Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Misjudged Risk Assessment

Here's another topic we've seen before: misjudging risk. (I hope no one went out with their kid(s) on Halloween, but, if you did, I hope it was to make sure they weren't hit by a car, not because of some insane idea that neighbors harm kids.) It turns out we should fear easy access to guns not necessarily because it leads to increased homicides, but, more importantly, increased suicides. Suicides by guns are three times more likely than homicides. Additionally, a new study by Alex Tabarrok and Justin Biggs estimates "that a 1% increase in gun ownership leads to a .5 to .9% increase in suicides."

1 comment:

James R said...

Alex Tabarrok updates this astonishing revelation about gun related suicides, so I thought I'd promote it with this comment.

Their findings show a very strong relationship between number of firearms and number of suicides by firearms.

Also, "Suicide kills more people than all of the world's armed conflicts combined."