Nearly twice as many people commit suicide in the 15 US states with the highest rates of gun ownership than in the six states with the lowest rates of gun ownership, although the population of the two groups is about the same, researchers said last week.
The difference testifies to the risk guns pose to gun owners, said researchers led by Matthew Miller at the Harvard School of Public Health. More than 30,000 people committed suicide in 2004, Mr Miller and his colleagues noted in a study published in the Journal of Trauma; guns were used in more than half of those cases.
States with higher levels of gun ownership consistently have higher levels of suicide, and that is not because of differences in poverty, unemployment, drug addiction or mental illness, according to the study. It compared suicide rates in all the 50 US states with rates of gun ownership in those states.
Guns are used in 5 per cent of suicide attempts, but more than 90 per cent of those attempts are fatal. Drugs account for nearly 75 per cent of attempts but the fatality rate is less than 3 per cent.
"Removing all firearms from one's home is one of the most effective and straightforward steps that household decision-makers can take to reduce the risk of suicide," Mr Miller said. "In a nation where more than half of all suicides are gun suicides and where more than one in three homes have firearms, one cannot talk about suicide without talking about guns."
- (LA Times-Washington Post)