U.S. Adds Nearly 200 Million Privately Owned Guns, Firearm Suicide Rate Decreases

From 1981 to 2013 the U.S. added 195 million privately owned firearms and the firearm-related suicide rate fell by five percent.

This is significant when one considers that firearm-related suicide is actually the category that drives gun violence numbers used by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the various gun control groups funded by Michael Bloomberg.  In fact, “with  firearm murder and firearm accident death rates…at historic lows,” Bloomberg’s Center for Gun Policy at John Hopkins University has set it sights on pushing gun control as a solution to suicide. The problem they face is that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) numbers show that a decrease in the firearm-related suicide rate correlated with an increase in the number of privately owned firearms.

According to the NRA-ILA, CDC numbers “[covering] years 1981 through 2013” show “the firearm suicide rate (the number of suicides per 100,000 population) decreased five percent” at the very time that the U.S. added nearly 200 million privately owned guns.

It is interesting to note that while “the firearm suicide rate” fell 5 percent, “the non-firearm suicide rate increased 27 percent.”

It is not uncommon to see the number of firearm-related suicides run 80 to 100 percent higher than the number of firearm-related homicides for a given year–see CDC numbers for 2012, 2013 for examples–and gun controllers see these figures as fertile ground for anti-gun policy promotion. But the hard numbers show that sharp increases in gun ownership were accompanied by a decrease in “the firearm suicide rate” over the time period 1981-2013.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.