(The Center Square) – A new report claims gun shops in a given area increase the local rate of suicides by firearm. Second Amendment advocates say the study is seeking to justify future gun control measures.
Julie Kafka conducted the study as a postdoctoral research fellow at the UW Medicine Firearm Injury & Policy Research Program in Seattle and remains affiliated with the program. She is an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine.
In a Thursday interview with The Center Square Kafka said, “We were really interested to learn how gun shops and their distribution impacts communities, particularly the impact of gun shops and firearms suicide rates.”
According to research cited in the report, published Sept. 9 in the Journal of American Medical Association, suicide deaths rose 34% between 2001–2022 in the U.S and in 2022, firearms were the lethal mechanism in 55% of suicide deaths.
More than 49,000 Americans died by suicide in 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Firearms, the most common method used, accounted for more than half of suicide deaths.