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Studies showing clear links between firearm access and suicide rates have nonetheless been criticized as small, based on old data, and possibly flawed by their methods of measuring firearm availability. Now, researchers used California state data from 2004 to 2016 to conduct a cohort study of death rates in 26.3 million adults without recorded handgun ownership (since 1985), of whom 676,425 had newly acquired a handgun during the study period.
During a mean follow-up of 7 years, death rates were higher in people who never owned handguns. However, suicide rates were higher among new handgun owners (adjusted hazard ratio, 3.67), which were driven by even higher rates of suicide by firearm (adjusted HRs: men, 7.82; women, 35.15). Suicide rates …