----- Original Message ----- From: "Cory Hojka" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 6:14 PM Subject: [inbox] "Laws Limiting Gun Access Cut Teen Suicides"
> http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2004/08/03/hscout520475.html > > Laws Limiting Gun Access Cut Teen Suicides > By Ed Edelson > HealthDay Reporter > > TUESDAY, Aug. 3 (HealthDayNews) -- Laws designed to keep guns away from young > people reduce the risk that teenagers will kill themselves, a study finds. > > In states with so-called child access prevention (CAP) laws, the suicide rate > for youths aged 14 to 17 was 8.3 percent lower than in states without such This is very interesting. CDC's age categories go from 10 to 14 and 15 to 19. There isn't any easy way to check this claim for ages 14 to 17. Why use this category rather than say, all minors? Or everyone in the 15 to 19 range? Or 10 to 19? It makes you wonder if they have picked the age range very carefully to get the right results. > laws, say researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. > The report appears in the Aug. 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical > Association. > > Suicide is the third leading cause of death in the 10-to-19 age group, and as > recently as 1994 seven of every 10 teen suicides involved firearms, the report > noted. The decreased suicide rate in states with CAP laws was entirely due to a > reduction in firearm deaths, the researchers said. I'm a bit skeptical about this, because that would mean that there was NO substitution of methods. That's a bit hard to believe. I can believe that lack of access to guns might cause many or even most teenagers to not attempt suicide, but I would find it hard to believe that no teenagers, or almost no teenagers, would substitute some other method. To claim that the decreased suicide rate "was entirely due to a reduction in firearm deaths" would mean that there was no change in suicide by other methods, or that the change in method was completely washed out by the lower lethality of other available suicide methods. As I mention below, there are plenty of other methods of comparable lethality available to teenagers. > That is because a gun "is about the most lethal form of suicide," and "a large > proportion of teen suicides are due to a kind of fleeting emotion," said study > co-author Daniel W. Webster, co-director of the Hopkins Center for Gun Policy > and Research. > > If a gun is not available, a teenager in agony because of a failed exam or a > breakup with a sweetheart might seek an alternative method of suicide, but > "pills very rarely are successful," Webster said. However, many of the other methods for committing suicide are close to firearms in lethality--and I'm not aware of any state that has made rope, automobile exhaust, or bodies of water hard to find. These have fatality rates of 80.0%, 77.0%, and 75.0%-- just a bit lower than shooting, which is 84.7% fatal. (Gary Kleck, _Point Blank_, Table 6.2.) Clayton E. Cramer [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
