Suicide and Gun Violence
By Ellen Lindeen

Many people I know want more regulation of firearms and less access to guns, so that rates of killing and murder will go down. Others feel very strongly about the “right to bear arms” and the Second Amendment to feel safe. Whichever side of the issue you are on, most people do not know that the majority of deaths in this country by firearms are suicides.

Though suicides get less public attention than gun-related murders, suicides have long accounted for the majority of U.S. gun deaths. In 2021, 54% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (26,328), while 43% were murders (20,958), according to the Centers for Disease Control (Pew Research). Mass shootings get the most press nationally. By July of 2023, the U.S. had over 400 mass shootings; however, these account for only 1% of all firearm homicides.

If we want to build Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of Beloved Community here on earth, we need to do all that we can to make all people safe from guns.

We can begin by dispelling the myths of gun ownership. Most gun owners believe they need a gun for protection, but there is no good evidence that using a gun in self-defense reduces the likelihood of injury (Hemenway, M.D., Harvard School of Public Health). According to Moyer in the article in Scientific American, “More Guns Do Not Stop More Crimes, Evidence Shows,” the results confirmed Kellermann’s conclusion that guns in the home are linked with higher odds of homicide – a 41% odds increase compared with people in homes with no guns – and a 244% increase for suicide. In fact, residents who do not own a handgun but live with someone who does are significantly more likely to die by homicide compared with those in gun-free homes, research shows. Additionally, a Stanford research team found that men who own handguns were eight times more likely to die of gun suicides than men who don’t own guns – and female handgun owners were 35 times more likely to die this way (Duff-Brown, “Handgun Ownership Associated with Much Higher Suicide Risk,” Stanford Medicine).

“The evidence that gun access is associated with higher suicide risk is now overwhelming,” said Matthew Miller, MD, ScD, a professor of epidemiology at Northeastern University. “Tolerating that suicide risk could, in theory, be worthwhile if firearm ownership enhanced personal safety in other ways. This study shows there’s no such trade-off, because the risk of fatal assault in homes with guns is higher too, and the gun owner’s family members bear a lot of that risk.”

Why do so many Americans believe the guns make them safer when the opposite is true?

The claim that gun ownership stops crime is common in the U.S., and that belief drives laws that make it easy to own and keep firearms. But 30 studies show more guns are linked to more crimes: murders, rapes, and others (Moyer, Scientific American: Public Health). Owning a gun does not make people safer.

Americans own more guns than any other country, total and per capita. In 2017, U.S. civilians held an average of 120.5 firearms per 100 people, the highest rate in the world by a factor of more than two, followed by Yemen (52.8), Montenegro (39.1), Serbia (39.1) and Uruguay (34.7) (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland). In other words, the United States is only country with more civilian-held guns than citizens. “Rethinking Gun Violence,” an ABC News Series, 2021 pointed out that the U.S. has "less than 5% of the world's population, but 40% of the world's civilian-owned guns."

Given the ongoing frequency of gun violence in the United States, particularly gun-enabled suicides and mass shootings in schools, places of worship, and businesses, many people agree that gun laws should be revised and tightened. However, gun control is a highly politicized issue in the U.S., which makes nationwide reforms difficult to pass (Global Firearms Holdings: Small Arms Survey, 2018).

The rate of gun fatalities varies widely from state to state. In 2021, the states with the highest total rates of gun-related deaths – counting murders, suicides and all other categories tracked by the CDC – included Mississippi (33.9 per 100,000 people), Louisiana (29.1), New Mexico (27.8), Alabama (26.4) and Wyoming (26.1). The states with the lowest total rates included Massachusetts (3.4), Hawaii (4.8), New Jersey (5.2), New York (5.4) and Rhode Island (5.6). Among men, among women, and in every age group (including children), states with higher rates of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm suicide and overall suicides (“What the Data Says about Gun Deaths in the U.S.” Pew Research).

