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Teen Suicides and Limiting Access to Guns

In multiple studies, teenage suicides have been found to occur significantly more frequently in homes with firearms. By 2001, 18 states adopted laws requiring that firearms be secured from children in the home ("access laws"). These authors examined whether enactment of firearm laws was associated with changes in total and firearm-only suicide rates among youths. Controlling for various factors including demographics, religion, and beer consumption, the investigators compared state-by-state suicide rates for youths aged 14 to 17 and 18 to 20.

From 1976 to 2001, 63,954 youth suicides occurred, 39,655 (62%) by firearms. In the younger group, access laws (but not minimum purchase-age or possession-age laws) were associated with significant reductions in total suicides (8.3% decrease) and firearm suicides (10.8% decrease). The authors estimated that access laws resulted in 333 fewer suicides between 1989 (when the first access law was enacted) and 2001. In the older group, increases in the minimum purchase age were associated with a 9.0% drop in firearm suicides but with no decrease in overall suicide rates.

Comment: It is disappointing that access laws did not have an even greater effect in the younger group; better implementation might decrease the rate of suicide further. The decrease in overall suicides in the younger group suggests that when firearms were inaccessible, the teens did not substitute other means. This is clinically important: Practitioners can inform families of the benefit of securing their firearms. For older youths, however, the stability of the overall suicide rate indicates that those intent on suicide did substitute other means.

— Barbara Geller, MD

Published in Journal Watch Psychiatry September 8, 2004

Citation(s):

Webster DW et al. Association between youth-focused firearm laws and youth suicides. JAMA 2004 Aug 4; 292:594-601.

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