"Universal Background Checks" may Increase Firearms Suicide

While firearm studies by medical journals have been notoriously anti-Second Amendment, this interesting bit comes from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Michael Bloomberg gave the school 300 million dollars specifically to target "gun violence" and other issues.  Bloomberg's fanatical advocacy of political gun control has tainted "research" that comes from the school.  When the researchers found that gun control laws could have unintended consequences, they did not advocate for repeal of those laws. From foxnews.com:

The research team looked at what happens when people want to temporarily remove firearms from their home because they fear someone in the house might be considering a suicide attempt. In some states, they found, gun control laws may actually hamper the ability to easily transfer a gun temporarily to reduce suicide risk.

What's needed, according to Jon S. Vernick of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore and colleagues, are laws that allow for temporary storage of guns by federally licensed firearm dealers, law enforcement officers, family members and friends.

The research was published this week in an issue of JAMA Internal Medicine focusing on firearm violence.

Other researchers are arguing that voluntary cooperation may work better than the heavy hand of legislation.

In a separate paper in the same issue, public health researchers from Boston argue that in order to reduce gun suicides, health care professionals need to work with, and not against, gun shop owners, firearm instructors and gun rights stakeholders. Rather than squaring off against one another, they say, these groups should "jointly devise strategies to put time and distance between a suicidal person and a firearm."

The thinly disguised attempt to create "universal gun registration", otherwise known as "universal background checks" never seemed likely to reduce suicide rates.  That it might work against efforts to reduce suicides by firearm should have been widely anticipated.

Most people who commit suicide with guns are older white males that have owned the guns for decades.

Suicides are approximately two thirds of all fatalities that are associated with guns.  It is likely that more suicides with guns will result from Universal background checks than unjustified homicides will be prevented.  Universal Background checks have not been shown to reduce the criminal use of guns.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.

Link to Gun Watch