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It's suicides. Almost 60% of gun deaths are suicides.
Gun deaths reached their last peak in the US around 1975. At that time the rate between homicide and suicide was about 50/50. So it's not like suicides were very low with guns, guns are probably the most quick and effective way to kill yourself and if you want to be dead, using a gun is the gold standard. Still, from 50% to 60% is a very significant change. It's also important to note, there is more variability in gun homicide than there is in suicide (though there is still a little bit of a positive correlation), so in times of low violent crime the disparity grows.
Thank you, genuinely. I'll see if I can confirm that explanation independently, but that gives me an angle to research.
And we know it's not the guns that magically make people more suicidal...as there are multiple countries with basically 0 access to firearms with higher suicide rates than we have here in the USA. Japan is the main one.
Actually some countries with the highest suicide rates have decent gun control. Japan isn't in the top 10, and South Korea is the Asian country with high suicide rates and has strong gun control. Here are the 2024 countries with the most suicides per 100k, and the USA/Japan for reference.
Lesotho 72.4
Guyana 40.3
Eswatini 29.4
South Korea 28.6
Kiribati 28.3
Micronesia 28.2
Lithuania 26.1
Suriname 25.4
Russia 25.1
South Africa 23.5
#23 USA 16.1
#25 Japan 15.3
Here are the estimated guns owned per hundred residents
Lesotho 4.8
Guyana 15.8
Eswatini 4.8
South Korea 0.2
Kiribati 0.8
Micronesia 0.7
Lithuania 13.6
Suriname 15.9
Russia 12.3
South Africa 9.7
USA 120.5
Japan 0.3
I would need to graph this data for every country and year over year to see if there is a correlation. It would be hard to extrapolate especially considering so many different cultural beliefs on suicide and gun control/ownership.