Suicides in US, 2015: 44,193
Gun Suicides in US, 2015: ~22,000
Percentage of suicides where the method was guns in 2015: 49.8
Percentage of all murders in England and Wales that were committed by firearm: 4.5 percent.
Academic research shows that more guns equal more suicides.
Number of suicides in England and Wales, 2016: 5,668 (equivalent to about 28,330 in US or 36% lower)
Number of suicides by firearam in England and Wales, 2011: 84 (this is the most recent statistic I could find but the typical percentage is given as 1.6% of all suicides; that would be the equivalent of 707 suicides by firearm in the US instead of 22,000).
For more on murder by firearms in Britain, see the BBC.
The US has the highest gun ownership in the world and the highest murder rate in the developed world.
It seems pretty clear, as well, that many US suicides would not occur if firearms were not omnipresent.
There is some correlation between high rates of gun ownership and high rates of violent crime in general, globally (and also if you compare state by state inside the US):
h/t Christopher Majka
In the case of Britain, firearms murders are 53 times fewer than in the US per capita. [Don't bother with flawed citations of Switzerland or Israel, where most citizens are the equivalent of military reservists.]
Every mass shooting since Sandy Hook, mapped. https://t.co/IqqLwO7LC2 pic.twitter.com/AQMoVLpWh9
Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 2, 2015
Do hunters really need semi-automatic AR-15 assault weapons? Is that how they roll in deer season? The US public doesn't think so.
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