Nate Silver’s organization FiveThirtyEight has compiled this information about gun deaths in America for the years 2012-2014 and averaged it for the presentation of data at the top.
The most surprising statistic to me is that more than 1/3 of all gun deaths in the U.S. comprise the suicides of men over 45. A little less than another 1/3 is other suicides. Somewhat less than 1/3 are homicides (note: “suicide by cop” is not a separate category, but is counted among all homicides; homicide apparently includes “justifiable homicide” such as in cases where an assailant is killed to save someone else’s life).
It would be very interesting to me to see statistics about all non-natural deaths. For example, what percentage of suicides are by gun vs. other methods? Then compare that to another country with virtually no guns but a high suicide rate (Japan comes to mind) to see if easy access to guns actually has an effect on suicide rate. Or the same type of comparison with other methods of homicide. But this would be a much larger task. It seems to me that by focusing on deaths by guns, FiveThirtyEight is starting out with an agenda. They talk about causes of gun deaths and solutions to gun deaths. Without studying all causes of non-natural death, it seems like the discussion of possible solutions will, of necessity, be incomplete.
The real question for study is, considering all methods used for non-natural death in the U.S., can a case be made that easy access to guns results in a significantly larger quantity of deaths? Or should solutions focus on the causes of the actions that led to the deaths, rather than on the methods used? That is the data that I would like to see.
Sure it’s rare, but when my family’s life is at stake, there can be no excessive precautions. That’s why I carry around polar bear repellent wherever I go, just in case! I openly carry it too, just so those polar bears know what’s what!
Since their introduction into Brazil, they have killed some 1,000 humans, with victims receiving ten times as many stings than from the European strain.
I listened to a Freakonomics podcast episode about suicide, it somewhat addresses some of the questions you have. The transcript is here, the episode was from a few years ago, but it was just rebroadcast on June 29 so it should be easy to find if you want to listen to it.
It can be difficult to compare suicide between different countries, because different cultures can have different issues and different ideas about death and suicide. Suicide is seen as a sin in Christianity and Catholicism in particular, but from what I’ve read suicide isn’t seen as a sin in Japan with the different religions they have there. I’m sure there are suicidal people in the US who stop because of God, and similar people in Japan don’t have that stopping them.
Also, suicide is often an impulsive thing. People don’t usually stew for days thinking about killing themselves, then take time to plan out how they’ll do it. They have a period that’s bad enough that they think about suicide and either do it or the time passes and they don’t want to kill themselves anymore. From the podcast:
Suicides were down a third, not because of some national mental health measure, but because one super easy method of suicide was eliminated. Some people who might have killed themselves with gas didn’t have that option, and so the impulse passed before they could get another method.
If guns were banned in the US, not all suicides would be stopped, some who would shoot themselves would use another convenient method. But the number would decrease. I don’t know how you’d help people this way though, because it’s easy to say that there should be more gun control to keep hands out of criminals, it’s less likely to be accepted that there should be more gun control because no one knows when they’ll have a bad enough day that they might want to kill themselves.
It looks to me as if the suicide rate in the UKwas already on the decline before the '70’s, and it went back up in the mid-70’s through the early 2000’s before slowing declining again. So, I don’t see this as even good evidence that it would decline in the US (who’s rate is already lower, per 100k than the UK) with a gun ban…certainly not over the long term.
Addressing suicide there is evidence from both Australia and Canada that access to legal firearms does not have a significant impact on the suicide rate.
That said all suicides tend to be under-reported in this country. Particularly with older people whom are in declining health. This is anecdotal but I was friends with the daughter of the family that ran the funeral home in my home town. Her father claimed once told me that almost all closed casket funerals that did not state a cause of death were suicide, either hanging or from firearms.
There is a significant amount of cultural bias against suicide in our country and I know of two incidents here in Seattle where people smashed out windows in the high-rise I use to work in. Most news papers will not report on most of these cases and I know that the obituary for at least one individual was marked as accidental.
I also know that my old roommate committed suicide via drug overdose and that it was not categorized as a suicide despite the fact that he timed it so that his body would be found and massively overfed his cats so that they would survive.
