Suicide
Some research shows an association between household firearm ownership and gun suicide rates. For example, it was found that individuals in a firearm owning home are close to five times more likely to commit suicide than those individuals who do not own firearms. However, other research found a statistical association among a group of fourteen developed nations but that statistical association was lost when additional countries were included. During the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a strong upward trend in adolescent suicides with a gun, as well as a sharp overall increase in suicides among those age 75 and over. In the United States, firearms remain the most common method of suicide, accounting for 52.1% of all suicides committed during 2005. Unlike in the U.S., suicides committed with guns in countries where firearms are uncommon are similarly uncommon (an obvious statistic, since guns are not as available).
Research also indicates no association vis-à-vis safe-storage laws of guns that are owned, and gun suicide rates, and studies that attempt to link gun ownership to likely victimology often fail to account for the presence of guns owned by other people leading to a conclusion that safe-storage laws do not appear to affect gun suicide rates or juvenile accidental gun death.
Read more about this topic: Gun Violence
Famous quotes containing the word suicide:
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear- headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: “I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.””
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“It is suicide to be abroad. But what is it to be at home, Mr. Tyler, what is it to be at home? A lingering dissolution.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)