Two Reasons To Have Guns In The Home?

Two reasons not to have guns in the house.

When every problem looks like a nail, every tool looks like a hammer.

When every threat looks like an armed attacker, every solution looks like a firearm.

Chesterton: "It isn't that they can't see the solution. They can't see the problem."

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(Alan: The findings of the following Harvard study are presented in more colloquial terms at http://www.healthychildren.org/English/health-issues/conditions/emotional-problems/pages/Teen-Suicide-and-Guns.aspx  "Frontline: Raising Adam Lanza" - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/02/frontline-raising-adam-lanza.html)   

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Harvard School of Public Health Study 

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/risk/

How States Compare

Ecologic studies that compare states with high gun ownership levels to those with low gun ownership levels find that in the U.S., where there are more guns, there are more suicides. The higher suicide rates result from higher firearm suicides; the non-firearm suicide rate is about equal across states.

For example, one study (Miller 2007) used survey-based measures of state household firearm ownership (from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System) while controlling for state-level measures of mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, and other factors associated with suicide. The study found that males and females and people of all age groups were at higher risk for suicide if they lived in a state with high firearm prevalence. This is perhaps most concrete when looking not at rates or regression results but at raw numbers. The authors compared the 40 million people who live in the states with the lowest firearm prevalence (HI, MA, RI, NJ, CT, NY) to about the same number living in the states with the highest firearm prevalence (WY, SD, AK, WV, MT, AR, MS, ID, ND, AL, KY, WI, LA, TN, UT). Overall suicides were almost twice as high in the high-gun states, even though non-firearm suicides were about equal.

Suicides in the 15 U.S. States with the Highest vs. the 6 U.S. States with the Lowest Average Household Gun Ownership (2000-2002)

                                             High-Gun States        Low-Gun States

Population                                  39 million                   40 million

Household Gun Ownership          47%                           15%

Firearm Suicide                           9,749                          2,606

Non-Firearm Suicide                   5,060                          5,446

Total Suicide                             14,809                          8,052

• More ecologic studies (See “Firearm Availability and Suicide: Ecologic Studies”)
• State Data on suicide and firearm ownership rates

What is it about Guns?

Guns are more lethal than other suicide means. They’re quick. And they’re irreversible.

About 85% of attempts with a firearm are fatal: that’s a much higher case fatality rate than for nearly every other method. Many of the most widely used suicide attempt methods have case fatality rates below 5%. (See Case Fatality Ratio by Method of Self-Harm.)