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jason1637 said:

1. The point I was making was that since Guns don't make people want to comitt sucide taking them alway does not solve that issue. Yeah guns are reliable but there are other reliable ways people can commit suicide. I used the example of the UK gun control to show that gun control does not necessarily lead to lower sucide rates.

You are making several assumptions here that cannot be assumed with the given information. You assume that all individuals who attempt suicide with a firearm would attempt suicide without the firearm around and you assume that all individuals who do attempt suicide would use a method which is equally reliable.

Yes, there are methods that are equally reliable, however with these other methods you also have to ask how physically available and how psychologically available they are. Jumping out of a plane may be fairly reliable, but it tends to be physically unavailable. On the other hand, something like slitting your wrists would be something that would be considered highly psychologically unavailable because of the pain and emotional difficultly involved.

While an individual could likely find a way to commit suicide, it is unreasonable to assume that those who commit suicide with guns would still attempt suicide at a 100% rate, and that those who still attempt suicide would use a manner with as high of a success rate at a 100% rate.

To illustrate this point, the Washington Post did some math which applied typical methods to suicide attempts to the United States to determine how suicide rates would change if fewer attempts were performed with firearms. This math does not account for a possible decrease in attempts.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/wonkblog/suicide-rates/

Overall, by changing how individuals attempt suicide, the overall suicide rate could decline 20-38%. That is a very substantial figure (and again, it doesn't account for a likely decrease in attempts).

A similar correlative effect is seen when comparing states by household firearm ownership:

https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(18)32383-3/fulltext

Overall, with a 10% increase in household firearm ownership, youth suicide increases by about 26%.

This same trend has been reproduced in multiple studies. The following study examined the relation between firearm ownership and suicides at a city level instead of a state level:

https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/21/e1/e116.short

Again, the same trend was observed, with higher rates of firearm ownership being strongly associated with higher suicide rates.

Further studies introduced questions about firearm storage and strictness of gun control regulations into the above picture and again, found similar trends:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/sltb.12243

Availability of guns and gun readiness were associated with increases in suicide rates, while stricter gun regulations decreased suicide rates.

And here is an article which looks specifically at Handgun Purchase Delay regulations and again finds that it has an effect on suicide rates:

https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-abstract/128/616/3117/5251684

Overall, purchase delay laws alone were found to reduce firearm suicide rates by 2-5% with no associated increase in non-firearm suicides. Obviously, there are numerous things that can be done beyond this which would stack to further reduce suicide rates, but this is just one example.