A new peer-reviewed analysis suggests a controversial population-level intervention for the public health crisis of firearm suicides: ensuring the population does not have firearms.
The data, published Thursday in a JAMA paper, examined a self-reported cohort of individuals living in environments completely devoid of guns. Researchers noted a sharp, statistically significant decrease in the number of patients absorbing high-velocity ammunition, though they repeatedly stressed that the association between an empty hand and a lack of gunshot wounds does not necessarily equal causation.
While the preliminary findings are certainly intriguing, we must be careful not to conflate the absence of a firearm with the inability to shoot oneself until we can adequately control for confounding variables.
The findings mark a major departure from traditional psychiatric guidance, which has historically focused on the highly inexact science of predicting exactly which patients might become suicidal. Instead, the newly proposed protocol suggests a blanket environmental safeguard, hypothesizing that individuals experiencing a sudden mental health crisis will find it mathematically difficult to discharge a weapon that is not currently located in their physical dimension.
Despite the apparent success of this broad restriction of lethal means, the FDA and medical ethicists caution against moving too quickly. Health officials warned that until a multi-year, double-blind clinical trial can be conducted—in which half the suicidal cohort is given a placebo firearm—clinicians should treat the "no-gun" intervention as strictly experimental.