Men’s Rights activists like to remind people that men commit suicide far more often than women.
But that’s not because men are many times more miserable than women. In fact, women are far more likely to attempt suicide than men. They simply don’t succeed at it as often as men do.
The reason for this is simple: men tend to choose more lethal methods of suicide than women. And that often means guns. Indeed, most gun deaths in the US are the result of suicide, not murder.
Could we reduce the number of suicides by making guns harder to get hold of? A new study in the American Journal of Public Health suggests the answer is yes.
Researchers Michael D. Anestis and Joye C. Anestis from the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg looked at the effect four different kinds of gun control legislation — waiting periods, universal background checks, gun locks, and open carrying regulations — had on suicide rates, finding that
[e]ach law was associated with significantly lower firearm suicide rates and the proportion of suicides resulting from firearms. In addition, each law, except for that which required a waiting period, was associated with a lower overall suicide rate. Follow-up analyses showed a significant indirect effect on overall suicide rates through the proportion of suicides by firearms, indicating that the reduced overall suicide rate was attributable to fewer suicide attempts, fewer handguns in the home, suicide attempts using less lethal means, or a combination of these factors. States that implemented any of these laws saw a decreased suicide rate in subsequent years, whereas the only state that repealed 1 of these laws saw an increased suicide rate.
This isn’t the only study suggesting that restricting access to firearms could dramatically lower suicide rates.
A 2013 study by researchers Justin Briggs and Alex Tabarrok at George Mason University found that in the United States from 2000 to 2009, each “percentage-point decrease in household gun ownership leads to between 0.5 and 0.9 percent fewer suicides.”
And the effect has been seen in other countries as well. Australia saw an 80 percent reduction in suicides by firearm after adopting stricter gun control laws and instituting a large-scale gun buyback program in the 1990s; there was no rise in suicides by other means.
This last finding may strike some as the most puzzling one. If someone is intent on killing themselves but no longer has a firearm in the house, wouldn’t they just attempt suicide in some other way? Surprisingly the answer is generally “no.”
As Briggs and Tabarrok noted in a Slate piece explaining their findings,
contrary to the “folk wisdom” that people who want to commit suicide will always find a way to get the job done, suicides are not inevitable. Suicides are often impulsive decisions, and guns require less forethought than other means of suicide—and they’re also deadlier.
MRAs who are serious about reducing the number of male suicides — not just using male suicide stats as a cheap debating point — need to start talking seriously about gun control.
Here’s a video from VOX with more information on the subject:
Reblogged this on Pink Peach News and commented:
Something of interest to the lives of GBT men and boys:
But gun control is something that people on the left want. Therefore, it’s not something most MRAs are going to take up. It force them to align with the ess jay dubyas. Ideological purity is more important than the well being of suicidal men.
One of the most disturbing experiences I’ve had was getting a call as I was getting ready for work (around 11pm since I was on midshift that week) from my roommates girlfriend asking me to go get her handgun from under my roommate’s bed since she had been over earlier in the night and was worried about the state of mind my roommate was in. Roommate was out (not far it turns out, passed drunk out in his car out front) so got her gun back to her without incident. Roommate went to rehab not long after and was doing well last I heard.
@WWTH, yeah, that’s the kind of thinking that tends to poison any sort of progress for men that MRA’s want because most every social reform that could stand to improve the lot of men tend to be associated with SJW movements, so they’re poisoned. That’s even before you get into the ultra-masculine and individualist tendencies of the manosphere that discourage societal or structural reforms by mythologizing the individual.
That ease of method is a major factor in suicide is well understood in the mental health community.
There’s a myth that someone bent on suicide will always find a way but that’s not the case.
In the UK the most common cause of suicide used to be sticking one’s head in the oven. Then we changed to a different type of gas, one that was not lethal. Suicide rates dropped by a third; that was pretty much the number of people who had previously used the oven method.
Even a minor impediment can stop a suicide. Putting a 5 foot barrier on a bridge will pretty much stop all suicides there. Climbing 5 feet is not difficult so you’d think someone determined to kill themselves would manage that, but they don’t.
It’s difficulty to assess what impact the handgun ban had on suicide rates in the UK as even when they were allowed, the death rate from guns was generally so low that the Government didn’t bother to record which were homicides and which were suicides.
Ha Ha!
returnofkings.com is being DDOSed.
i feel like using a joke image like the one featured above when discussing suicide by gun is incredibly distasteful
@Hipsterminator
I’m not sure why that would be. The usual hacktivists like 4chan and reddit seem like Roosh’s customer base.
If there’s one thing I learned about gun-nuts: even when given piles of evidence as to why even the most sensible regulation will work, they will instantly equate it all to prohibition (apparently they don’t understand how language works) and why incidents likes mass shootings “prove” we “need” more guns. ‘Cause reasons.
I used to tolerate them, even didn’t mind guns or gun-ownership, but they have made it increasingly difficult for me to empathize on any level – especially once they get to self-victimizing and equating themselves to oppressed minorities.
It seems they can’t accept that a gun is a dangerous tool and make it into something symbolic, even though owning that tool is not even necessary and protecting lives against misuse of them just makes practical sense. But they don’t think practically – if they did, they wouldn’t put so much emotional stake in an inanimate object.
@entireties, just my experience re:image. When I first saw the image I too looked for “the joke”, but noticed David didn’t add a snarky caption and then thought it was more a statement on who the victims of gun violence really are, which is not funny at all.
