Guns in the home and suicide risk

The big picture:  4,035 deaths too many.

Photo credit:  University of Washington

Reported in Guns in home boost suicide risk, but almost no gun owners believe it.  (Appleton Post-Crescent, 3/23/2018)

A January study published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine found more than 90 percent of gun owners with children don’t believe household firearms increase suicide risk. About two-thirds of health care practitioners agreed. 

They’re wrong. 

Children who live in homes that have guns are at least twice as likely — some studies say as much as 10 times as likely — to die by suicide, according to an array of studies dating back to the 1980s.