And not just any suicides, but youth suicides. (Won't somebody please think of the children?)
Admittedly, I did not read the entire journal article published in the AJPM, but I did notice this particular point:Suicide rates among U.S. children and teens have hit startling rates and a study now finds one clear predictor of youth suicide: gun ownership.
Youth suicides rates are higher in states with high gun ownership rates, a team at Boston University School of Public Health found.
“Household gun ownership was the single biggest predictor of youth suicide rate in a state,” Dr. Michael Siegel, a public health specialist at BU, told NBC News.
Siegel has been studying the relationships between gun ownership and homicide, suicide and other factors. It’s well known that people with access to a gun are far more likely to complete suicide. And some data had suggested that gun ownership in general was associated with higher suicide rates.
Which, I dunno, seems to directly contradict the article's conclusions...In the falsification test, although household gun ownership was strongly related to the youth firearm-related suicide rate (regression coefficient=0.531, 95% CI=0.319, 0.742), it was not significantly related to the youth non–firearm-related suicide rate (regression coefficient=0.150, 95% CI= –0.023, 0.322).