To Reduce Suicides...

The biggest category of firearm deaths is suicides.

State licensing laws for gun ownership can help by delaying access to guns. Even a short delay can be effective, experts say, because most people attempt suicide within an hour of their decision to end their lives.

In Israel, the military cut the suicide rate among young soldiers by 40 percent by forbidding them to take their service weapons home on weekends, according to a study published in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior in 2010. And in Australia, the rate at which people killed themselves with guns fell nearly 80 percent after a national gun buyback in 1997,

No policy or education campaign is going to prevent every suicide. But that is no excuse for failing to save as many people as we can by improving gun safety and by protecting people who are a danger to themselves.

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