LOCKING UP GUNS LOWERS TEEN SUICIDE RATES
Locking Up Guns Lowers Teen Suicide Rates
Reuters Health
By Alison McCook
Tuesday, August 3, 2004
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Requiring people to store guns where they are not easily accessed by children and teenagers appears to reduce the rate of suicide among 14- to 17-year olds, according to new study findings released Tuesday.
Placing an age limit on who can carry and buy guns, however, seems to have no effect on suicide rates among teens, the authors report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"There is a lot of evidence that access to firearms does increase teen suicide," study author Dr. Daniel W. Webster told Reuters Health. Clearly, he added, access is more restricted by having good storage of guns in the household than from age requirements for purchasing and carrying guns.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death in young people between the ages of 10 and 19 in the U.S. Previous research has found that having guns in the home increases the risk of teen suicide, and states with higher rates of gun ownership also tend to show the highest suicide rates among teens.
In order to limit teens' access to guns, in 1968, the government began requiring that no one under the age of 21 could purchase handguns. In 1994, the legal age dropped to 18, and the law started applying to private dealers, who, according to Webster, contribute approximately 40 percent of gun sales.
In addition, many states have adopted child access prevention (CAP) laws, which make it a crime to store guns where children and teens can easily get at them. Since 2001, 18 states have established a form of CAP law, mostly requiring that guns be locked.
However, little research has examined whether these laws actually limit youth suicides. To investigate, Webster and his colleagues reviewed suicide rates among 14- to 20-year olds between 1976 and 2001, comparing rates before and after the new child-protection laws went into effect.
During that time period, nearly 64,000 suicides occurred in that age group. More than 60 percent involved guns.
Webster and his team found that requiring teens to wait until they are 18 to purchase or carry guns from any dealer appeared to have no effect on suicide rates. However, once states adopted CAP laws, the rate of suicide among 14- to 17-year olds dropped by 8 percent. This change in suicide rates was largely a result of a decrease in gun-related suicides, suggesting the CAP laws had an effect.
In an interview, Webster explained that CAP laws may reduce teen suicide better than age limits because many teens who use a gun don't try to purchase it themselves. "The vast majority of teens use a gun owned by their parents or someone in their house," he said.
Moreover, it is often very difficult to enforce age requirements on gun purchase and ownership, noted the researcher, who is based at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.
Encouragingly, since 1994, the rate of teen suicide had dropped markedly, largely a result of decreases in suicides using firearms, Webster noted.
"Things are going in the right direction," he said. "People out there are getting the message that, in order to protect your teen, it's important to keep guns from them."
SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association, August 4, 2004.
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