
Risk of suicide is much higher among handgun owners - chmaynard
https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/06/23/risk-of-suicide-is-much-higher-among-handgun-owners-study-says/
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ThrowawayR2
There is an element of conflation going here perhaps? The title and article
text subtly suggest that long-term firearm ownership is hazardous and provide
numbers to back that up. However, note the last sentence of the results from
the study itself
([https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1916744](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1916744))

>" _A total of 676,425 cohort members acquired one or more handguns, and
1,457,981 died; 17,894 died by suicide, of which 6691 were suicides by
firearm. Rates of suicide by any method were higher among handgun owners, with
an adjusted hazard ratio of 3.34 for all male owners as compared with male
nonowners (95% confidence interval [CI], 3.13 to 3.56) and 7.16 for female
owners as compared with female nonowners (95% CI, 6.22 to 8.24). These rates
were driven by much higher rates of suicide by firearm among both male and
female handgun owners, with a hazard ratio of 7.82 for men (95% CI, 7.26 to
8.43) and 35.15 for women (95% CI, 29.56 to 41.79). Handgun owners did not
have higher rates of suicide by other methods or higher all-cause mortality.
The risk of suicide by firearm among handgun owners peaked immediately after
the first acquisition, but 52% of all suicides by firearm among handgun owners
occurred more than 1 year after acquisition._ "

To invert that sentence, 48% of suicides by firearm occurred less than 1 year
after acquisition. So while the title is correct in a strict sense, unless I'm
grossly mistaken, it would seem that the long-term hazard numbers should be
something like 52% of the published value.

~~~
masonic
The study also completely ignores suicide _attempts_ and counts only completed
suicides. Of course an attempt is more likely to be "successful" with a
firearm than most other means.

