Suicide, Guns, and Public Policy

Guns and suicide in the United States.

n engl j med 359;10 www.nejm.org september 4, 2008 989 arms in the home to be locked violated the Second Amendment. But the Supreme Court’s finding of a Second Amendment right to have a handgun in the home does not mean that it is a wise decision to own a gun or to keep it easily accessible. Deciding whether to own a gun entails balancing potential benefits and risks. One of the risks for which...

Guns and Suicide: Correlation or Causation?

Suicide guns: why collect this information?

Suicide guns: why collect this information? Firearm suicide is a worldwide problem. The majority of firearm deaths in many countries are suicides (including and the United States). 1 2 In the United States, over half of suicides are committed with firearms. 1 2 However, we know much more about the characteristics of suicide victims than we do about the firearms that they use. Although often ove...

Guns, suicide, and homicide: individual-level versus population-level studies.

Population-Level Studies In a systematic review published in this issue, Anglemyer and colleagues (1) found that access to firearms is associated with the risk for completed suicide (odds ratio, 3.2) and being the victim of homicide (odds ratio, 1.9). These results are consistent with those of previous literature reviews (2, 3). The lack of recent research on these issues is telling: The curren...

Carrying guns in public: legal and public health implications.

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own handguns in the home for protection, invalidating a Washington, D.C. law banning most handgun possession. The Heller decision, however, provided lower courts with little guidance regarding how to judge the constitutionality of gun laws other than handgun bans. Neverthe...