International experts have concluded that restriction of access to lethal means is one of the few suicide-prevention policies with proven effectiveness (Miller, M.D. and Hemenway, Ph.D., “Guns and Suicide in the United States,” The New England Journal of Medicine).

Heather Saunders in “Do States with Easier Access to Guns have More Suicide Deaths by Firearm?” shares the following facts. Nearly half a million lives (480,622) were lost to suicide from 2010 to 2020. During the same period, the suicide death rate increased by 12%, and as of 2009, the number of suicides outnumbered those caused by motor vehicle accidents. Suicides account for over half of all firearm deaths (54%), and over half of all suicides involve a firearm (53%). Variation in state-level suicide rates is largely driven by rates of suicide by firearm. More than twice as many suicides by firearm occur in states with the fewest gun laws, relative to states with the most laws. Firearms are the most lethal method of suicide attempts, and about half of suicide attempts take place within 10 minutes of the current suicide thought, so having access to firearms is a suicide risk factor. Her findings were published by KFF: Kaiser Family Foundation, the independent source for health policy research, polling, and news. 

Suicides are often explained through the large umbrella, “mental illness.” This is true to some extent, but many studies show that more suicides are impulsive. When the attempt is made with a gun, there is not a second chance. Further research shows that the majority of people (90%) who have attempted suicide do not go on in life to die by suicide (Owens, “Means Matter,” Harvard School of Public Health, 2021).

Research demonstrates that household gun ownership in the United States makes a strong independent contribution to increased suicide risk, above and beyond the effects of other covarying risk factors for suicide (Miller, Barber, White and Azrael, “Firearms and Suicide in the United States: Is Risk Independent of Underlying Suicidal Behavior?” American Journal of Epidemiology. A recent large study in Switzerland found that an enduring decrease in the population suicide rate was attributable to an army reform that halved the number of firearms available in the homes of military reserve personnel (Swiss Medical Weekly, 2018).

Some of the statistics in this article are international and not solely about the United States. That is due to legal restraints that the Center for Disease Control was put under not to study gun deaths for decades, the devastating impact of nonfatal firearm injuries in the U.S. has been understudied, under covered by the media and often overlooked. Political pressure from the gun lobby, regulations and "disordered and highly segmented" collection systems have created chronically unreliable data and information that obscure our true understanding of the public health, financial, psychological and social toll of gun injuries, according to a 2020 study on firearms (Westervelt, NPR, 2021).

The United States is in the midst of an epidemic of gun violence. There are an average of 123 suicides each day in this country. Most efforts to prevent suicide focus on why people take their lives. But as we understand more about who attempts suicide and when and where and why, it becomes increasingly clear that how a person attempts – the means they use – plays a key role in whether they live or die (“Means Matter,” Harvard School of Public Health, 2021).

“Means reduction” (reducing a suicidal person’s access to highly lethal means) is an important part of a comprehensive approach to suicide prevention. It is based on the following understandings:

·       Many suicide attempts occur with little planning during a short-term crisis.

·       Intent isn’t all that determines whether an attempter lives or dies; means also matter.

·       90% of attempters who survive do NOT go on to die by suicide later.

·       Access to firearms is a risk factor for suicide.

·       Firearms used in youth suicide usually belong to a parent.

·       Reducing access to lethal means saves lives. (“Suicide, Guns, and Public Health,” Harvard School of Public Health).

There are clear steps we can take to prevent suicide deaths. We need to advocate for life. If we are to create Beloved Community, we must study, pray, and act. The poem below tells us where we begin in the United States.

“America is a Gun” by Brian Bilston

England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is a gun.

Brazil is football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona’s hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun.

 Dr. Ellen Birkett Lindeen is a writer, storyteller, peacemaker, and activist based in Barrington IL. She is Professor Emeritus of English and Peace Studies at Waubonsee Community College. A past member of EPF’s National Executive Council, Ellen has also served in leadership for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR-USA) and the Peace & Justice Studies Association.