More people in America kill themselves with guns than other people

Disraeli's Ghost

Don't farmers have the highest suicide rate here as they all have access to guns?

Pyers

Still leaves 12,000 gun related murders

Chris

All right, I'll bite. How do you kill yourself with other people? Get them to jump off a high building as you're passing by underneath?

Paul B

I believe that if the person is so motivated to kill themselves, then if they didn`t have access to a firearm, they would simply choose another method. I wonder what the percentage of suicides to per 100,000 of population is in the States...larger or smaller than the UK s - that would be interesting. I believe I read some Samaritan figures that we here have one of the highest suicide rates in Europe, especially in young men under the age of about 25. We also have one of the tightest gun regimes in Europe, so one could argue, that if the article an attack on Americas liberal guns, which it plainly is, then really its totally misguided and can soon totally demolished.

People couldn`t jump under trains prior to Stephenson's rocket, so one assumes they jumped under horse drawn mail coaches instead.

Lastly, I would have thought that killing yourself with gun at least has the advantage of efficiency.

Nicholas

Pyers - and how many non-gun related murders?

Verity

Pyers writes: "Still leaves 12,000 gun related murders."

Murders?? "murders" was the word used by James Forsyth. The term in the report is "firearm deaths".

I know this is difficult for you proponents of prohibition of private gun ownership, but the term "firearm deaths" includes perps shot dead by police and by citizens defending their homes or their lives.

Given that over 40 states permit the private ownership of guns - probably a population of 240m people out of a total of 300m - this is probably fewer deaths annually, percentagewise, than those dying by stabbing and other forms of violence in Britain.

ndm

In 2004/2005, 78 people were shot dead in England & Wales and shootings accounted for 9% of all murders. By contrast, in 2004 more than 11,000 people were shot dead in the United States and shootings accounted for 70.3% of all murders.

Statistics are from:

The Violent Crime Overview, Homicide and Gun Crime 2004/2005 (England and Wales)
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/hosb0206.pdf

FBI Crime in the United States 2004 report
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offenses_reported/violent_crime/murder.html

Iain Murray

America, with lax gun control laws, has a suicide rate almost identical to Australis, with (now) strict gun control laws, and far lower than Japan, with extremely strict and long-standing gun control laws. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

This is a non-issue, resurrected by desperate gun grabbers.

Water

A de facto euthanasia policy one might think.

Nicholas

I wouldn't trust Home Office statistics. They were used misleadingly for years to support more and more stringent gun controls to the point where now no law abiding Britons can own guns for the defence of their homes but criminal gangs are well armed and gun crime is on the increase.

Parallel with this situation police watch and ward presence and response, particularly in rural areas, has declined to the point of being useless.

There has not yet been a headline case demonstrating this madness but it is just a matter of time.

Sally S

Thanks for the pdf ndm.

Water

“Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation's nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” strikes me as just as interesting that the statistics are avalible (over in the US) ‘from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’! The only logical conclusion seems to be that suicide is looked upon as a disease, which I assume in mental health terms it would be (not that I would disagree). Though, nonetheless, the words ‘Disease Control and Prevention’ are still somewhat striking in this context, a very clinical approach.

ndm

The originating CNN article counters Paul B's belief that "the person is so motivated to kill themselves, then if they didn`t have access to a firearm, they would simply choose another method:"

Public-health researchers have concluded that in homes where guns are present, the likelihood that someone in the home will die from suicide or homicide is much greater.

Studies have also shown that homes in which a suicide occurred were three to five times more likely to have a gun present than households that did not experience a suicide, even after accounting for other risk factors.

Gunshot, unsurprisingly, appears to be a fairly successful way to commit suicide. Removing guns from the picture forces a potential suicide to rely on a less certain method. Of the two people I have known who have attempted suicide only the one who used a gun was successful.

ndm

Water is surprised that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is interested in measuring suicide statistics. The CDC is a large agency in the Department of Health and Human Services with an annual budget of more than $8B. The most curious thing I discovered in its "About" information is that it has a department named the "Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response (COTPER)."