Most Deaths From Guns In America Are Suicides
Here’s a fact the gun-control activists don’t often talk about:
ATLANTA - The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on gun ownership last week focused on citizens’ ability to defend themselves from intruders in their homes. But research shows that surprisingly often, gun owners use the weapons on themselves.
Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation’s nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There was nothing unique about that year — gun-related suicides have outnumbered firearm homicides and accidents for 20 of the last 25 years. In 2005, homicides accounted for 40 percent of gun deaths. Accidents accounted for 3 percent. The remaining 2 percent included legal killings, such as when police do the shooting, and cases that involve undetermined intent.
So if most gun deaths are people deliberately killing themselves, and if we can assume that most people who kill themselves would probably find another method of suicide if they couldn’t get their hands on a gun, doesn’t this mean that gun fatalities are much less of a public safety issue than gun control advocates tell us it is?
I mean, suicides aren’t a happy thing by any stretch of the imagination, but they aren’t the shooting-sprees the gun control nuts like to talk about either.
Of course, the gun control people would have you believe that people are committing suicide simply because they own guns:
Public-health researchers have concluded that in homes where guns are present, the likelihood that someone in the home will die from suicide or homicide is much greater.
Of course, it could just be that guns are the most popular method for suicide. Which would mean that a lot of suicides would naturally have a gun in the house.
Statistics can be made to say anything sometimes.
