Teenage boys' suicide rate is skyrocketing because of firearms access

Kinda hard to convince people suicide is caused by owning a firearm and not, you know, the reasons they committed suicide. Once again pointing societal issues as simply “not enough restrictions”, assuming that’ll fix anything. Waste of time.

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It's not the root cause, but I'm sure having easy access to a gun seems a lot quicker and cleaner than, for example, hanging yourself. I know a lot of people who probably wouldn't be around right now if their folks kept guns in the house.

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- It’s not the root cause, but I’m sure having easy access to a gun seems a lot quicker and cleaner than, for example, hanging yourself.
  
  we're getting into the macabre a little bit here but, to be brief: yeah. if it was required people attempt to hang themselves (or overdose, or any other non-firearm method of suicide), pretty much all the data i'm aware of indicates the suicide rate would drop appreciably from where it is now in the US (45,000-50,000 deaths a year).
  
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- The path of least resistance from thought to action is very important. I wouldn’t actually know of an easy way if I wanted to kill myself right now. Having a gun in my drawer could easily make a bad day into a final day.
  
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- The pro-gun crowd doesn't care. There's no such thing as a body they won't sweep under the rug and suicide makes it easy.
  
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I believe the going theory is firearms are more likely to succeed whereas other means aren't. So you get fewer suicide attempts and more suicides :(

We need to be asking why are teen boys committing suicide at high rates? But also we need to be able to support and help them somehow instead of casting them off on their own once they hit puberty.

PS:

Vinik noted that the suicide rate, already at a 20-year high, is rising the most quickly among young people of color.

Article goes on to talk about the difficulty of accessing mental health care for black boys, and other factors.

Presently, the firearm suicide rate is highest with Native American and Alaska Native young men and Black men — but Asian and Pacific Islanders, Latinx, and Black young men constitute the fastest-growing firearm suicide rates of any racial and ethnic groups in the Unites States.

Also

Michael pointed to “traditional, cisgender masculinity” as a factor in the rising suicide rate among teenage boys and young men.

“If you are a person that’s either been raised to believe that seeking help for mental health ailments is a sign of weakness, you might also be a person at risk for suicide,” Michael said.

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People always say it's about metal problems and not guns. And that might be true, but will you Americans ever try and fix that? Maybe by reducing healthcare prices or something.

So far it seems like the answer is: No, we won't do anything about it.

At very least it makes sense to force parents to keep their guns locked away from their children and everyone else.

No-one under 18 should ever be allowed non supervised access to weapons and everyone over should have to take a mandatory safety and usage course and of course a comprehensive background check.

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- These are all things having little to do with suicide: Japan completely disarmed everyone outside of government in the 90's, and they have better access to healthcare than Americans, but suicide rates only grew. Attention needs to be on root causes, like the explosive rise in loneliness and identifying how to repair some of the social changes brought on by a complete paradigm shift to how humans share information and interact with one another.
  
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I'm all for gun control, but if suicide rates are up it's because of our society not because of the tool used to commit the act. Suicide rates are the highest they've ever been in modern history and everyone is largely silent about it. Maybe one day humans will realize that they create society and can change it if they choose

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I mean, if someone is suicidal, a tool that has a high chance of failure or a time where the effects can be reversed (like an overdose which might take time to set in and be treatable with prompt hospitalization) is going to lead to fewer deaths than one that is lethal instantly, because some who use it may not try again if they regret it.

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Only 1 in 10 people who survive a suicide attempt go on to die by suicide. The number is much the same the world over, regardless of method.

Very few people survive putting a gun in their mouth and pulling the trigger.

There is a record high number of children doing exactly that with their father's guns. I wonder how many of those fathers claimed the gun was to "keep their family safe"? I wonder how many of them taught their children how to load and fire the round that killed them?

There's actual lives behind those numbers.

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- The argument is, gun control treats the symptom and not the cause. Personally, I'm mixed on it. I definitely think we should be severely limiting access to automatic weapons, and others along those lines. But too much control over legitimate hunting weapons is an attack on a lifestyle, and I absolutely see the need for handguns now that I live in an area with very large predators.
  
  Instead, I feel we'd be much better off attacking the social injustice that leads people to feel so helpless and lost.
  
