Georgie Stanford writes:
The thesis is the following:
(1) Worldwide suicide rates are essentially the same regardless
of political factors such as availability of firearms
when matched for age and sex. Worldwide these are about
1.5% in all whole populations except for 2).
Really?
From the UN demographic yearbook I computed percentages of deaths that
were suicides:
El Salvador 4%
Japan 2.5%
Fiji 2%
Korea 1.5%
Nicaragua 1%
Mexico 0.5%
There seems to be quite a bit of variation there.
(2) Males of northern European extraction have a higher total
suicide rate of about 2.5% regardless of political factors
such as availability of firearms. In whole populations
this is the only major exception.
If I understand you correctly, this means that a whole Northern
European population will have a suicide rate of 2% (1.5% for women and
2.5% for men). Let’s look at all the countries listed in the UN
demographic yearbook adjacent to the Baltic Sea:
Estonia 2%
Finland 3%
Germany 1.5%
Latvia 2%
Lithuania 2.5%
Poland 1.5%
Once again, there is quite a bit of variation.
(3) Other factors such as age, psychopathology et cetera
show subgroups within populations which have higher rates
(particularly advanced age, schizophrenia, manic depression
and substance abuse) but factors such as availability of
firearms do not affect the overall rates between the same
subgroups in different countries.
You might want to look at:
Killias “International correlations between gun ownership and
rates of homicide and suicide” Can Med Assoc J 1993; 148(10)
pp 1721-1725
Killias found a significant correlation between gun ownership and
suicide. Most of the countries looked at were in Northern Europe and
with similar demographics, so I doubt if controlling for the factors
you suggest above would make the correlation between guns ownership
and suicide go away.
(4) In countries with fewer guns the choice of tool for suicide
changes but not the overall rate of the entire population based
on race (per number 2) and subpopulations matched for age, sex
and psychopathology.
You might also want to look at:
Clark and Lester “Suicide : closing the exits” Springer NY 1989
which makes a case for availability of means for suicide affecting
overall suicide rates.
(I noticed you’ve not bothered to look up the Toronto suicide
data I previously mentioned but the onus is on you; it is clear
that the Toronto political experiment is the basis for my past
statement about shooters vs jumpers, that this is established
observation and not theory and studies on this and similar
occurrences are freely available through biomedical libraries and
databases.
Yes indeed. Specifically on the 78 Canadian law (which I believe you
are referring to) see Am J Psychiatry 151:4 606-608 (1994).
Abstract:
” To assess the impact of the 1978 Canadian gun control law on suicide
rates in Ontario, the authors compared firearm and non-firearm suicide
rates for 1965-1977 with those for 1979-1989. There was a decrease in
level and trend over time of firearm and total suicide rates and no
indication of substitution of other methods. These decreases may be
only partly due to the legislation.”
As I said before, I’m not asserting anything new. I’m merely
reciting material (which if not junior high school level is still
well within undergraduate range) which has been so well
documented elsewhere as to merely be an educational exercise.
I certainly do not consider the evidence on the subject to be at all
conclusive. However, I think it is incorrect to say that it is
well-established that gun availability (or availability of means in
general) has no effect.
In Point Blank Gary Kleck writes:
The aggressor’s possession of a handgun in a violent incident
apparently exerts a very slight net positive effect on the
likelihood of the victim’s death. The linear probability
interpretation of the OLS coefficient implies that the presence of a
handgun increases the probability of the victim’s death by 1.4%.
thus the violence-increasing and violence-suppressing effects of
gun possession and use almost exactly cancel each other out. This
small association is statistically significant, however, because of
the very large (n=14,922) sample size.
the effects of aggressor weaponry are quite substantial when taken
stage by stage, i.e., when separately examining attack, injury, and
death. This is why impressive-appearing results can be obtained
when researchers examine, for example, only the last stage, looking
solely at the impact of guns on the likelihood of the victim’s
death, among those wounded…
The findings also imply that if gun possession were reduced among
aggressors in violent situations, total assault injuries would
increase, the fraction of injuries resulting in death would
decrease, and the total number of homicides would remain about the
same….
This is perhaps the most bone-headed claim Kleck makes in his book.
Kleck’s data implies that a 10% reduction
in gun possession by aggressors would result in a 2% decrease in
injuries and a 6% decrease in homicides. This is definitely not
“remain about the same.”
Peter H. Proctor writes:
If memory serves,
roughly half of all murders in the US are committed by blacks ( usually against
other blacks ), who represent about 14% of the US population.
If memory serves, if you discount this one population, the murder
rate in the US is below some European countries. This is counting
Hispanics ( who have a murder rate roughly double that for other US whites )
with the White population.
The US white homicide rate is about 5 per 100,000. The median homicide
rate for Western European countries is about 1.2 per 100,000. (Source
WHO Statistical Yearbook).
This is from memory, but I think our rate is about that of Italy. I
notice that you give the median, which hides a lot of national
variability.
The 1992 WHO Statistical Yearbook gives the Italian homicide rate as 2.3.
There were 28 countries listed for the European region in the 1992 WHO
Statistical Yearbook. The only ones with rates above 2.0 were Finland
(3.3) Hungary (4.1) Israel (2.5) Luxemburg (2.9) Poland (2.9) Romania
(5.4) and Northern Ireland (4.9).
Greater than of course the Brits, but that has always been true. And the
US white rate includes Hispanics, whose murder rate is roughly double that
for other whites.
Which implies that the US white non-Hispanic homicide rate is about 4
per 100,000. Still much greater than in the European countries where
their ancestors cam from.
The British rate didn’t change much if any when they went
from essentially open firearms rights to complete control.
True, it didn’t change that much, but it did go down. And legal
restrictions only represent part of the picture of firearms
availability.
A real test would be to control for national origin. E.g., my guess is
that the murder rate by Australians in the US is probably the same as for
Australians in Australia ( i.e., pretty low, even in the ending era of
fairly free access to firearms in Oz ). You lot don’t suddenly become
blood thirsty when you visit the bad old USA with its gun vibes.
Australians who visit the US are unlikely to be representative. Why
not compare white non-Hispanic Australians with white non-Hispanic
Americans? Roughly similar culture, both groups whose ancestors
emigrated from Europe. The US homicide rate is about 4, the
Australian one about 2. The non-gun homicide rates are about the
same, the with gun homicide rate is about 4 times greater in the US.
Of course, this hardly proves that gun availability causes the
difference, but simply controlling for ethnic origin does not explain
the difference.