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baldeagle wrote:More stupidity by "researchers". The first thing you do when you come across this kind of shenanigans is check John Lott. He pretty much eviscerates the study.

Here's my take on it.

Look at the homicide rates by state.

States that have strict gun control laws:
California - 4.8
Illinois - 5.6
Massachusetts - 2.8

States that have "loose" gun control laws:
Florida - 5.2
Oklahoma - 5.5
Texas - 4.4

From these numbers it should be obvious that the gun control laws have little impact on the homicide rate. Oh wait, their study shows that higher rates of gun ownership lead to higher firearm homicide rates. Ah, but according to John Lott, they never looked at gun ownership rates.

Using state level data the study claims a positive relationship between the percentage of suicides committed with guns (they call this the gun ownership rate rather than what it actually is) and the firearm homicide rate.

So a state with high suicide with gun rates is considered to be a high gun ownership state? That's called manipulating data to get the outcome you're looking for. Where's the data that shows that lower firearm ownership rates lead to lower overall suicide rates (not lower firearm suicide rates.) It stands to reason that lower firearm access will lead to lower firearm suicide rates, but does it lead to lower overall suicide rates? Apparently not.

Studies of suicide rates are ambiguous as to causes. This one shows that 54% of suicides are committed with a firearm. Do the researchers really want to say that we could eliminate 54% of all suicides by getting rid of guns? That's laughable. People don't commit suicide because they have a gun. They commit suicide because they are suicidal. The gun is just a handy instrument of death.

Let's look at suicide rates by state independent of firearm suicides for the same six states I arbitrarily picked earlier.
Callifornia - 10.5
Florida - 14.8
Illinois - 9.2
Massachusetts - 9.1
Oklahoma - 16.5
Texas - 11.5

So while Illinois has one of the lower suicide rates it has one of the highest homicide rates. A legitimate scholarly study would account for those kinds of anomalies.

It makes you wonder if the authors of this study first read this study which found, among other things:

The nine states that rank lowest in terms of gun prevalence are the very same nine that rank lowest for suicide rates. Similarly, the three states top-ranked for gun prevalence can be found among the four states ranking highest for suicide rates.

Aha! Perfect data to prove our preexisting theory!

One last comment. There's an elephant in this study that they never mention.

for each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of Black population, firearm homicide rate increased by 5.2%

Maybe, just maybe, gun homicides have a stronger correlation to crime rates than they do to gun ownership?