Extending the Firearm Suicide Proxy for Household Gun Ownership

Levels of gun ownership and lethal violence in the U.S. far surpass those in any other developed country, and yet, there is little known about the origins of these trends owing to a lack of historical data on the prevalence of gun ownership. To fill this gap, this study extends an existing proxy for household gun ownership rates-firearm suicides divided by suicides-from 1949 to 2020, including new coverage for the 1949 to 1972 period.

A novel approach was developed to validate the firearm suicides divided by suicides proxy for household gun ownership rates during a period that lacks firearm ownership measures conventionally used to validate firearm proxies. Historical data were compiled that should be strongly associated with gun ownership trends to test the strength and consistency of the relationship with the percentage of all suicides committed with a firearm between 1949 and 2020.

The firearm suicides divided by suicides proxy increased by 45% between 1949 and 1990, the latter representing the U.S.'s peak year for the firearm suicides divided by suicides proxy. Over half of that increase occurred between 1949 and 1972, the period that previously lacked systematic data on gun prevalence rates. Firearm suicides divided by suicides can be used as a proxy for the prevalence of guns among U.S. households at the state level between 1949 and 1972.

Unlike most gun prevalence measures that are representative at the national or regional level, this proxy represents household gun ownership trends at the state level and is not reliant on self-reported data that are prone to social desirability bias. This extended proxy represents the longest-ranging data set of state-level gun ownership rates to date.