Access to firearms poses a significant risk for men committing suicide and for women becoming victims of homicide, according to a recent research at UC San Francisco.
The meta-analysis at UCSF showed that someone with access to firearms is three times more likely to commit suicide and nearly twice as likely to be the victim of a homicide as someone who does not have access to it.
The United States is said to have higher gun ownership than anywhere else in the world, where firearms cause an estimated 31,000 deaths each year.
When firearms were accessible, men were nearly four times more likely to commit suicide than when firearms were not accessible, while women were almost three times more likely to be victims of homicide, the researchers found.
Andrew Anglemyer, who is an expert at UCSF and also a U.S. Army veteran, said that most victims of homicide know their assailants, and the higher risk for women strongly indicates domestic violence.
The researchers said that about 75 percent of suicides occur in the victims' homes, and a similar percentage of female homicide victims die in their homes. The figure is about 45 percent for men.
