The New York Times (6/3, Carey) reports that first-time gun ownership “raises the purchasers’ risk of deliberately shooting themselves by ninefold on average, with the danger most acute in the weeks after purchase,” researchers concluded in “the largest analysis to date tracking individual, first-time gun owners and suicide for more than a decade.” What’s more, “the risk remains elevated for years,” investigators found after tracking “nearly 700,000 first-time handgun buyers, year by year, and” then comparing “them with similar non-owners, breaking out risk by gender.”
HealthDay (6/3, Norton) reports the study concluded that “male handgun owners had an eight times higher risk, versus other men; the risk soared 35-fold among female gun owners, compared with other women.” The latter “partly reflects the fact that women generally have a low rate of suicide by gun, said lead researcher David Studdert,” LLB, ScD. Studdert also “said, men accounted for the large majority of firearm suicides during the study period, at 83%.” The findings were published in the June 4 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Related Links:
— “First-Time Gun Owners at Risk for Suicide, Major Study Confirms, “Benedict Carey, The New York Times, June 3, 2020