The numbers are less exceptional when suicide is factored out. Where other people eat pills, Americans eat a gun.
Not being facetious here, I'm merely asking because 1-2 weeks ago somebody else made exactly the same point in another US gun-violence discussion I participated in.
And just like you, he didn't support his claim with any numbers.
But even at first glance, this argument does not check out at all. It basically argues that all the extra gun violence in the US is the result of people buying guns only for the purpose of committing suicide.
Yeah, no, not buying that. Suicide is an issue, but it's not that big of an issue that it alone accounts for the massive gun violence outlier the US represents among developed countries.
Especially in the context of prescription meds also being way more easily and readily available in the US (opiate crisis) than many other places, I find it hard to believe that all US Americans simply prefer firearms to pills for their "suicidal needs".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
I don't see a problem with that as long as the statistics for all the countries are handled that way, the datasets still remain comparable.
Or are you suggesting other countries don't account for the suicides, yet that's the only real difference?
What about the argument that people killing themselves with firearms, due to easier access to them, might have gotten proper help elsewhere and survived? In that context, even these suicide deaths can be considered victims of the failed firearms regulation.
A loaded firearm is quite a low barrier of entry for any person in emotional distress. Most other methods of suicide require at least some level of research, planning and preparation and often still fail.
Also, the method of suicide people use tends to be highly cultural, even with gender differences. In France, the methods of suicide primarily used by men - guns and hanging - tends to be much more deadly than the ones used by women - medication overdose, causing women to have a higher rate of suicide but men representing the majority of deaths.
The regulation resulting from the needs for these kinds of restrictions is exactly the same.
Firearm permits often have mandatory hours of safety training attached, that's also to protect people from themselves and drive home the point that this is a dangerous device they own and handle.
The same applies to drivers licenses, these have mandatory training requirements not just to protect other people on the street, but also the person driving the car and getting the permit.
In that context, it is completely irrelevant why you regulate something when both are valid reasons for regulating something, protecting people from themselves, by requiring them to show they are actually able and reliable to handle a dangerous device, and protecting others from people who handle their dangerous devices irresponsibly by requiring at least a basic amount of training and competency.
From a quick look at Wikipedia (not exactly the gold standard of research, but hey) the US has a truly astounding suicide-by-firearm rate compared to the UK (7.1 vs 0.15), but if we only compare homicide-by-firearm it's actually even worse than before (4.86 vs 0.06 -> ~80x higher, but it's unreliable because we're dividing by such a small number). But then our income inequality is at least a bit higher than the UK (41% vs 34% Gini coefficient), we certainly have substantially worse social safety nets across the board, and we have serious systemic socioeconomic issues in a downright embarrassing number of locations.
But to me at least, by far the most important factor is one I can't easily turn up reliable statistics on - gangs, cartels, and other organized crime. Having lived in some questionable areas, I've seen first hand that in many cases criminal groups will engage in conflict with one another and not intentionally target innocent bystanders. I used to live in an area where there were nightly shootings (!!!) that I could hear from my house, but it was a seemingly mutual exchange of gunfire. I have no idea how you're supposed to account for that sort of thing in an analysis, but it seems clear to me that it must be accounted for if you're going to attempt to claim that it's reasonably unbiased.
TL;DR. The US seems to be slightly above the average EU suicide rate, but below several individual European countries.