The gun is almost completely irrelevant, because if you are intent on killing yourself there are many accessible options. For example, almost anyone can kill themselves (including gun-less 14 year olds) by jumping off a tall building.
I understand that people care about gun violence, and that this detail seems highly salient to them, but to focus on it here, completely misses the point (and distracts from more pertinent issues - e.g., loneliness, social isolation, lack of parental oversight)
In a nutshell, guns are massive force multipliers when it comes to violence against others. They are negligible force multiplier when it comes to violence against yourself. People are connecting guns to violence, but in this case (because it is an actual of self harm) that is a spurious connection.
Guns simply make suicide easy. You’d be surprised how much grit/nerve it takes to jump off a bridge or building, it is definitely much harder than pulling a trigger. Stabbing yourself to death also takes a lot of grit/nerve. Guns are pretty easy and harder to screw up.
But you have countries like Korea with a high suicide rate and low access to firearms, so it’s obviously possible to have suicide without guns. But we don’t know if the problem would be much worse if South Koreans had easier access to firearms, or if the American problem is amplified by easy firearm access.
The gun is almost completely irrelevant, because if you are intent on killing yourself there are many accessible options. For example, almost anyone can kill themselves (including gun-less 14 year olds) by jumping off a tall building.
I understand that people care about gun violence, and that this detail seems highly salient to them, but to focus on it here, completely misses the point (and distracts from more pertinent issues - e.g., loneliness, social isolation, lack of parental oversight)
In a nutshell, guns are massive force multipliers when it comes to violence against others. They are negligible force multiplier when it comes to violence against yourself. People are connecting guns to violence, but in this case (because it is an actual of self harm) that is a spurious connection.