It seems to me that the authors of this study have identified but not really controlled for the endogeneity problem that gun control regulations are both caused by and the cause of the gun prevalence. They report:
Access to lethal weapons is an important risk factor for suicide. Our study suggests that general barriers to firearm access created through state regulation can have a significant deterrent effect on male suicide rates in the United States. Permit requirements and bans on sales to minors were the most effective of the regulations analyzed.
My instinct is that decreasing access to guns will just lead to more non-gun suicides, which is what one study they cite actually found:
An evaluation of the 1996 National Firearms Agreement (NFA) in Australia documents a decline in firearm suicides after the implementation of the agreement (Klieve et al., 2009). However, these findings may be confounded with an overall decline in gun ownership that preceded the NFA. Additionally, there was some evidence of increased suicides by hanging.
However, I can imagine some people might deterred from a temporary impulse to kill themselves, and that the extra time that buys them might be enough to get help, change their mind, etc. Nevertheless, it is an interesting question, and I think some clever scientist out there should be able to think of an actual instrumental variable to get a better answer to this question.
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Saturday ~ February 20th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
teageegeepea
I’ll outsource this to Sister Y. Preventing suicides is not necessarily a positive thing, it is paternalistic overriding of someone else’s preferences because we honestly don’t give that much of a shit about their autonomy. Does living seem worse than death? Too bad, suck it up, it’s not your life to lose.
Monday ~ February 22nd, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Roland
If we think that having access to a firearm makes committing suicide easier (probably, killing yourself with razor blades or poison is harder than you think) and that some suicidal impulses are transient (life is full of transient impulses) then restricting access will keep alive some who for the majority of the time wish to live
Monday ~ February 22nd, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Adam Ozimek
I think your right Roland. I’m generally very sympathetic to the right to die. But I think that if you asked people who came very close to killing themselves but were deterred by the lack of quick and easy methods available to them, who also later overcame their depression or lost their suicidal urges whether and how thankful they were that they were deterred, I would guess you would find some very very thankful people. I’m sure there are others who do undertake a more gruesome death because the easier methods, like guns, weren’t immediately available, and that is a cost. But I think the likely time-inconsistent preferences here should put us strongly in favor of discouraging suicides when doing so does not greatly impinge upon liberty or added harm to those determined to kill themselves.
Thursday ~ February 25th, 2010 at 3:13 am
teageegeepea
You are restricting your sample to people who did not successfully commit suicide and later got better. That’s like advertising the lotto based on a sample of winners.
Monday ~ May 3rd, 2010 at 8:38 am
Chuck Harris
How boutif the person wants to kill themself, let them, We would save millions on trying to fix broken mondes. Get real people, you cant fix everything…..Don’t we have something caled a constitution or something, wanna ban that as well ??