Clayton writes: >More seriously, the risk factor, if real, would seem to be very low. >Pretty obviously, with 35-40% of American homes having at least one >gun, it can't be a very high risk factor, or there would be a lot fewer >homes.
In public impact, an increase in risk from 1 in a million to 2 in a million seems to get a lot of notice! So even if the risk increase is so small that it doesn't "weed out" homes-with-firearms, it can gain a lot of attention. >I do not doubt that the presence of guns represents a risk for some >people, in some homes. All other things being equal, the person with a >history of depression or alcohol abuse is probably at more risk of >suicide with a gun present than the same person without a gun present. Maybe - although there are so many alternative methods that it's not clear that this is so. Also, there can be a reversal of causation in this "risk". Even if only a minority of suicide-prone people acquire a firearms because of thinking about suicide, that can seriously tilt the risk odds. I haven't had a chance to read the article, but this is one of the problems of interpretation that I would look for. Another one would be how they determine the % of non-suicide homes that have guns present? >But I find it hard to believe that the presence of firearms is a >greater risk factor than say, the presence of alcohol, or the presence >of methamphetamines. This is likely. Perhaps the article has such comparisons. --henry schaffer _______________________________________________ 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.
