September 6, 2022 – Nearly 15,000 children ages 5-17 died by suicide in the U.S. from 2011-2020 and 40% of these deaths involved a firearm. In an August 17, 2022 commentary in The Conversation, Deborah Azrael, director of research at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and Matthew Miller, adjunct professor of epidemiology, wrote that the easy access many young people have to guns in the home significantly contributes to the high rates of gun suicides by U.S. youths.
The researchers said that the risk of suicide among children can be reduced by storing firearms securely, unloaded, and away from ammunition. “We believe that rigorously evaluating how to effectively communicate the importance of making household firearms inaccessible to children is an urgently needed next step if we are to prevent the loss of so many young lives year after year to suicide,” they wrote.
Read article in The Conversation: How easy access to guns at home contributes to America’s youth suicide problem