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I think the core of this is the hurtful aspects of gender roles men and boys face about how to handle and express emotions creates the situation of increased suicidality. Yeah firearms access is going to enable suicidal people to act upon their ideation, but taking it away just leaves you with a depressed/anxious guy, who doesn't have the knowledge or resources to overcome his negative emotions. I'm not saying this in a "it's a mental health issue not a gun issue" way, but society really normalizes the ignorance of mens' emotions and for men to not build support for managing their emotions, be it intimate friendships, healthcare resources, healthy expression of emotions.

I think it's good topic to bring up, because there's a lot of things leading to men not doing too well, and I think it'd be dumb to ignore it, given the rise of acts of violence we've seen in the past decade from men who really feel disconnected or disillusioned with society. Finding out what we can do to help men cope with hardship in a more productive way, and ultimately address the root causes of the issues they face can improve things for men, as well as everyone in society.

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Oh, of course, it's the guns that make them suicidal 🙄

Now, how the hell can we solve the problem if we can not even seriously recognize the cause?

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The guns didn't make them suicidal, but they provide a very easy way to be impulsive.

I'm vaguely suicidal a good chunk of the time. I don't want to be anywhere near a gun.

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My abstract for the linked article

Click to expand

Teenage boys' suicide rates in the US have increased sharply in recent years, especially among boys of color. Firearm access plays a major role, as 90% of youth who die by suicide use guns. The article discusses how traditional masculine norms discourage help-seeking, while easy access to guns in homes increases the risk of suicide fourfold for young men.

One expert recommends educating parents on safe gun storage, like childproofing, noting that over 90% of suicide attempts with guns end in death, making restrictions on access especially important for preventing youth suicide.

This comment was generated by a bot. Send comments and complaints via private message.

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I don't think guns are to blame for boys wanting to kill themselves. Maybe there's some issue with how we treat them? Ever consider that?

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i'm going to remove your comment because i severely doubt you read this entire article in two minutes and this seems like a driveby that's not engaging with the content at all, but with respect to "I don’t think guns are to blame for boys wanting to kill themselves" you are patently false. access to firearms is quite literally the most important variable, because it makes a person significantly more likely to kill themselves[^1]--a correlation between ownership and suicide is particularly established among men specifically. see for example Firearm Ownership and Suicide Rates Among US Men and Women, 1981–2013, which concludes:

Conclusions. We found a strong relationship between state-level firearm ownership and firearm suicide rates among both genders, and a relationship between firearm ownership and suicides by any means among male, but not female, individuals.

if you want a lower rate of male suicide, literally the single most effective policy to that end is less firearm ownership, and lessened access to guns generally. see Firearms and Suicide in the United States: Is Risk Independent of Underlying Suicidal Behavior? in particular, which notes that:

In the United States, where firearms are the method used in more than 50% of all suicides and where roughly 1 in 3 homes contains firearms, even small relative declines in the use of firearms in suicide acts could result in large reductions in the number of suicides, depending on what, if any, method would be substituted for firearms. Consider, for example, the fact that more than 90% of all suicidal acts with firearms are fatal, but suicidal acts with firearms constitute only 5% of all deliberate self-harm episodes. In contrast, fewer than 3% of all suicidal acts with drugs or cutting are fatal but, as a group, such acts constitute approximately 90% of all attempts (33, 34). If even 1 in 10 of the approximately 22,000 persons who attempted suicide with firearms in 2010 (the 19,932 who died and the approximately 2,000 who survived) substituted drugs or cutting, there would have been approximately 1,900 fewer suicide deaths.

[^1]: or harm another person close to them. specific citations are: “Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the October 7, 1993; “Suicide in the Home in Relation to Gun Ownership,” by Arthur L. Kellermann et al., in New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 327, No. 7; August 13, 1992; “Homicide and Suicide Risks Associated with Firearms in the Home: A National Case-Control Study,” by Douglas J. Wiebe, in Annals of Emergency Medicine, Vol 41, No. 6; June 2003

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- Oh boy, I see I'm back on Reddit.
  
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It's a lot like saying the French Revolution happened not because of the absolutist royal family, but because the population had access to guillotines. If they didn't have guillotines, they'd probably be using knives or something, and the same can be said about this: If they didn't have a gun, they'd probably hang

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It's not a lot like saying that at all.

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