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Comment by wyldfire | Hacker News Reader

> I don't think anyone ever thought that the results of these events would be 1-for-1 removal of crime guns off the street.

I don't think I would've guessed it but apparently firearm deaths exceed motor vehicle traffic deaths in the US. Score one for auto safety. But regarding "stolen, found by kids, etc." -- there's lots of accidental deaths and injuries from kids finding guns. So I think you're right -- that's exactly the kind of thing buybacks help reduce.

    Motor vehicle traffic deaths
    Number of deaths: 40,698
    Deaths per 100,000 population: 12.4

    All firearm deaths
    Number of deaths: 45,222
    Deaths per 100,000 population: 13.7

Source: National Vital Statistics System – Mortality Data (2020) via CDC WONDER

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In the US, 60% of firearm deaths are from suicide. There are, on the other hand, ~430 accidental firearm deaths per year. Not saying reducing accidental deaths isn't a good thing, but in terms of efficacy, the dollar spent per reduced death, I feel like there might be better ways other than a buyback program.

For anyone curious, 40% of 45,222 is 18,089

Mental health treatment is of course the best way to prevent suicides, but when people are in a suicidal mental state, they're a lot better off if they don't have grandpa's heirloom shotgun lying around.

> In the US, 60% of firearm deaths are from suicide.

How many suicide deaths would happen with fewer firearms available? I suspect a large portion of the suicide victims may not even be the owner/purchaser of the firearm used. Among all the methods, suicide by firearm is awful because it's so effective. Without an available firearm, attempting suicide by another method might be something that could be recoverable with some intervention after the attempt. Seems like a buyback could reduce the opportunity for deaths and injuries due to suicide attempts.

South Korea has a much higher suicide rate and virtually no firearms.

That's irrelevant. How do you know it wouldn't be higher if there were more firearms? Too many variables.

The US has only very recently started to eclipse other developed nations in suicide rate, and you can probably point to twenty years of war and the 2008 financial collapse as having a significant role to play in this. Maybe social media too. But gun ownership (access to firearms) is not in any way correlated with high per capita suicide rates. For many decades you might have been able to show inverse correlation.

If people want to suicide, they'll suicide.

Every other suicide method has a higher chance of rendering an individual comatose, disabled, or permanently disfigured. The side effects of a failed first attempt would be an incentive for the pursuit of a successful second.

> Seems like a buyback could reduce the opportunity for deaths and injuries due to suicide attempts.

Attempting to reduce deaths will only increase permanent injuries. That will certainly be a burden on the medical system which comes as an added expense on the willfully living. If people want to kill themselves in the least painful and most effective way they can afford, they shouldn't be prevented. It's tortuous to deny a person the right to dispose of his own life as he sees fit by means of his own property.

Reducing the access to means of suicide greatly reduces the number of suicides. Many suicides are the result of a short term crisis or encouraged by having an easy means todo it.

So getting rid of the unused gun in the attic for a few hundred or thousand dollars may well be a simple and cheap technique to reduce suicides.

Rates of suicide are higher in places without guns.

I didn’t say the opposite. But reducing the means reduces the numbers of suicides.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/

We also had a lot of lockdowns/work from home/etc in 2020, which prevented a lot of people from driving, probably lowering that driving stat. It would be interesting to get statistics for a non-covid year.

Because of covid some places stopped requiring kids to pass a driver's test to get a license. Some only had to have a parent sign off that their child was a good enough driver. I wouldn't be surprised if that had an impact on the number of accidents.

The reduction in accidents and suicides from gun buyback programs sounds essentially impossible to measure.

These programs cost money so they should be justified with real evidence. I understand it isn't very much money, and studying it would likely cost orders of magnitude more. There's other costs though, like an erosion of belief in government competence.

The firearm numbers don't distinguish between suicides, accidental deaths, self-defense, and homicides whether intended or negligent.

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