Over the last decade, my trust in the scientific establishment has gone to crap. I could get into why, but the reality is that there are just too many so-called researchers drawing paychecks to twist science for their own political ends. There's almost no realm where this isn't a thing, after all, and that's not great. That's why I automatically start rolling my eyes when supposed research makes cases about things like suicide risk and guns.
It's not that I don't think people will take their own life. This is Bearing Arms. We know better.
Instead, it's how they keep asking the wrong questions.
Researchers analyzed survey responses from 7,810 U.S. adults. Participants were asked about whether they knew someone who died by firearm suicide, whether firearms were typically kept in or around their home, their beliefs about suicide risk and whether any household firearm was typically stored both unlocked and loaded.
More than one in four participants, 27.8%, reported personally knowing someone who died by firearm suicide. Firearm access at home was associated with greater odds of reporting such a loss.
Among firearm owners, knowing someone who died by firearm suicide was associated with stronger beliefs that having a firearm at home increases suicide risk. It was also associated with storing at least one firearm both unlocked and loaded.
Here's the issue I have.
First, the "scientific" definition of safely secured is locked up and unloaded, meaning useless for home defense. Even if it doesn't, though, the issue is that no one asked what happens if someone feels themselves start to contemplating suicide.
I've personally held onto guns for friends who were suffering. They realized they were in a bad place and asked me to hold onto them for a while. I gladly agreed, because a little less room in the gun safe is preferable to attending a funeral that could have been prevented.
That's better than locking a gun up at a time like that because while I get that the act of unlocking a safe or gun lock gives people a moment to reconsider their actions, it doesn't actually prevent someone who is determined to take their own life. Not having a gun anywhere in the house might drive them to find another means, but it means they have to consider another means, which takes a bit longer than just punching a code in or inserting and turning a key.
But they never ask about that. Maybe it's because it's a gun culture thing and since gun researchers are almost never part of the gun culture, they're unaware of it. Who knows.
Either way, I think that matters. It's one thing to recognize the risk, but it's quite another to ask how someone might mitigate the risk while not rendering their guns entirely useless all of the time, because that's a non-starter for millions of Americans. We have guns for self-defense, after all, and it makes no sense to have them for that purpose, then make them inaccessible when needed.
But then again, researchers don't actually tend to care about research in far too many cases.
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