...they used other means, any stats on that?

Do you dispute this?

If the person commits suicide by some other means, you can't really say that "gun laws" were effective.

Which is why the previous poster asked if the (potential) victims used other means to commit suicide; were any stats on that provided?

Unsupported by any facts. I've never seen any study that indicates any firearm "facilitated" an "impulsive suicide." At first blush that strikes me as a silly statement. But happy to review any support you might have.

Note that this is another of the studies that applies numerous "controls" that have who knows what impact and whether those controls are even the correct ones (if any) to apply:

After controlling for population density, race and ethnicity, education, poverty and age, they found that each of the four laws was associated with a lower rate of suicide by gun as well as a lower overall rate of suicide

All the suicides I have known have used firearms. None left a note, none of their loved ones had any idea why or any clue that they were suicidal.

Are firearms the leading method of suicide in America, or not?

...about 40% of suicides. What are you getting at?

While I understand that some individuals will change their mind about committing suicide at the moment if they don't find a close by method to commit their suicide, I don't think that most will say finding a tall building or car or bottle full of pills is too difficult and skip it if they don't find a gun.

You yourself use (Maybe) in your column sentence so we aren't too far apart and neither of us seems to be so ideologically driven to discuss this in absolutes.

Booze has killed countless more people than civilian guns and the experiment to deal with the problem by banning the item, instead of dealing directly with the problem gave us a huge spike in murders and established the modern edition of the mobs. The second great prohibition on non-Pharma drugs initiated a second surge in killings and put so much money onto the street that it enabled every gang in the USA to be able to afford gun arsenals which kind of brings us back full circle to the current topic.

I believe every dollar spent on providing a better mental health support system will be vastly superior to every dollar spent on banning guns when it comes to suicide prevention in particular and gun violence in general. Not saying you said to ban guns by the way. Getting more funding for mental health support is going to be hard. Getting rid of guns in the USA within two generations is almost impossible. I vote (literally) for trying the hard solution and not the almost impossible one.

It's a common problem with a lot of these purported firearm"studies."

Ironically, the authors found that waiting periods were not associated with a lower overall suicide rate. Does that mean gun controllers will now concede that waiting periods are effectively worthless "feel good" laws, particularly as applied to people who already own firearms?

Since the actual full study in unavailable for review, I'm also most curious how one controls for "population density, race and ethnicity, education, poverty and age" in research concerning guns laws and suicide. It certainly sounds like they "controlled" the data until it confirmed their preconceived notions.

Significantly, the NYT's blog also indicated that the "authors acknowledge that they were unable to account for other variables that could be relevant, including religiosity and prevalence of mental illness among others."

I would really like to know how a study concerning suicide rates did not, or could not, account for prevalence of mental illness?

Could you be a bit more precise, please?

but that "stat" proves it.

That means that some of the harshest gun laws in the entire developed world didn't drop the suicide rate...even though Americans work longer hours with less time off, and have poorer access to mental health care.

Remember, Australian gun laws are so harsh that they would get a lot of *Brits* thrown in prison. That Australia's suicide rate is higher than ours says a lot about just how irrelevant harsh gun-owner restrictions are to the suicide rate.

Then there's Japan, whose suicide rate is so high that their combined violent death rate (murder/suicide) is almost *twice* ours, at last count (28ish/100K vs 16/100K if I remember correctly).