President says ‘epidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apart’ after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago
Try the other way around: how much gun control would impact in the total suicide number?
This is the sad reality. Gun violence is generally committed by sick people. Similarly, I saw this chart a few years back on Australian gun/knife violence. The plots are mirrored. Violence is sort of static.
That plot is in percentage. Of course violence is static. Because 100% of homicides are violent. Let’s see total number of homicides per year.
Edit: To clarify, if gun and non-knife homicides dropped to zero, and knife homicides dropped to one, that plot would show knife homicides skyrocket to 100%. The plot isn’t demonstrating the trend you think it is.
Look at what happened when England reduced CO access by switching from coal gas to natural gas.
Over time, as the carbon monoxide in gas decreased, suicides also decreased (Kreitman 1976). Suicides by carbon monoxide decreased dramatically, while suicides by other methods increased a small amount, resulting in a net decrease in overall suicides, particularly among females.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves-lives/
Suicide is often a matter of convenience. If it’s harder to kill yourself, many people are less likely to do it. I suspect reducing access to guns would reduce suicides just like it did with coal gas.
