Suicide and Gun Purchase

Re “Study Links Gun Purchases, Suicide,” Nov. 18: Aside from being a direct affront to women in general, this study, which finds that gun buyers, “especially women,” are more likely to kill themselves during the first week after purchase, is patently stupid. So stupid, in fact, that I almost smell tax dollars at work.

Criminal misuse of firearms includes using one to commit suicide. Were one to conduct this study based on many common suicide methods, i.e., purchases of large quantities of barbiturates and alcohol, the same pattern would develop.

This study only proves that people usually buy something for a specific purpose, and then they use it; people intent on ending their own lives are no different from the rest of us in that respect.

Out of approximately 200 million firearms presently owned in the United States only one-half of 1% are used for criminal purposes; numbers such as these certainly do not cry out for increased regulation, regardless of the product.

J. MARVIN CAMPBELL

Los Angeles

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I am sitting here aghast at the perfidy of people who hate freedom so much that they would conduct a study in the name of bad science, reach totally erroneous conclusions and then have a major newspaper publish the study on Page 3. Anybody with even a tiny understanding of the human psyche should realize that once the decision is made to kill oneself or another person, then finding a method is entirely secondary. Sure, guns make it easy, but ask yourself this question: If there were no guns in the entire world, would people quit killing themselves and others? If the answer is no, it becomes obvious that gun control is meaningless.

Last year my brother committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a rifle; I never spent even a second thinking that “if only he hadn’t had a gun he would be alive today.” He was a relatively smart person who, because of stresses suffered during Vietnam and a constant struggle with alcoholism, decided to end his life. There are millions of ways to kill yourself or someone else; taking away one method will have no effect at all.

JERRY PARSONS

Long Beach