By Ian Erlichman
“Anyone who says that there is a correlation between guns and interpersonal gun violence is wrong,” said Trevor Burrus of the CATO institute. The real cause of nearly two thirds of America’s gun deaths aren’t homicides: they are suicides, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
“The top gun death states in America are Alaska and Wyoming,” said Burrus. This is explained by the fact that both “Alaska and Wyoming have disproportionately high suicide rates,” he stated.
According to the CDC, Burrus was pretty close. Both Alaska and Wyoming top the state suicide ranking, per hundred thousand inhabitants. Although, Wyoming was only 11th on the CDC’s list of gun death rates, Alaska did top that list with 23 firearm deaths per 100,000 people. Similarly, Wyoming and Alaska ranked first and 15 respectively in gun ownership per capita, according to ATF.gov.
Conversely, New York State is third lowest in firearm death rate, and second lowest in suicide mortality, according to the CDC.
So high numbers of suicides, gun violence, and gun ownership all appear in similar states. But how many suicides are committed with guns?
According to a study by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 50.9 percent of all fatal suicides are carried out by a gun. That same study also said that only 0.8 percent of nonfatal suicide attempts involved firearms. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, firearms have the highest suicide lethality rate of any method, at 82.5 percent.
Guns are used in half of all fatal suicides and comprise the vast majority of all gun violence. But what guns are most dangerous for both suicides and gun related homicides? Some may think Assault rifles.
Miles Manchester, a gun advocate and Canton local, said “to put that [assault weapons] in the civilian market is absurd.” While at a SLU ‘Politics and Pizza’ event, Manchester spoke about the characteristics of assault weapons that contribute to their deadly nature: citing grip style, bullet size, and stock design.
However, Young Americans for Liberty President and member of the St. Lawrence Gun Club, Thomas Jones is not so convinced.
Jones believes that “they want to ban them [assault rifles] because they look scary.” Jones felt that the media publicizes school shootings too much, and in turn, stigmatizes assault rifles.
Burrus felt that assault rifles “are the weapons that seem to be terrorizing white suburban America.” He said that most gun violence results in “blacks male being the predominant victims, especially for handguns.”
According to Statistica.com, the most commonly used firearms in mass shootings from 1982 to 2017 were semi-automatic handguns. Similarly, “most homicides in the United States are committed with firearms, especially handguns” according to the National Institute of Justice website.
Additionally, a NCBI study found that handguns were also the most frequently used firearm in suicides. The evidence is overwhelming, suicide is a factor in the gun control debate.
Burrus believes that the focus on assault weapons is “wasted breathe.” He concluded “if assault weapons are an incredibly small part of gun violence…then how could going after assault weapons be an effective way of combating gun violence?”