[Editorial] Gun deaths and the gun control debate in the USA

The numbing parade of mass shootings in the USA —like the one in Las Vegas that left at least 59 people dead—has often obscured the gun debate's open secret: horrific, attention-grabbing, mass shootings represent only a small minority of gun deaths each year. Two-thirds of all gun deaths in the USA are attributable to suicide, a fact highligh ted by a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on over half a million deaths by suicide from 2001 to 2015. Rural counties have a higher prevalence of suicide than do small and medium metropolitan, or urban counties (17·3 vs 14·9 and 11·9 deaths per 100 000 peop le, respectively).

Source: LANCET - October 20, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: The Lancet Tags: Editorial Source Type: research