“State levels of gun ownership were estimated using a well-established proxy variable: the percentage of a state’s suicides that are committed with a firearm (FS/S).”
No wonder they get the results they do. Such a “proxy” is worthless. They in fact say they use that proxy “Because there is no state-level survey that measures household gun ownership”, then they add “The proxy correlates highly with survey measures of household firearm ownership, the authors said”.
So there is no state-level surveys that measure household gun ownership, so they use a proxy instead that “correlates highly with survey measures of household firearm ownership””
What “survey measures of household firarm ownership” can they be referring to, after they admitted there are no such state-level surveys and the research is comparing states???
Sounds like a lot of garbage science to me.
The state of Illinois would have a high rate of deaths from guns because of Chicago gone mad. The rest of the state is peaceful and armed. But because the two are thrown in together, the claim can be made.