It's important to remember that the majority of gun deaths are suicides.
It's also important to remember that any blocker between a potential suicide victim and the weapon of choice reduces rates greatly. A gun locked in a safe where the potential suicide knows the code - reduces rates.
> It's also important to remember that any blocker between a potential suicide victim and the weapon of choice reduces rates greatly. A gun locked in a safe where the potential suicide knows the code - reduces rates.
RAND found that minimum age requirements and child-access prevention laws reduced suicides and unintentional injuries/deaths and violent crime:
* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/child-acce...
* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/minimum-ag...
Interesting. What causes this? Could it have to do with the type of person to keep a gun in a safe (has kids, is more cautious in general, etc) or have studies shown that this minor friction is actually enough?
the Israeli military did a study about ~15 years ago where they looked at soldier suicide rates after they had enacted a policy of leaving the weapons at base over the weekend and if I recall correctly it cut the rate of suicides by 40-50%.
https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html
the data from CDC agrees with you, and agrees that a firearm is most common method.
but also indicates age correlate with freq of suicde by firearm.
guess who the least frequent group is, kids.
now that might fly in the face of stats, but suicide is an "intentional" thing. [that rides on the idea that you are competent to form intent when suicidal]
so yes if you keep your guns secure, and gun proof your kids to mitigate accidents that should improve things, for kids.
however take at least as much care for your grandparents, they are apparently at extreme risk, of forming intent and, acting especially grandpa.