Note on 'suicide and increased availability of handguns in the United States': the influence of firearm ownership on accidental deaths.

Each year tn the Untted States, about 1500-2000 people are accidentally killed by firearms In 1976, for example, there were 2059 accidental deaths due to firearms (out of 100,761 total accldental deaths), as compared to 14,728 suicides due to firearms and 12,766 homicides due to firearms [I] In addition, many nonlethal uqunes occur from firearms These mjunes due to firearms are not counted accurately and probably greatly exceed the number of accIdenta deaths due to firearms For example, m a study m Philadelphia, Khella and Stone [2] found that 66 out of 101 cases of traumatic spinal cord injury were a result of gunshot wounds In recent years, the firearm accident death rate has decreased (see Table 1) while the firearm homicide and suicide rates have increased What might be the causes of this7 The increase m firearm sulclde and homicide rates IS sometimes attributed to the increasing ownership of guns [3], but available data do not show an increase m overall gun ownershlp, but rather a changmg pattern of gun ownership Household ownership of handguns has increased while ownership of shotguns has decreased (see Table 1) Might this changmg pattern of gun ownership be related to the decrease m the firearm accident death rate and the Increase m the firearm smclde and homlclde rates7 Clarke and Jones [4] showed m a time senes study of the Umted States from 1959 to 1984 that suicide rates were related to estimates of the ownershlp of handguns but not to the ownershlp of nfles or shotguns The present comment extends their analysis to accldental deaths from firearms and homicides due to firearms It has long been suspected that the ownershlp of guns m the U S A may be related to the number of accldental deaths from firearms, but there has been disagreement over whether long-guns or handguns are pnmanly responsible Klem et al [5] documented that shotguns and nfles were mvolved more m the accidental deaths of whites whereas handguns were involved more m the accIdenta deaths of blacks. In titles, handguns appear to be the most common agents of accldental deaths Rushforth et al (61 found that 83% of the accidental fatahtles m Metropolitan Cleveland were from handguns, whereas Wailer and Whorton [7] found that two-thirds of the fatahtles m Vermont were from nfles The present study looks at accidental death rates from firearms over time m the U S A , rather than over regons as m the studies mentloned above Furthermore, It uses the estimates of the actual ownershlp of handguns, nfles and shotguns provided by Gallup and NORC polls and used by Clarke and Jones [4] rather than measures of the stnctness of gun control laws. Thus the study promises to provide a methodologically sounder analysis of the relationship between gun ownershlp and accidental death rates from firearms Data concerning accidental deaths, sulcldal deaths and homlcldal deaths were obtamed for 1959-1984 from the annual volumes of the Vztal Statzstzcs of the Unzted States This source provided annual counts of accidental, sulcldal and homicidal deaths by firearms as well the total number of sulcldal and homlcldal deaths (by all methods) The category for suicides 1s ‘firearms and explosives’, but about 98% of these are firearm smcldes [S] Numbers of households and mean household size for 1959-1984 were obtained from the annual editions of the Statzstzcal Abstract of the Unzted States and used to generate annual estimates of the population for calculatmg suicide rates. As in Clarke and Jones [4], data on the proportlon of households with guns were obtained from opmlon polls conducted by Gallup m 1959, 1965, 1968, 1972 and 1983 and from those conducted by the National Opmion Research Center m 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1982 and 1984 In all cases, the samples consisted of about 1500 respondents selected to be representative of the total adult population of the continental U.S A., non-mstltutlonahzed and English-speakmg. One person in each household was Interviewed Smce gun ownership was not known for 13 of the 26 years in the penod studled, mlssmg values were allowed to take a value consistent with a smooth trend between adlacent years with data The data used in the present study are shown m Table 1 The results of the correlations between firearms ownership and death rates from guns are shown m Table 2 It can be seen that the ownershlp of both