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by matthewisabel 4612 days ago
According to the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, there is some risk, particularly when considering younger demographics.

"The preponderance of current evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for youth suicide in the United States. The evidence that gun availability increases the suicide rates of adults is credible, but is currently less compelling." [1]

There's a lot of good additional data in the original report. According to the table on page 40 [2], self-harm by firearm represented 19,392 of 38,364 suicides. This dwarfed the number of gun-related homicides which was 11,078.

Page 83 explores death by intent. Interestingly, there's also a category for legal intervention/war which represented 344 of all firearm deaths.

[1] http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-owne...

[2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf