Blaming suicide on firearms ... is like blaming obesity on french fries
.. I don't follow the analogy, you can't eat a french fry on the spur of the moment & make yourself die. French fry eating would be incrementally insidious over a long period, like smoking cigs, whereas the gun is instantaneous death. I frequently heard from smokers 'One cigarette won't kill you', but never heard that from a gunowner about a gun.
If you just mean 'easy access' to both fries & guns, better, but still leaks. And it's not 'firearms' per se that is the reason for increased suicides, but the personal or familial ownership of firearms. That is, a gun in your house, accessible.
Some factoids:1 Suicide done by gun is ~85% successful, by other means ~20%.
2 The low caliber 22 is either most popular for gunsuicides, or amongst the highest used. One of the least potently lethal guns is used more than other calibers because the 22 is one of the most popular guns. It's really misleading tho, since guns 'other than 22s' are used in the vast majority of suicides, like 80%(?) (dunno fersure).
3 the next choice for suicides I believe is jumping from high places, but you can imagine the awful non fatal lasting injury from these attempts, & falling off is not as lethal as guns of course, overall.
4 In japan, which essentially bans guns to everyone, they have a suicide rate comparable to US, but don't start the progun rant just yet. In japan you can collect on life insurance if you suicide, so a desperate father who jumps out the tokyo skyscraper is not a degenerate but somewhat a savior to his family for providing for them for the future, akin to their code of bushido was it? where self inflicted death was honorable (hiri kiri).
Even a japanese mother whose husband is cheating on her or abusing her, can kill her young children & then suicide, and she is not held to be some evil monster, but somewhat justified in her revenge, by depriving her lousy husband of future joy. Weird, but is more the reason for japanese suicide. Neither of these reasons are 'honorable' in america.
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