I bring this up because the statistics are not complete or accurate enough to make concrete claims on causality.
For non-suicide deaths, as far as my research has found, there is a distinction to be made which may seem subtle but is significant as far as the topic goes. There is little to no evidence that legal civilian firearm ownership significantly alters the homicide rate either way.
There is some evidence that firearms do have a causative correlation with extra-legal deaths but there is no good data to show that lawful ownership restriction or liberalization effects those rates particularly in cases with a significant source of income for organized criminals like illicit drugs. IIRC well established pipelines for illegal goods are quite capable of supplying firearms for the black market and availability (more correctly prices) of illegal firearms directly relates to how established those alternative channels are.
There is significant evidence that social equality, education and equal opportunity do have a significant effect.
But to really answer the question we would have to look at each one of the causes of death. Suicide can be the result of undiagnosed or unsuccessful treated clinical depression or it could be due to a fear of financial burden on loved ones etc… Those issues have very different motivations and removing firearms from the home if a loved one has depression would probably be a good idea. However in case of depression educated compassion, active de-stigmatization of mental health and treatment would most likely have a greater effect.
If we consider the practicality of particular interventions the question becomes much easier to quantify but as the OP was more abstract I will attempt to not delve into that subject.
Maybe the suicide rate was dropping anyway, maybe it dropped more because gas wasn’t available. That the suicide rate went back up is unfortunate, but some of the people who would have killed themselves earlier were still around so there was still some good done, even if things could have been better. A study referenced here says that an estimated 6 or 7 thousand lives were saved.
There does seem to be indications that barriers to suicide decrease the numbers of suicide. People are often resistant to suicide barriers on bridges but they do decrease the numbers of suicides from that bridge without corresponding numbers going up elsewhere. I don’t know what type of barriers would be best for guns, I’m not sure if there is a waiting period now to get guns or if it’s easily avoided, or if there’s some other barrier that could be used to slow people down before they kill themselves with a gun.
I’m not actually calling for a gun ban, but if there were fewer people with guns, there would be fewer suicides. Maybe the decrease would be temporary, and in a few decades the overall suicide rate would increase because of some other method, but then we could think about tackling that issue. Just because a solution isn’t perfect or it’s effects wouldn’t last forever doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be tried if the positives outweigh the negatives.
There are other things that affect suicide rates, like problems with money, relationships, drugs or alcohol. Improving those issues would also decrease suicides, but that’s a much bigger and broader thing. We should also have much better ways to help people going through those problems, and that will help decrease suicides.
I have read that guns increase the likelihood of successful suicide due to the cataclysmic and instantaneous nature of the injury, but haven’t read anything about how guns increase the likelihood of attempts.
Oddly enough, Freakonomics re-released their podcast about suicides which addresses this very question.
I don’t think your cite is quite supporting your claim. You seem to be claiming that suicides by firearms or by hanging might not be marked as suicide in the official records, which would be the death certificate. Some cause of death has to be on the death certificate. In the case of suicide by violent means (firearms, hanging, jumping from a building, etc.) there has to be some investigation to make sure it was not murder. To avoid an investigation would mean hiding the injury from the police and having a doctor sign a death certificate that does not mention the injury (and instead specifies some fictional natural cause of death), an action for which there are fairly serious penalties. The investigation will determine whether it is called suicide, accident or homicide on the death certificate. So I think your friend’s father was not being entirely straightforward with you. Especially likely if you were still a child or adolescent at the time of the telling.
Having said that, it is quite possible that some suicides by violent means are marked as accidental, especially if the person involved made some effort to hide their intent, or at least make it ambiguous. But I doubt the number of these would be statistically significant.
My first thought when I saw that visualization was it is not a valid point, as the US suicide rate is not that much higher than other Western countries that have strict gun control, but themurder rate is.
That wouldn’t be the case you’d make. People don’t kill themselves over one bad day. The case you’d make is that suicidally depressed people shouldn’t own guns. It would essentially mean that you’d do a mental health check.
And you don’t have to ban it entirely, even. Just make it take effort. Depressed people are less likely to go to much effort, as one of the main symptoms of depression is not having the energy or desire to force yourself to do things.
