Guns and Suicide
Guns and Suicide

Author: Michael D. Anestis

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-01-08

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0190675071

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The majority of gun deaths in the United States are suicide deaths, and the majority of suicide deaths are gun deaths. Most people are unaware that suicide, at nearly 43,000 deaths per year, is more common than homicide and other widely publicized tragedies. And yet, suicide is typically absent from discussions of gun violence. As such, the national conversation on gun violence is inadequate and unrelated to the majority of gun deaths in this country. In Guns and Suicide, Michael Anestis reframes our perspective on gun violence by shifting the focus to suicide. Guns play a uniquely profound role in American suicide, and Anestis explains how they have this effect-not by making otherwise non-suicidal people want to die, but by facilitating suicide attempts among suicidal individuals. He reviews the evidence - in suicide and other public health concerns - that focusing on specific means for contracting an unwanted outcome (e.g., HIV) can successfully reduce the frequency of that outcome. With suicide, this could mean the passage of legislation related to firearm ownership and storage, non-legislative encouragement of safe storage of private firearms, voluntary and temporary removal of firearms from the home during times of distress, or a combination of these factors. Importantly, this is not a book about gun control. Anestis does not argue in favor of tighter restrictions on ownership, assault weapon bans, or longer waiting periods for purchase because these will not substantially reduce the staggering gun suicide rate. Rather, Anestis aims for a cultural shift towards suicide-specific safe gun ownership and puts forth unemotional suggestions in hopes of leveraging common ground in the pursuit of a lower suicide rate.

Guns and Suicide
Guns and Suicide

Author: Michael David Anestis

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0190675063

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Guns and Suicide, Michael Anestis reframes our perspective on gun violence by shifting the focus to suicide. Guns play a uniquely profound role in American suicide, and Anestis explains how they have this effect--not by making otherwise non-suicidal people want to die, but by facilitating suicide attempts among suicidal individuals.

Firearms and Violence
Firearms and Violence

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2005-01-13

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0309091241

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For years proposals for gun control and the ownership of firearms have been among the most contentious issues in American politics. For public authorities to make reasonable decisions on these matters, they must take into account facts about the relationship between guns and violence as well as conflicting constitutional claims and divided public opinion. In performing these tasks, legislators need adequate data and research to judge both the effects of firearms on violence and the effects of different violence control policies. Readers of the research literature on firearms may sometimes find themselves unable to distinguish scholarship from advocacy. Given the importance of this issue, there is a pressing need for a clear and unbiased assessment of the existing portfolio of data and research. Firearms and Violence uses conventional standards of science to examine three major themes - firearms and violence, the quality of research, and the quality of data available. The book assesses the strengths and limitations of current databases, examining current research studies on firearm use and the efforts to reduce unjustified firearm use and suggests ways in which they can be improved.

