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RandySF

(57,661 posts)
Thu Jun 4, 2020, 02:33 AM Jun 2020

First-Time Gun Owners at Risk for Suicide, Major Study Confirms

The decision to buy a handgun for the first time is typically motivated by self-protection. But it also raises the purchasers’ risk of deliberately shooting themselves by ninefold on average, with the danger most acute in the weeks after purchase, scientists reported on Wednesday. The risk remains elevated for years, they said.

The findings are from the largest analysis to date tracking individual, first-time gun owners and suicide for more than a decade.

The study, posted by The New England Journal of Medicine, does not greatly alter the prevailing understanding of suicide risk linked to gun ownership. Previous research had suggested a similarly increased risk, due largely to the ease of having such a lethal option at hand.

But experts said the new evidence was more powerfully persuasive than any research to date. The study tracked nearly 700,000 first-time handgun buyers, year by year, and compared them with similar non-owners, breaking out risk by gender. Men who bought a gun for the first time were eight times as likely to kill themselves by gunshot in the subsequent 12 years than non-owners; women were 35 times as likely to do so. (Male gun owners far outnumbered women owners in the study.)




https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/health/suicide-guns-firearms.html?smid=tw-nytnational&smtyp=cur

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First-Time Gun Owners at Risk for Suicide, Major Study Confirms (Original Post) RandySF Jun 2020 OP
It's BGBD Jun 2020 #1
Yup. Look at the numbers for first time gun owners that weren't planning on suicide when they brewens Jun 2020 #2
Oddly worded study DFW Jun 2020 #3
it sure seems BGBD Jun 2020 #7
Everything is going to shit. rusty quoin Jun 2020 #4
Can't shoot yourself if you don't have a gun? Straw Man Jun 2020 #5
Maybe this is where BHDem53 Jun 2020 #6
Wow - people who own an gun are more likely to shoot jmg257 Jun 2020 #8
 

BGBD

(3,282 posts)
1. It's
Thu Jun 4, 2020, 02:45 AM
Jun 2020

not saying a higher risk of suicide, it is saying a higher risk of suicide by gunshot. Doesn't take a big leap to see why there gun owners are more likely to shoot themselves than non gun owners. People who own a car are probably more likely to die in a car crash than non car owners too.

Correlation doesn't mean much. I'd be more interested in seeing the regression line between owning guns and suicide, I doubt it's very linear. Owning a gun doesn't make anyone suicidal, and while it may be easy to kill yourself with one, anyone who really wants to kill themselves will find a way to do it, gun or not.

brewens

(13,400 posts)
2. Yup. Look at the numbers for first time gun owners that weren't planning on suicide when they
Thu Jun 4, 2020, 02:47 AM
Jun 2020

bought that first gun.

DFW

(54,057 posts)
3. Oddly worded study
Thu Jun 4, 2020, 02:48 AM
Jun 2020

"Men who bought a gun for the first time were eight times as likely to kill themselves by gunshot in the subsequent 12 years than non-owners; women were 35 times as likely to do so."

Well, aside from that fact that the article gives the impression that you are less likely to kill yourself if you buy multiple guns, the statement that people who own guns are more likely to shoot themselves that people without guns seems a little obvious. How are people who don't own guns going to shoot themselves, after all? Go borrow the neighbor's gun and then blow themselves away on their front porch?

The article might use a rephrasing here or there.

 

BGBD

(3,282 posts)
7. it sure seems
Thu Jun 4, 2020, 08:58 AM
Jun 2020

like a study that had a hypothesis and then sought to prove it rather than disprove it.

 

rusty quoin

(6,133 posts)
4. Everything is going to shit.
Thu Jun 4, 2020, 03:22 AM
Jun 2020

Anyone buying a gun for the first time is because everything is going to shit. It’s no secret.

It’s not because the want to join the right wing militia movement.

jmg257

(11,996 posts)
8. Wow - people who own an gun are more likely to shoot
Thu Jun 4, 2020, 09:17 AM
Jun 2020

Themselves than people who don’t own a gun?

That’s deep.

Knew a state trooper who hung himself - huh.

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