Connecticut made it harder to get guns — and suicides fell significantly

Sarah Kliff · Wednesday, September 02, 2015, 10:10 am

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In 1995, Connecticut established a "permit to purchase" law, which required a background check and eight hours of safety training for those seeking to buy a handgun.

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Missouri used to have a law like that, too, but repealed it in 2007.

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New research shows what happened afterward. Firearm suicide rates fell 15.4 percent in Connecticut — but rose 16.1 percent in Missouri. The study, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, only confirms what other papers have found: Making it harder to access guns correlates with fewer suicides.

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Most gun deaths in the United States are suicides

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There were 33,636 gun deaths in the United States in 2013. While homicides and mass shootings dominate the headlines, nearly two-thirds of those deaths — 21,175 — were suicides.

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http://www.vox.com/2015/9/2/9242147/gun-control-connecticut-suicides