Socialization, Firearms, and Suicide

Abstract

Psychological explanations of suicide often involve the concept of lethality of intent. This perspective views the method of self-destruction as an indicator of the seriousness of intent. Thus individuals who use firearms to kill themselves are seen as more serious in intentthan those using “less deadly” methods such as drugs or poisons. A more sociological perspective of this phenomenon emphasizes the social and cultural availability of the various means of self-destruction. Data from a non-probability sample of college students in the South and non-South suggest that different patterns of socialization with firearms may account for existing regional and sex differences in methods of self-destruction. Southerners were more likely to have had experience with firearms than non-Southerners, and males more often had such experience than females. Finally, national data for 1970 on actual methods used by the suicide population are consistent with the regional and sex differences in familiarity with firearms found among these respondents. The conclusion is that methods of suicide are basically independent of reasons for suicide and consequently independent of the suicide rate.