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Is it of questionable utility? I don't think it's a waste to look at the data and see if certain methods of suicide really stand out. It doesn't seem unreasona

Is it of questionable utility? I don't think it's a waste to look at the data and see if certain methods of suicide really stand out. It doesn't seem unreasonable to see if (this is a gross way to phrase it but here we go) easy and efficient methods of suicide are associated with more suicides. My gut instinct would say that having easy access to handguns would be associated with more suicides, as it's (relatively) more reliable than an intentional drug overdose. Does the data here reflect that? I am not a statistician, but what's shown actually makes me question my priors. The US has a huge difference in suicide by gun rates, but the overall suicide rate isn't all that different from European countries. And, this actually surprised me, the male-to-female suicide ratio in the US isn't much different than other countries, which really makes me question my prior that "guys have handguns and thus have an easier way to commit suicide".

losvedir 6y ago
Exactly. It's obvious that suicide by gun is going to be correlated to gun ownership, but that's not valuable information at all. The much more interesting question of whether suicide is correlated to gun ownership was (for me) striking in its absence. I guess there's no good data for it.
- James_Henry 6y ago
  There's ok data. Take a look at this paper https://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/BriggsTabarrokFirearmsSuicide.pdf https://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/BriggsTabarrokFirearmsSuicid... and this page from our world in data https://ourworldindata.org/suicide#gun-prevalence https://ourworldindata.org/suicide#gun-prevalence Also of interest to me is how regulating alcohol and other drug use influences suicide. Because of the failures of the war on drugs and prohibition, this doesn't seem to be a very popular topic of study, but I reckon that making alcohol harder to get would decrease the number of suicides.

losvedir 6y ago

Exactly. It's obvious that suicide by gun is going to be correlated to gun ownership, but that's not valuable information at all. The much more interesting question of whether suicide is correlated to gun ownership was (for me) striking in its absence. I guess there's no good data for it.

James_Henry 6y ago
There's ok data. Take a look at this paper https://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/BriggsTabarrokFirearmsSuicide.pdf https://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/BriggsTabarrokFirearmsSuicid... and this page from our world in data https://ourworldindata.org/suicide#gun-prevalence https://ourworldindata.org/suicide#gun-prevalence Also of interest to me is how regulating alcohol and other drug use influences suicide. Because of the failures of the war on drugs and prohibition, this doesn't seem to be a very popular topic of study, but I reckon that making alcohol harder to get would decrease the number of suicides.