Private Guns, Public Health
Private Guns, Public Health

Author: David Hemenway

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2006-12-29

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 0472031627

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"In this small book David Hemenway has produced a masterwork. He has dissected the various aspects of the gun violence epidemic in the United States into its component parts and considered them separately. He has produced a scientifically based analysis of the data and indeed the microdata of the over 30,000 deaths and 75,000 injuries which occur each year. Consideration and adoption of the policy lessons he recommends would strengthen the Constitutional protections that all of our citizens have to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." -Richard F. Corlin, Past President, American Medical Association "This lucid and penetrating study is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the tragedy of gun violence in America and-even more important-what we can do to stop it. David Hemenway cuts through the cant and rhetoric in a way that no fair-minded person can dismiss, and no sane society can afford to ignore." -Richard North Patterson, novelist "The rate of gun-related homicide, suicide, and accidental injury has reached epidemic proportions in American society. Diagnosing and treating the gun violence epidemic demands the development of public health solutions in conjunction with legislative and law enforcement strategies." -Kweisi Mfume, President and CEO of NAACP "In scholarly, sober analytic assessments, including rigorous critiques of NRA-popularized pseudoscience, David Hemenway constructs a convincing case that firearm availability is a critical and proximal cause of unparalleled carnage. By formulating such violence as a public health issue, he proposes workable policies analogous to ones that reduced injuries from tobacco, alcohol, and automobiles." -Jerome P. Kassirer, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, New England Journal of Medicine, and Distinguished Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine "As a former District Attorney and Attorney General, I know the urgency of providing safe homes, schools and neighborhoods for all. This remarkable tour-de-force is a powerful study of one promising solution: a data-rich, eminently readable demonstration of why we should treat gun violence as an American epidemic." -Scott Harshbarger, Former Attorney General of Massachusetts, President and CEO of Common Cause On an average day in the United States, guns are used to kill almost eighty people, and to wound nearly three hundred more. If any other consumer product had this sort of disastrous effect, the public outcry would be deafening; yet when it comes to guns such facts are accepted as a natural consequence of supposedly high American rates of violence. Private Guns, Public Health explodes that myth and many more, revealing the advantages of treating gun violence as a consumer safety and public health problem. David Hemenway fair-mindedly and authoritatively demonstrates how a public-health approach-which emphasizes prevention over punishment, and which has been so successful in reducing the rates of injury and death from infectious disease, car accidents, and tobacco consumption-can be applied to gun violence. Hemenway uncovers the complex connections between guns and self-defense, gun violence and schools, gun prevalence and homicide, and more. Finally, he outlines a policy course that would significantly reduce gun-related injury and death. With its bold new public-health approach to guns, Private Guns, Public Health marks a shift in our understanding of guns that will-finally-point us toward a solution.

Gun Violence and Mental Illness
Gun Violence and Mental Illness

Author: Liza H. Gold, M.D.

Publisher: American Psychiatric Pub

Published: 2015-11-17

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 1585624985

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Perhaps never before has an objective, evidence-based review of the intersection between gun violence and mental illness been more sorely needed or more timely. Gun Violence and Mental Illness, written by a multidisciplinary roster of authors who are leaders in the fields of mental health, public health, and public policy, is a practical guide to the issues surrounding the relation between firearms deaths and mental illness. Tragic mass shootings that capture headlines reinforce the mistaken beliefs that people with mental illness are violent and responsible for much of the gun violence in the United States. This misconception stigmatizes individuals with mental illness and distracts us from the awareness that approximately 65% of all firearm deaths each year are suicides. This book is an apolitical exploration of the misperceptions and realities that attend gun violence and mental illness. The authors frame both pressing social issues as public health problems subject to a variety of interventions on individual and collective levels, including utilization of a novel perspective: evidence-based interventions focusing on assessments and indicators of dangerousness, with or without indications of mental illness. Reader-friendly, well-structured, and accessible to professional and lay audiences, the book: * Reviews the epidemiology of gun violence and its relationship to mental illness, exploring what we know about those who perpetrate mass shootings and school shootings. * Examines the current legal provisions for prohibiting access to firearms for those with mental illness and whether these provisions and new mandated reporting interventions are effective or whether they reinforce negative stereotypes associated with mental illness. * Discusses the issues raised in accessing mental health treatment in regard to diminished treatment resources, barriers to access, and involuntary commitment.* Explores novel interventions for addressing these issues from a multilevel and multidisciplinary public health perspective that does not stigmatize people with mental illness. This includes reviews of suicide risk assessment; increasing treatment engagement; legal, social, and psychiatric means of restricting access to firearms when people are in crisis; and, when appropriate, restoration of firearm rights. Mental health clinicians and trainees will especially appreciate the risk assessment strategies presented here, and mental health, public health, and public policy researchers will find Gun Violence and Mental Illness a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume that eschews sensationalism and embraces serious scholarship.

Firearms and Suicide
Firearms and Suicide

Author: David Lester

Publisher: Nova Science Publishers

Published: 2019-02-08

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 9781536146905

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

There are many issues in the role of firearms and personal violence (suicide and homicide). Do strict gun control laws have a preventive impact on the use of firearms for personal violence? Does the prevalence of firearm ownership impact the use of firearms for personal violence? Do people perceive the different methods for suicide differently? Are there certain types of people and situations that favor the use of guns for personal violence? Are there possibilities for reducing the role of firearms in personal violence other than reducing their prevalence? What is the experience of other nations (Australia and Canada) in coping with the role of firearms in personal violence? This book will explore the answers to these questions.

