In the national debate over gun violence—a debate stoked by mass murders such as the December 2012 massacre at a Newtown, Conn. elementary school—one fact is largely ignored: Far more people kill themselves with a firearm each year in the United States than are murdered with one. This Special Report in Harvard Public Health explores why this fact is overlooked, which conditions raise the risk of gun suicide, and what can be done to stop these preventable tragedies.
Among the report’s significant findings: • Rates of firearm suicide in states with the highest rates of gun ownership are nearly 4 times higher for men and 8 times higher for women, compared with states with the lowest gun ownership. • Most gun suicides are impulsive acts committed during moments of brief but heightened vulnerability, not the result of long-simmering anguish; in one study, 70 percent of people who survived a near-lethal suicide had waited less than an hour between when they decided to take their lives and when they pulled the trigger. • In the U.S., there is a dearth of research on gun suicide. Federal and state governments have not collected data on why people own guns, how they use them, and why they sometimes choose to relinquish their firearms. Since the mid-1990s, lobbying by the National Rifle Association has gutted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) gun safety research by 96 percent. • Some of the most innovative policy proposals to reduce gun suicide defuse the topic by meeting gun owners halfway—emphasizing conversations about the risks and benefits of gun ownership rather than confiscation of firearms.