Dr. Swanson and his associates found that the individuals had an average of seven guns, 92% were male, and their mean age was 47 years. Most (81%) were married or cohabitating, 46% had a mental health or substance abuse record, 12% had an arrest leading to conviction in the year before or after, 61% were considered a risk of harm to self, 49% of calls to police about the individual came from family members or acquaintances, and 55% were transported to the emergency department or hospital. The researchers found that the proportion of people in treatment in the public behavioral health care system increased from 12% before the gun removal event to 29% after the gun removal event.
When they matched the death records, they found 21 suicides among these 762 patients, which was about 40 times greater than the suicide rate in the general adult population in Connecticut, 12 per 100,000. “That’s important, because if you think about suicide as a needle in a haystack, this law provides a way to identify a much smaller haystack with a lot more needles in it,” Dr. Swanson said. “So it’s more efficient to try to intervene to prevent gun suicide or violence in a group like that, and it shows that this policy is narrowly tailored.” When the researchers examined the method of suicide, they found that only 6 out of 21 individuals used a firearm, and none of the gun-involved suicides happened during the year when the firearms were retained. “They all happened when the person became eligible to get their guns back,” he said. “Using information on the fatality rate for each method of suicide, we estimated that for every 10-12 gun removals, one life was saved. Is that high or low? It depends on where you stand. If you’re someone who cares a lot about the right to own firearms, you might think that’s unacceptable. If you’re like me and you have had three gun suicides in your extended family, every one is a tragedy, a life cut short. We want to put this kind of calculation in the hands of lawmakers so they can see what is in the balance between risks and rights.”
Dr. Swanson ended his presentation by offering five principles aimed at guiding gun policy reforms related to mental illness: