How easy access to guns at home contributes to America’s youth suicide problem

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Matthew Miller, Northeastern University and Deborah Azrael, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

(THE CONVERSATION) School shootings in the U.S. are national tragedies, and the toll they take in lives cut shortand traumatized distinguishes the U.S. from other high-income countries. But there is another way that guns are killing American children, and in far greater numbers: suicide.

Between 2011 and 2020, the most recent decade for which data is available, 14,763 children ages 5-17 died by suicide in the U.S. – a rate of approximately four deaths every day. Over 40% of these suicides involved a firearm. The great majorityof guns involved in youth suicides come from the victim’s home or the home of a relative.

As...