MISSING PIECES - Inter-Parliamentary Union

MISSING PIECES
public health approach to gun violence includes isolating and controlling
the cause of injury—in this case, small arms.
The relationship between gun ownership and gun death is complex. As
with any social policy issue, proving a causal relationship between widespread
weapons availability and gun violence is difficult, hampered by a
lack of complete and reliable data and an inability to screen out mitigating
factors. 16 On balance, however, empirical evidence supports the notion that
making guns more difficult to obtain legally can help reduce certain types
of violence, particularly those that are impulsive. 17 In particular, the presence
of guns in the home has been shown to influence rates of suicide,
accidents, intimate partner violence, and family murders. 18
BOX 1 PREVENTING SUICIDE: FOCUSING ON THE GUN
The social stigma often attached to self-directed violence means that gun
suicides are largely neglected—or sidelined—in efforts to prevent armed
violence. In fact, the magnitude and patterns of gun suicide provide a compelling
supporting case for improved small arms controls.
Suicide—a global health burden
An estimated 815,000 people commit suicide each year, 19 of which at least
50,000 (6 per cent) are completed with small arms, 20 compared to about
200,000 global gun homicides. 21 Gun suicides represent 1.4 per cent of the
Global Burden of Disease, 22 but this burden is distributed unevenly across
regions: almost half (48 per cent) of all suicides with small arms occur in
Western Europe and North America. In the US, the gun suicide rate is ten
times that of Africa and Southeast Asia. 23 However, suicides are often underreported
in the global South for religious or cultural reasons, so the true
firearm suicide rate may be much higher. 24 In Brazil, for example, public
health experts believe that many gun deaths ruled by coroners to be of
‘unknown cause or intent’ are actually suicides. 25
The suicidal urge is commonly impulsive and transitory, especially in
youth, and many people who contemplate or attempt suicide eventually
recover and lead healthy, fulfilled lives. But if a gun is available to use in a
suicide attempt, the chances of survival are slim: 85 per cent of suicide
attempts with a gun end in death, a higher completion rate than by other
methods, such as jumping, laceration, and poison. 26 Those who do survive
self-directed gunshots often suffer life-long head injuries that present a
‘formidable challenge to reconstructive surgeons’ 27 with significant social
and psychological repercussions for the injured.
Unlike firearm homicides, which are primarily—but by no means exclusively—an
urban and outdoor phenomenon, gun suicides routinely occur
in the home and in rural settings. 28 In the US, rural communities experience
a 54 per cent higher firearm suicide rate than urban communities. In England
18