The common response is that "people will just find another way" but that's not supported by evidence.
>“Anything that builds in delay is working in your favor because that fever-pitch time when you’re actually willing to swallow the poison or pull the trigger is often fairly narrow,” said Cathy Barber, who directs a suicide-reduction campaign at the Harvard School of Public Health.
I'm not convinced that even eliminating firearms completely would reduce suicide rates as much as some think because people would find another means. Even the linked piece states "nobody knows what would happen if firearm availability in the US resembled levels of other developed countries." In countries where firearms aren't as available, other methods are more prevalent. I also think there's a lot of differences between the US and other developed countries along a lot of dimensions other than firearm use.
Even if it did reduce suicides, though, what does that leave people with? It's akin to saying "we're going to take away this only out for your pain without addressing your problems."
Sure, keeping them alive long enough might allow you to intervene and reduce their pain, but the fact that they are driven to suicide to begin with suggests something failed earlier along the chain.
What we want are people who don't feel driven to suicide, not people who are unable to commit suicide.
I work in suicide prevention in a country that has seen decreasing rates of suicide at a time when the government has been defunding mental health care.
Reducing access to means and methods of suicide is the most important thing we can do to stop people killing themselves.
Barriers on bridges and multi-storey carparsk save lives. Smaller pack sizes of paracetamol prevents death. Gun control would absolutely save lives.
We've had a wide range of natural experiments for this. Two notable examples are when the UK changed the domestic gas supply from coal gas to natural gas; and when the UK introduced laws for catalytic converters. Two very common methods went, and rates declined for some years after.
Of course you need the bio-psycho-social support too, but method removal is crucial.
Is there a reason we shouldn't do both?
Suggesting policy based on evidence instead of trying to immediately assign blame to your least favorite political group is a huge improvement in discourse. It's pretty absurd that this is getting downvoted.
>And for those who did not die, it's likely they would not try to commit suicide again. A 2002 review of 90 studies indicates that more than 90 percent of people who survive a suicide attempt won’t die from a later suicide attempt either.
Lots of people attempt suicide more than once, and many of them die by suicide when they try again.