[sneak]

This bundles in firearm suicides with firearm homicides, obscuring the real issue.

When most people say "gun violence" they do not mean gun-as-tool-used-in-suicide, they mean nonconsensual use of a firearm against someone.

Suicides are way up. Gun murders are up too, but they're still pretty low in the scheme of things. They're "safe to completely ignore" low if you're not in one of a few specific counties in the US where gang violence causes 70-90% of the gun murders.

The movie plot/evening news gun violence stuff that you hear about is so rare as to be safely ignored in all parts of the US.

[AlexandrB]

Making guns harder to access probably reduces suicide rates as well because there are few faster, easier methods of suicide than a gun[1]. I think it's valid to lump gun suicides with other gun violence for this reason.

> The consensus among public health experts is that there is strong evidence that reducing firearm suicides in contexts where more-lethal means of attempting suicide are unavailable will result in reductions in the total suicide rate (see, for example, Office of the Surgeon General and National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, 2012; World Health Organization, 2014; for review, see Azrael and Miller, 2016).

[1] https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/suicide.ht...

[JamesBarney]

There's actually better evidence gun control will reduce suicides than homicides.

[refurb]

Yet the US suicide rate is lower than other developed countries that have no guns.

[cinntaile]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide...

Not really.

[refurb]

South Korea isn’t a developed nation?

[TheCoelacanth]

One developed country with few guns having a higher rate but dozens with few guns having a lower rate is not a very strong argument in favor of your point.

[refurb]

Yes it does.

It shows there is zero correlation.

[mikewhy]

Is this data like way off or something? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/suicide-deaths-firearms

[lern_too_spel]

Yes. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/suicide-deaths-firearms is the correct data. The US is worse than most other developed countries, but not that much worse.

[mikewhy]

Did you mean to repost the same link I did?

[lern_too_spel]

I did not. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/suicide-death-rates is the corrected link. My HN reader did not update the location bar after clicking to the correct page.