Deltoid

Georgie Stanford writes:

The thesis is the following:

(1) Worldwide suicide rates are essentially the same regardless of political factors such as availability of firearms when matched for age and sex. Worldwide these are about 1.5% in all whole populations except for 2).

Really?

From the UN demographic yearbook I computed percentages of deaths that were suicides:

El Salvador 4%
Japan 2.5%
Fiji 2%
Korea 1.5%
Nicaragua 1%
Mexico 0.5%

There seems to be quite a bit of variation there.

(2) Males of northern European extraction have a higher total suicide rate of about 2.5% regardless of political factors such as availability of firearms. In whole populations this is the only major exception.

If I understand you correctly, this means that a whole Northern European population will have a suicide rate of 2% (1.5% for women and 2.5% for men). Let's look at all the countries listed in the UN demographic yearbook adjacent to the Baltic Sea:

Estonia 2%
Finland 3%
Germany 1.5%
Latvia 2%
Lithuania 2.5%
Poland 1.5%

Once again, there is quite a bit of variation.

(3) Other factors such as age, psychopathology et cetera show subgroups within populations which have higher rates (particularly advanced age, schizophrenia, manic depression and substance abuse) but factors such as availability of firearms do not affect the overall rates between the same subgroups in different countries.

You might want to look at:

Killias "International correlations between gun ownership and rates of homicide and suicide" Can Med Assoc J 1993; 148(10) pp 1721-1725

Killias found a significant correlation between gun ownership and suicide. Most of the countries looked at were in Northern Europe and with similar demographics, so I doubt if controlling for the factors you suggest above would make the correlation between guns ownership and suicide go away.

(4) In countries with fewer guns the choice of tool for suicide changes but not the overall rate of the entire population based on race (per number 2) and subpopulations matched for age, sex and psychopathology.

You might also want to look at: Clark and Lester "Suicide : closing the exits" Springer NY 1989 which makes a case for availability of means for suicide affecting overall suicide rates.

(I noticed you've not bothered to look up the Toronto suicide data I previously mentioned but the onus is on you; it is clear that the Toronto political experiment is the basis for my past statement about shooters vs jumpers, that this is established observation and not theory and studies on this and similar occurrences are freely available through biomedical libraries and databases.

Yes indeed. Specifically on the 78 Canadian law (which I believe you are referring to) see Am J Psychiatry 151:4 606-608 (1994). Abstract:

" To assess the impact of the 1978 Canadian gun control law on suicide rates in Ontario, the authors compared firearm and non-firearm suicide rates for 1965-1977 with those for 1979-1989. There was a decrease in level and trend over time of firearm and total suicide rates and no indication of substitution of other methods. These decreases may be only partly due to the legislation."

As I said before, I'm not asserting anything new. I'm merely reciting material (which if not junior high school level is still well within undergraduate range) which has been so well documented elsewhere as to merely be an educational exercise.

I certainly do not consider the evidence on the subject to be at all conclusive. However, I think it is incorrect to say that it is well-established that gun availability (or availability of means in general) has no effect.