Firearms and suicide: the American experience, 1926-1996

The hypothesis that American male suicide rates are higher than the rates of women because men select more highly lethal methods than do women is tested by adjusting male rates so that the distribution of male and female suicides to highly lethal methods is equal. However, the adjusted male rate is still higher than the total female rate in all eight periods from 1926-1929 through 1996. Also, increases in the percentage of female suicides using firearms over this period are unrelated to increases in female rates, and similar increases in firearms use by males are positively related to increases in male suicide rates only in recent decades. The impact of change in the male firearms suicide rate on change in their total suicide rate was weak or nonexistent in three of seven change periods; its impact on the female total rate was trivial in five of the seven change periods.