Singer Mindy McCready's death highlights role guns play in suicides [View all]

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Country singer Mindy McCready, whose troubled personal life often overshadowed her music, made several suicide attempts using pills in the past decade. She died this time when she used a gun.

The role of guns in suicide is receiving renewed attention in the national debate over firearms violence after the shootings in Newtown, Conn. About 19,000 of the more than 31,000 gun-related deaths in the U.S. each year are due to suicide — far outnumbering gun-related homicides.

About 85 percent of suicide attempts with guns prove fatal, making firearms the leading method of suicide in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In comparison, pills result in death in 2 percent of cases.

“It’s access to weaponry that turns desperate people into suicides,” says psychiatrist Kenneth Duckworth, medical director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, interviewed before McCready’s death.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20130219/NEWS08/302190005/Singer-Mindy-McCready-s-death-highlights-role-guns-play-suicides