Adolescent Gun Violence Prevention
Adolescent Gun Violence Prevention

Author: Nancy A. Dodson

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-10-29

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 3030847101

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Each year, gun violence kills approximately 2,700 and injures approximately 14,500 children in the U.S.; the overwhelming majority of child gun deaths are among teenagers who die by homicide or suicide. Gun violence is the leading cause of death for Black teens. A recent spate of high-profile tragedies involving children, such as the Newtown mass shooting in 2012 and the Parkland mass shooting in 2018, have reinvigorated a national debate about the role of guns in our private and public spaces. Physicians, and in particular pediatricians, have become increasingly vocal about the need to address the epidemic of gun violence in the U.S. This book serves as an in-depth, comprehensive guide to adolescent gun violence prevention. It describes the epidemiology of teen gun violence in the U.S. by focusing on the parallel epidemics that claim the most lives: gun suicide among rural white males, and gun homicide among urban Black males. It offers in-depth reviews of key concepts that are crucial to reaching a meaningful understanding of gun violence. The text also addresses specific methods of intervention at various levels of society, from the individual; to the local community; and finally to the entire nation. This first of its kind book is a valuable reference for physicians, public health scientists, policy-makers, gun reform advocates, and anyone interested in working towards a safer future for young people.

Suicide in Canada
Suicide in Canada

Author: Antoon A. Leenaars

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 1998-01-01

Total Pages: 518

ISBN-13: 9780802077912

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Compiled by Canada's leading experts on suicide, this collection provides long-awaited information that focuses specifically on Canada.

Under the Gun
Under the Gun

Author: Peter H. Rossi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-29

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1351300784

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1978, the Social and Demographic Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, received a grant from the National Institute of Justice to undertake a comprehensive review of the literature on weapons, crime, and violence in the United States. The purpose of the project is best described as a "sifting and winnowing" of the claims and counterclaims from both sides of the Great American Gun War - the perennial struggle in Ameri­can political life over what to do, if anything, about guns, about violence, and about crime. The review and analysis of the available studies consumed the better part of three years; the results of this work are contained in this volume.The intention of any review is to take stock of the available fund of knowledge in some topical area. Under the Gun is no different: our goal has been to glean from the volumes of previous studies those facts that, in our view, seem firmly and certainly established; those hypotheses that seem adequately supported by, or at least approximately consistent with, the best available research evidence; and those areas or topics about which, it seems, we need to know a lot more than we do. One of our major conclusions can be stated in advance: despite the large number of studies that have been done, many critically important questions have not been adequately researched, and some of them have not been examined at all.Much of the available research in the area of weapons and crime has been done by advocates for one or another policy position. As a consequence, the manifest intent of many "studies" is to persuade rather than to inform. We have tried to approach the topic from a purely agnostic point of view, treating as an open question what policies should be enacted with regard to gun, or crime, control. Thus, we have tried to judge each study on its own merits, on the basis of the routine standards normally applied to social-scientific research, and not on the basis of how effectively it argues for a particular policy direction. It would, of course, be presumptuous to claim that we have set aside all our own biases in conducting this study. Whether or not our treatment is fair and objective is clearly something for the reader, and not us, to decide.

Guns, Gun Violence and Gun Homicides
Guns, Gun Violence and Gun Homicides

Author: Wendell C. Wallace

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-12-11

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 3030845184

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book provides in-depth coverage of guns, gun violence and gun homicides from a variety of perspectives, including, but not limited to, gender, suicide, peaceology and police (in)action. Reflecting changes in contemporary perceptions as well as desires for scholarship emanating from under-researched areas of the globe, this book addresses the pervasive issue of guns, gun violence and gun homicides. Authored by a wide range of Social Science experts, and premised on the notions of epistemological diversity, inclusivity and knowledge production in the Global South, this book provides comprehensive coverage on the nebulous concern of guns and their destructive force using differing approaches to the same problem, with a focus on prevention/reduction of gun violence. Readers may find the chapters contained in this book to be fascinating, provocative, informative, clearly presented and solution oriented. This book is of special interest to students, criminologists, policymakers, criminal justice system officials and laypersons. It is invaluable to policymakers at differing levels of government who provide advice on the social issue of guns and gun violence in their respective jurisdictions.