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Originally Posted by pilotbob
Once again though, it the suicide rate due to the guns? Would the suicide rate be lower if there were no guns?
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A quote from the article I linked to in post #94 would seem to suggest that the answer is "yes":
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Reducing access to firearms in Switzerland would lead to fewer suicides, said Barbara Weil, from the Initiative for the Prevention of Suicide in Switzerland.
"We can prove that in other countries which have tightened their laws concerning the availability of guns, it also changed suicide rates considerably, such as in Canada, Australia and Britain," said Weil.
In Australia, the number of households with guns was halved from 20 to ten per cent during the 1980s and the percentage rate of gun suicides fell from 30 to 19 per cent.
Opponents say people wanting to kill themselves simply turn to other methods, but this is not true, said Irminger.
He pointed to Austria where the introduction of restrictive firearms legislation significantly decreased the rate and percentage of firearm suicides without leading to an increase in other suicide methods.
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Perhaps it might be because shooting yourself is a pretty irrevocable act, whereas if you take a drug overdose, you generally have time to change your mind - and many people do.