# Guns: Newsweek proposes a compromise

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-newsweek-proposes-a-compromise/725345>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [July 16, 2015, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-newsweek-proposes-a-compromise/725345 "2015-07-16T18:10:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 142

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**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2015, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guns-newsweek-proposes-a-compromise/725345/142 "2015-07-19T18:04:12Z")

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> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Suicide by gun is violence done with a gun, and I’m sorry it interferes with the “gun violence is going down” thing some have going on.

Let’s focus on gun violence that does not include crime. We know gun crime in nearly all categories is trending downward as discussed and you appear to concede. So what does that leave the gun control advocates? Suicide and unintentional firearm injury and unintentional firearm death.

Luckily, in the previous thread that you participated in we discussed one of these items, unintentional firearm death:

> [@Another deadly shooting](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-deadly-shooting/690488/37):
>
> Not quite. To show this, you’d have to isolate unintentional firearm related death. Homicide and suicide would need to be omitted to get information on the safety of the gun itself.
> 
> 1991: 1441  
> 2001: 802  
> 2010: 606
> 
> A 24% drop in the last 10 years, and a 58% drop in the last 20 years using 2010 data.
> 
> [Pulled from here (pdf)](http://www.nssf.org/PDF/research/IIR_InjuryStatistics2013.pdf). I did verify the 2001 and 2010 numbers at the [CDC site here.](http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/dataRestriction_inj.html) but I couldn’t find the source of the 1991 figure.

So what about unintentional firearm injury that doesn’t result in death. Not a straight line trend, but an overall decrease for the past 12 years with recent increases. (per 100K):

> [@](#):
>
> Rate Year  
> 5.33 2013  
> 5.53 2012  
> 4.71 2011  
> 4.59 2010  
> 6.07 2009  
> 5.66 2008  
> 5.21 2007  
> 4.92 2006  
> 5.21 2005  
> 5.65 2004  
> 6.53 2003  
> 6.11 2002  
> 6.21 2001

So that leaves suicide. As you acknowledge, suicide trended downward until about 2006, then started rising again. If you only looked at this, then you could think of it as an indictment against firearms. Firearms are a very effective method of suicide. But over this same period, suicide by all methods increased (per 100K):

> [@](#):
>
> Rate Year  
> 13.02 2013  
> 12.94 2012  
> 12.68 2011  
> 12.43 2010  
> 12.03 2009  
> 11.85 2008  
> 11.49 2007  
> 11.16 2006  
> 11.04 2005  
> 11.08 2004  
> 10.85 2003  
> 11.01 2002  
> 10.75 2001  
> 10.43 2000  
> 10.46 1999

So if the discussion is focused on firearms, and their interaction with suicide, then the question is really is suicide by firearm increasing, decreasing, or staying the same? Here is the rate of suicide by firearm as compared to all other methods:

> [@](#):
>
> 51.46% 2013  
> 50.90% 2012  
> 50.58% 2011  
> 50.55% 2010  
> 50.76% 2009  
> 50.57% 2008  
> 50.15% 2007  
> 50.70% 2006  
> 52.09% 2005  
> 51.64% 2004  
> 53.70% 2003  
> 54.05% 2002  
> 55.09% 2001  
> 56.51% 2000  
> 56.85% 1999

So at the same time suicide overall has experienced a consistent rising trend, the proportion of those suicides by firearm has decreased, with an uptick over the last 2 years of data available. The conclusion is that firearm violence when you include injury and suicide is also trending down in similar fashion to firearm crime. Overall suicide is increasing which as I said before, has separate remedies than gun crime. But even if the suicide data went the other direction - it doesn’t matter. Suicide prevention is not a valid reason to restrict gun rights. Doing so disproportionately impacts the rest of the population who are not suicidal, and are law abiding.

And just to be clear, none of the gun control proposed in the OP from the article would have any meaningful impact on suicides. Standard capacity magazines (only 1 round is used), open carry (these aren’t being done at Target), and background checks (NICS reporting isn’t mandatory for mental adjudication) - there is no connection here with suicide prevention. These control measures are simply what gun control advocates think they can push now. They’re wrong, but that’s what’s going on. If they were ever to be successful, the people who support gun control would move on to the next thing. Like \*\*Yog \*\*said in post 45, gun banners just want something, anything and won’t stop.

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