LPD implied that a gun being available increases the chance of someone committing suicide, but a look at the real world shows that there is no correlation between gun availability and suicide rate. LPD should know that and so should the Journal. Not putting that in the article is a lie by omission, and I would say the lie is deliberate.
There is, however, a correlation between method used and the success of said suicide attempt. Unsurprisingly, people who attempt to commit suicide using a firearm are significantly (statistically significantly) more
successful than those who use other methods.
Which makes sense---the reason it is an effective self-defense tool is because it is a significant and reliable force multiplier that anyone can use. As such, that force can be used for things other than self-defense, with similar results, by anyone.
The media, of course, changes that to "more likely to
attempt" which is a different thing.
As such, there
is a correlation between gun availability and the suicide rate. However, there isn't a correlation between gun availability and the
attempted suicide rate. (Note, however, that measures of "gun availability" are normally found only via proxy, and poor proxy at that, so the stats on "gun availability" are generally suspect. Nonetheless, using firearms as the method is significantly more likely to cause the suicide attempt to succeed, compared to any other method.)
It is certainly true that the
reasons for suicide attempts have nothing to do with firearm availability.