MRAs! This is your chance to make a difference! Start a support group in your area, organize a fundraiser for veterans support! Common, I’m woman, if you can’t take joy in helping your fellow man, take joy in proving me wrong! I don’t think your capable.
Re: suicide, men or otherwise, I’ve read different efforts in the U.S. to reduce suicide through structural deterrents , one of the more recent was to add a suicide net to the Golden Gate Bridge. These methods of detours work, but need to be supported by solid mental health system. Having used the Suicide Hotline myself in times of duress, I appreciate the people working there… But there’s a lot of room for improvement.
I don’t doubt the study cited at all. I would love to see gun control in the U.S. strengthened for many reasons, including this one.
@ NIckNameNick
I mean, “I’m a woman.” ugh.
@ mistressoflarry
I just assumed the ‘hear me roar’ was implicit.
The quick asnwer is NO. First, a landmark study in the 1970s showed that, if a gun is unavailable, a suicidal person will simply choose another method. Lethality or non-lethality is another issue. Sometimes a suicide isn’t serious, but more of a call for help or attention. Women tend to do this more often than men, too. A truly suicidal person will choose a method that is nearly always fatal. Guns just tend to be more handy here in the U.S., so they get chosen more often. They aren’t a CAUSE. They’re simply the means. This is demonstrable in the fact that both Japan and France are virtually gun-free in comparison, and both “developed” countries, yet their suicide rate exceeds ours.
Actually, the gun fetishism seen today is historically recent – the NRA prior to the 1970’s not only promoted safety above all else but also supported regulation of firearms. The assassination of JFK, for example, made them adopt a policy to not have guns be mail-ordered anymore. The current incarnation of NRA actually came about due to white reactionaries worrying about the after-effects of the Civil Rights Movement as well as the activities of the Black Panthers.
Essentially, scared white people glorified guns even further as an excuse to protect themselves against “scary black people.” That might explain why gun-nuts were so adamant in protecting George Zimmerman, even though there was evidence he initiated a confrontation by refusing to listen to police and stalk a teenager while armed. They cared more about keeping “Stand Your Ground” legitimate than weather or not Zimmerman was guilty or not guilty for what he did.
And, even if they did use knives, the damage done would still be less than what occurs with guns in the U.S.
Sounds dangerously like common sense to me, David.
I do think this a good argument for gun control though. Sometimes actually having to think through and plan a suicide can be enough to dissuade a person from going through with it.
Why is “gun nut” not considered ableist?
We also need to reform the mental health system and take away the stigma of men seeking help as being weak.
It’s not weak to need help. It’s human nature. We need to be taught that.
This is one of the very few areas where I think the MRA have a point – why is the male suicide rate so much higher? It’s a valid question. Alas, none of their answers make much sense. And since their blather tends to be about misplaced blame (it’s feminism’s fault!! or if not that, than the fault of beautiful young women that don’t want to please yer boner demand-free), that’s doubtless adding to the confusion and bitterness and despair of anyone who stumbles across their nonsense at a moment of crisis.
At any rate, I agree with the gun control and do believe that it would reduce the suicide rate in the US. The rate of gun ownership in the US is a clear and present danger to public health. However, gun control doesn’t appear to reduce the differential between men and women (at least in a quick comparison of US v UK suicide rates per 100,000 pop. over here at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate) The UK rate is about half that of the US and while I don’t doubt for second that’s partly about access to guns and perhaps access to mental health services and perhaps even access to income support and benefit services and perhaps some as yet unidentified and perhaps unexplainable cultural differences, but mostly guns. However, men still kill themselves at roughly 3.5 times the rate of women in both the US and the UK.
@Mij
I would consider it ableist? Who said gun nut though? I didn’t see gun nut in the article.
@rugbyyogi
We need to remember that it’s not men how are killing themselves more, it’s men being more successful at killing themselves. Different wording makes a helluva a lot of difference at the end.
I wonder if this is because men own more guns than women? Do we know if a majority of guns are registered to men than any other gender?
@ rugbyyogi
As I mentioned above, even before the handgun ban, the use of firearms for suicide in the UK was negligible .
So uncommon in fact that in the Jeremy Bamber murder case, where his defence was that his suicidal sister had shot her family then herself, the key plank of the Prosecution case was that suicides hardly ever use guns and women suicides never.
Wikipedia gives a good summary of this:
“Reasons for this gender difference may lie in women’s greater propensity to seek psychological and medical attention, suggest some psychologists. Younger women are more likely to resort to deliberate self-harm and attempted suicide, rather than suicide itself. Greater social stigma against male depression and a lack of social networks of support and help with depression are often identified as key reasons for men’s disproportionately higher level of suicides, since suicide as a “cry for help” is not seen by men as an equally viable option. Typically males die from suicide three to four times more often as females.”
@ Pandapool
Don’t know about the situation in the US, but in the UK it’s seems to be the case that women use less ‘messy’ suicide methods than men. So they tend to go for pills whereas men do the jumping in front of trains type things.
That’s one of the reasons that, whilst the attempt rates are similar for all genders, the ‘success’ rate is higher for men. You can vomit up pills but it’s harder to recover from jumping off a cliff.
@Hipsterminator, that put a smile on my face.
@ikanreed from what I understand it’s not too hard to figure out how to ddos someone. Not that I’ve ever tried.