What this study shows is that a gun is likely the first choice of gun owners who are trying to kill themselves. It cannot determine how much less likely they would have been to kill themselves had they not owned a gun, if at all.
I wonder how many people choose other methods of suicide (Hanging/Drug OD) when they had a gun available.
When I was a medic for 15 years, I was paged out to 4 suicides, two self hanging, one OD, and one wrist slashing, (all male). Nor can I remember any reports of suicide by gun either. There were also good number of attempted OD’s though. And this was in a rural community where almost every home had at least one gun and often more.
I don’t think anyone could prove one way or another why guns didn’t seem to be a choice for suicidal people in that community. I certainly don’t know. But people who are not of sound mind often do strange things for inscrutable reasons.
Probably approaching zero. If you want to die, a gun has a very, very high probability of succeeding, and you’re unlikely to feel pain (assuming that you don’t miss the important parts of your brain). Hanging means–at best–breaking your neck and severing your spinal cord, and then dying by lack of blood flow to the brain while still feeling the pain from the broken neck. At worst, you fail to break your neck and then choke to death for several minutes. (This used to be the way hanging worked; rather than breaking their necks, execution victims would strangle. It could take longer than 10 minutes in some cases.) ODs tend to be quite survivable if someone finds you before brain death occurs, and ODing on certain OTC medications–like acetaminophen-- will take a few days to kill you from organ death. Cutting your wrists is absolutely going to hurt. Asphyxiation is difficult unless you’re doing so with an inert gas; CO2 buildup causes an involuntary panic reaction. Jumping is only fairly certain once you have access to something over five stories tall; less than that, and you’re likely to have injuries ranging from mild to catastrophic (although head-first onto concrete at three stories is pretty likely, if you can force yourself into a dive like that). Back when they used coal gas for cooking in England, that was a pretty common method. Likewise, mixing barbiturates and alcohol worked pretty well, until benzodiazepines almost entirely supplanted barbiturates.
I wonder how many people choose other methods of suicide (Hanging/Drug OD) when they had a gun available.
When I was a medic for 15 years, I was paged out to 4 suicides, two self hanging, one OD, and one wrist slashing, (all male). Nor can I remember any reports of suicide by gun either. There were also good number of attempted OD’s though. And this was in a rural community where almost every home had at least one gun and often more.
I don’t think anyone could prove one way or another why guns didn’t seem to be a choice for suicidal people in that community. I certainly don’t know. But people who are not of sound mind often do strange things for inscrutable reasons.
They’re kind of notorious for people surviving the attempt, with stories of shattered jaws and a life of brain damage afterwards.
There, at the very least some truth to that. I did run across one failed attempt with a gun that fit that bill.
Probably approaching zero. If you want to die, a gun has a very, very high probability of succeeding, and you’re unlikely to feel pain (assuming that you don’t miss the important parts of your brain). Hanging means–at best–breaking your neck and severing your spinal cord, and then dying by lack of blood flow to the brain while still feeling the pain from the broken neck. At worst, you fail to break your neck and then choke to death for several minutes. (This used to be the way hanging worked; rather than breaking their necks, execution victims would strangle. It could take longer than 10 minutes in some cases.) ODs tend to be quite survivable if someone finds you before brain death occurs, and ODing on certain OTC medications–like acetaminophen-- will take a few days to kill you from organ death. Cutting your wrists is absolutely going to hurt. Asphyxiation is difficult unless you’re doing so with an inert gas; CO2 buildup causes an involuntary panic reaction. Jumping is only fairly certain once you have access to something over five stories tall; less than that, and you’re likely to have injuries ranging from mild to catastrophic (although head-first onto concrete at three stories is pretty likely, if you can force yourself into a dive like that). Back when they used coal gas for cooking in England, that was a pretty common method. Likewise, mixing barbiturates and alcohol worked pretty well, until benzodiazepines almost entirely supplanted barbiturates.
I actually went the hanging route over my rifle. Glad I did since it didn’t work out 🤷♀️