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jka

There is a correlation chart[1] of gun ownership and gun deaths per state for 2013 in this article:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/gun-owners-stud...

(correlation does not explain causation, but it may help to guide analysis)

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20211204010352/https://www.mothe...

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That is gun deaths, not gun homicides or mass shootings. Around 2/3rds of gun deaths are suicides. A suicidal person will choose the most effective and painless method available to them, so if they have a gun around, they'll use it. This is a totally different problem than gun violence, but many activists will conflate the two.

Its not "conflation". Its recognition that background-checks, and delays, should reduce gun-violence AND cut back on suicides.

I'm not sure how much of an effect they would have on suicides. This may just be my stereotypical mental image, but I suspect that a lot of gun suicide victims have owned the gun in question for a long time, in which case a waiting period wouldn't help any more than a waiting period to buy a car would stop people driving off bridges.

Are there any numbers on how many people commit suicide with guns they bought in the last 6 months of their life?

Because they are sneaking suicides into the numbers. If you split the data up between suicides and homicides, the correlation disappears.

Upvoted and agreed, that's a reasonable complaint. Can you provide sources that illustrate the absence of correlation after dividing the dataset?

I haven't yet, although I did find this publication from Boston University positive correlation between increased gun ownership and increased non-stranger homicide rates: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4167105/

This post basically explains the bait-and-switch being used.

https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-...

The post also questions how studies like the one you linked are measuring gun ownership rate. Every reliable study uses % of suicides with guns as a proxy for gun ownership rates. RAND notes the same thing: "A fundamental limitation for all of the studies is the lack of direct measures of gun prevalence. All of the authors use FS/S as a proxy for gun prevalence" https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/fir...

https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/fir...

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