CBS News: Majority of Gun Deaths are Suicides Rather Than Gun Violence

A CBS News report on a mother who killed herself amid struggles with bi-polar disorder indicates upwards of 65 percent of annual gun deaths are suicides rather than gun violence.

CBS News quoted Rutgers School of Public Health professor Mike Anestis saying, “Suicide accounts for anywhere from 60% to 65% of all the gun deaths in the United States in any given year.”

University of Alabama professor Fred Vars noted, “In 2020, there were 66 gun suicides every day, which is more people than died in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. And we don’t see it. You know, it doesn’t make the news. It happens one person at a time. Unless it’s a celebrity, we just don’t hear about it.”

Breitbart News has pointed out that gun controllers often swell gun violence numbers by lumping suicides in with actual homicide numbers.

For example, on November 3, 2015, Breitbart News noted then-presidential hopeful Hillary released a gun control ad in which she combines suicides with firearm-related homicides and, as a result, elevates “gun violence” figures by approximately 66 percent.

There were approximately 11,713 gun-related homicides in 2013, which is about 32 homicides a day. But by adding in suicides, Clinton was able to report a figure of 32,888 people “killed by guns” and emphasis that that translated to “88 to 92 people” each day.

Twice as many people died in traffic accidents than were killed in firearm homicides in the United States in 2020. https://t.co/b0BX5cnTpd

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) May 21, 2022

Mike Bloomberg made similar claims in 2020, tweeting, “100 Americans were killed by guns yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that.”

Like Clinton, he lumped together homicides and suicides to reach his per-day figures.

On December 19, 2018, Breitbart News observed the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman indicating that gun control is not the solution to American firearm deaths because no amount of gun control will stop suicide, which is the driving force behind such deaths.

Chapman explained, “The sort of gun control measures that are politically conceivable in the United States would be irrelevant. We could ban semi-automatic ‘assault weapons’ or 15-round magazines, but neither is needed by those who want to shoot themselves.”

He also pointed to Japan, which has some of the most stringent gun control laws on the planet yet also has a suicide rate that is much higher than the rate in the U.S. And he noted that the predominate mode of suicide in Japan is by hanging, something which gun control does not even begin to address.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a PhD in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.