http://mindhacks.com/2007/04/12/gun-ownership-linked-to-suicide/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Mon, 20 May 2013 15:51:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2007/04/12/gun-ownership-linked-to-suicide/#comment-7440 Tue, 17 Apr 2007 15:23:59 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/gun-ownership-linked-to-suicide/#comment-7440 Hello,
In december I writed a post about the need (or not) of fire arms. Investigating about it I found that (in spanish, sorry):
La relación entre disponibilidad de armas e incidentes ocurridos es evidente y ha sido puesta de manifiesto por numerosas investigaciones experimentales y estudios epidemiológicos. En un reciente estudio realizado en USA y presentado en el Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association (Kellerman y cols. , 1992) los datos eran significativos. El 73% del total de suicidios fueron cometidos con armas de fuego. En los hogares en donde había este tipo de armas, el 86% de los casos de suicidio fueron realizados con este sistema, mientras que unicamente se utilizaron armas de fuego en el 6% de los suicidios en los que el individuo no tenía en propiedad arma de fuego alguna.
En otros trabajos realizados en Australia se detallaron correlaciones tan elevadas como 0,91 entre disponibilidad de armas de fuego y homicidios perpetrados, o de 0,94 entre disponibilidad de armas y suicidio.
Link: http://www.cop.es/papeles/vernumero.asp?id=730
The study was made by a psychological team in order to evaluate the needs for having a possesion permission of fire arms in Spain.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2007/04/12/gun-ownership-linked-to-suicide/#comment-7439 Sat, 14 Apr 2007 15:35:00 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/gun-ownership-linked-to-suicide/#comment-7439 Yeah, proxy measure, which means little (and the study says as much, criticizing proxy measurements) when the true issue is social isolation via low population density. Social isolation/loneliness has been found in numerous other studies to be one of the strongest causal factors of suicide. Not considering this well-known fact is just academic apathy.
Correlation does not equal causation. I’m not really sure why I need to explain this…

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2007/04/12/gun-ownership-linked-to-suicide/#comment-7438 Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:41:17 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/gun-ownership-linked-to-suicide/#comment-7438 The study controlled for urbanisation (a proxy measure of population density), mental illness and drug abuse.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2007/04/12/gun-ownership-linked-to-suicide/#comment-7437 Fri, 13 Apr 2007 07:45:45 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/gun-ownership-linked-to-suicide/#comment-7437 Your commentary reads like an exercise in confirmation bias; transcend your ego and the false choice fallacy of politics ruled by hatred and anger, Vaughan. The explanation for this is quite simple: gun ownership and suicide both correlate with population density, but for different reasons. I’ll let you PubMed and find out why. Break it down per US state, and you’ll start to see trends. Now add drug abuse and depression. You may, in fact, notice a pattern emerging from the data. But oh, the desire to rationalize those emotions that arose is oh-so-tempting.

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