicides
It's Simple: Fewer Guns, Fewer Suicides
Two scientists explore a decade of information to discover the tie between gun ownership and suicide in America.
The relationship betwixt guns and suicide is easier to study than guns and homicide.
Photo by Michael Smith/Getty Images
In the year since Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster rifle to gun down twenty children in Newtown, Conn., the discourse on gun control has focused on mass shootings and homicides. That's not surprising: Terrible events dominate the cable news cycle, and murders become reported every 24-hour interval in our nation's newspapers. But if we want to talk nigh the effects of guns, we should recollect this: In a typical year, suicides outnumber homicides past 3 to 1 and a majority of suicides are past firearm. Suicides come in ones and twos, hither and in that location; they rarely make the national news, and when they are reported at all they are veiled in euphemism ("He died suddenly"). Suicides go and then underreported that Slate 'southward Gun Deaths Projection, which collects information from news articles and other online sources, categorizes just roughly i-tenth of the reported deaths every bit suicides.
The national conversation about guns, and near gun control, should include the relationship between guns and suicide. We recently analyzed a decade'south worth of data on guns and suicides in the U.s.a. and we institute that the human relationship is articulate: more guns, more suicides.
Suicide is neglected compared with the large quantity of inquiry 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, just is this because guns crusade homicide or considering 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 betwixt suicides and guns is much easier to tackle because it'southward unlikely that an increase in the number of suicides in a community would cause an increase in local gun ownership.
So in a new paper published in the International Review of Police and Economics, we studied the relationship betwixt guns and suicide in the U.S. from 2000 to 2009. Using v measures of gun ownership and controlling for other factors associated with suicide, such equally mental disease, nosotros consistently plant that each ane per centum-point increase in household gun ownership rates leads to between 0.5 and 0.ix percentage 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.
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 atomic number 82 to more suicides past other means, suicides went down overall. That'southward because contrary to the "folk wisdom" that people who want to commit suicide will always notice a way to get the chore done, suicides are non inevitable. Suicides are oft impulsive decisions, and guns require less forethought than other ways of suicide—and they're also deadlier.
Our inquiry had to overcome the fact that no 1 knows with smashing precision how many guns there are in America, how many households own a gun, how gun ownership varies demographically and geographically, what types of guns there are, or how guns are used. In part that's because in 1996, Congress banned the CDC from funding any research to "advocate or promote gun control." That's non a ban on gun enquiry, technically, only subsequently Congress extended the wording and expanded the ban to other agencies, it had plenty of a chilling effect to reduce CDC funding for gun violence research from $ii.5 million per year in the early 1990s to but $100,000 in recent years.
But don't take our critique of bans on government-funded research as a plea for more funding for our research. We would exist satisfied if the CDC and other government agencies such every bit the Agency of Justice Statistics were simply allowed to collect more and better data on guns, homicide and suicide. The CDC's National Violent Decease Reporting Organisation, for instance, even so covers only 18 states. President Obama lifted some of the restrictions on the CDC earlier this year, so we are cautiously optimistic about the prospects for future research. (Gun advocates and supporters of Second Amendment rights shouldn't assume that more research simply ways more arguments against guns. Nosotros are eager, for case, to see more studies on the defensive use of guns, a phenomenon about which there is currently very little trustworthy data. Moreover, better research might detect means of reducing gun violence without violating Second Subpoena rights. Indeed, reducing gun violence could exist one of the all-time means of reducing the demand for gun control.)
Despite challenges presented by the information, our findings announced robust and are consistent with a serial of "natural experiments" from around the world. For example, following the 1996 killing of 35 people in Port Arthur, Commonwealth of australia, a strong movement for gun control developed in Australia. States and territories fabricated uniform and more stringent regulations for the possession of firearms, and instituted a purchase-back of the newly illegal guns, nearly of which were rifles and shotguns. As Andrew Leigh and Christine Neill adamant in a paper published in the American Law and Economic science Review, these changes resulted in a reduction of the country'due south firearm stock by 20 percentage, or more than 650,000 firearms, and show suggests that it about halved the share of Australian households with ane or more firearms. The effect of this reduction was an fourscore percentage fall in suicides by firearm, concentrated in regions with the biggest drop in firearms. Meanwhile there was little sign of any lasting rise in not-firearm suicides.
Suicide is a leading cause of expiry amongst adolescents and young adults, and limiting access to guns during those formative, sometimes unsteady years can have a real effect on suicides. In Israel most 18- to 21-year-olds are drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces and provided with military machine preparation—and weapons. Suicide among young IDF members is a serious problem. In an attempt to reduce suicides, the IDF tried a new policy in 2005, prohibiting most soldiers from bringing their weapons home over the weekends. Dr. Gad Lubin, the chief mental wellness officer for the IDF, and his co-authors estimate that this simple change reduced the total suicide charge per unit among young IDF members past a stunning 40 percent. It's worth noting that even though you might call back that soldiers home for the weekend could hands delay suicide by a mean solar day or 2, the authors did not find an increase in suicide rates during the weekdays. These results are consistent with interviews with about-fatal suicide survivors, who often say their decision was spontaneous and who typically go on to live long lives.
If more than guns lead to more suicides, should nosotros ban guns as Australia did? Not necessarily. We find that a ane percentage-point increase in the household gun-ownership rate increases suicides by at most 0.ix per centum. There are 114 million households in the U.S., then a 1 percentage-betoken increase in ownership ways approximately ane.1 1000000 more households with guns. Since there are relatively few suicides, this translates into 345 more suicides, at near. In this sense, guns are relatively benign. Most guns are never involved in a suicide or a homicide.
Only lives take great value. Government agencies such every bit the EPA value a statistical life at effectually $8.4 million (2006 dollars updated to 2012). Calculating the value of life is probably something only an economist would ever think to exercise, but it'due south a useful exercise. When evaluating everything from how much to spend on straightening roads or researching cancer drugs, we need to accept some idea, however crude, of the value of lives lost and saved. At $viii.iv million each the value of 345 lost lives is almost $3 billion. Considering the value of life tells u.s. that the truthful toll of guns is higher than the monetary price by at least $two,635, the corporeality needed to be able to compensate for the expected loss of life. At that cost, fewer people should want to purchase guns.
Guns in the home are a adventure factor for suicide, and the run a risk is especially great if at that place is a depressed adolescent living at dwelling house. Unfortunately, people don't ever weigh risks carefully. In one study, even when strongly recommended by mental wellness professionals to do so, well-nigh parents of a depressed adolescent didn't remove their guns from their home. It's as well disturbing that guns were least likely to be removed when the begetter of the depressed adolescent had a drinking or drug problem of his own.
Suicide gets less attending, less funding, and less concern than many other kinds of deaths. San Francisco spent $26.5 million installing a new median bulwark on the Golden Gate Bridge even though at that place hasn't been a fatal caput-on automobile crash on the bridge in 12 years. But no funds accept been spent on a system to help prevent suicides, despite the fact that 10 people died committing suicide on the bridge in Baronial of 2013 alone. It's true, of course, that different homicides or accidents, suicide is a choice, only information technology's a option frequently made nether the duress of crisis or low. Moreover, suicide is not chosen by the friends, siblings, children, spouse, or parents of the person who commits suicide. Losing a loved one to suicide is a traumatic and painful experience. Suicide and its relationship to mental health, social isolation, and firearm access deserve our full attention and business organization.
Source: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/12/gun-ownership-causes-higher-suicide-rates-study-shows.html
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