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Comment by jimbob45 | Hacker News Reader

“Higher suicide rates in rural areas are due to nearly 60 percent of rural homes having a gun versus less than half of homes in urban areas,” psychiatrist and behavioral scientist Keith Humphreys of Stanford University says. “Having easily available lethal means is a big risk factor for suicide.”

Pretty bold claim there. Seems like you could run a pretty big study just based off that one hypothesis.

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It's not especially controversial. Many people who attempt suicide regret trying and go on to live fairly normal lives but most people who attempt suicide with a firearm are successful. It's long been a causal factor in the male/female discrepancy in rates as well as the rural/urban divide.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4984734/

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/

It's not a bold claim anymore. It's well-established public health knowledge that people with faster and less failure-prone suicide methods are more likely to take their lives.

For example, women attempt suicide at a higher rate, but die less often because they use less-lethal methods (like pills). Further, making it impossible to spontaneously jump off bridges lowers suicide rates.

Study about guns here: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/

"Urban–Rural Differences in Suicide in the State of Maryland: The Role of Firearms"

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2017....

> Conclusions. Male firearm use drives the increased rate of suicide in rural areas

Your comment comes off as if people hadn't thought to do this before.

The center for disease control is legally prohibited from doing so thanks due to lobbying from the National Rifle Association - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment

Not quite true, and as the link you posted highlights, they are prohibited in using tax funds to advocate for or against gun control. They’re empowered to do studies, but they must not use tax dollars earmarked for specific initiatives.

If I'm not mistaken, the federal government in all of its forms has chosen to call even studying gun violence as a step in the process of advocating for or against gun control. I feel like NPR did a story about that last year, but I can't find anything about it. Am I imagining this happened.

This is an oft-repeated falsehood. The Dickey Amendment was a response to the CDC's openly-stated intent to create a stigma against firearms in the public view. Running PR to foment disgust against people who exercise a constitutionally-protected right is not proper behavior for a government agency.

The Dickey Amendment's scope is limited to this and does not prevent research of any kind. Please note that the quote in your linked article is actually the full text of the amendment:

"Provided further, That none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control." (Emphasis mine) https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house-bill/3610...

Wasn't this fact tested/proved numerous times?

Quick search lists plenty of articles on this topic.

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