Firearm Suicide: The Unacknowledged Cost of Firearms

Abstract

This paper addresses the gun control debate by turning the reader’s attention away from mass shootings and to suicide, from public spectacle to private troubles. The author explores the reasons that mass shootings have failed to generate a compromise position between gun-ownership advocates and gun-control advocates, but makes a case that firearm suicide, a far more common problem than mass shootings, has the potential to trigger support from moderates on both sides of the issue. The paper is ambitious, well researched, and well argued.