Firearms and Suicides in US States

Abstract This study investigates the relationship between firearm prevalence and suicide in a sam-ple of all U.S. states over the years 2000–2009. We find strong, positive effects of gun prevalence on suicide using OLS estimation, across a variety of measures for gun possession, and with several sets of controls. When using instrumental variable estimation, the effect remains significant, despite also find-ing significant evidence that gun ownership causes substitution towards gun-suicide rather than other methods of suicide. There is also evidence for nonlinearities in the effects of guns on suicide