Disparities in gun deaths

[kwassa]

today's Washington Post, their series on "Guns in America"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/feature/wp/2013/03/22/gun-deaths-shaped-by-race-in-america/

Gun deaths are shaped by race in America. Whites are far more likely to shoot themselves, and African Americans are far more likely to be shot by someone else.

The statistical difference is dramatic, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A white person is five times as likely to commit suicide with a gun as to be shot with a gun; for each African American who uses a gun to commit suicide, five are killed by other people.

Where a person lives matters, too. Gun deaths in urban areas are much more likely to be homicides, while suicide is far and away the dominant form of gun death in rural areas. States with the most guns per capita, such as Montana and Wyoming, have the highest suicide rates; states with low gun ownership rates, such as Massachusetts and New York, have far fewer suicides per capita.

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The impulse to commit suicide has been described as a trance, and the speed and lethality of a gun make it harder to interrupt the trance. Attempts at suicide are more than 20 times as likely to be fatal when a gun is used.

[ZOB]

1. What is the per capita suicide rate among whites vs African Americans?

Statistics can be dangerous things.

According to this source, http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html#2005, whites are more than twice as likely to commit suicide than blacks anyway, which would definitely change the implications of this WaPo piece.

[JVS]

2. I don't think the stats are changed by that.

Even though the suicide rate is higher for whites, the stats given are suicide per million people, not percentage allocation for the number killed by guns.

Just so that I'm being clear, the difference in suicide rate would make a big difference if you had the following stats:

Gun deaths by cause (black) homicide 75%, suicide 25%
Gun deaths by cayse (white) homicide)25%, suicide 75%

I guess the stats could also be made more understandable if they didn't use per million and just had
Gun deaths (black) homicide x, suicide y
Gun deaths (white) homicide w, suicide z