You said unjustifiable gun deaths...I wouldn't consider suicide a justifiable gun death, and I don't think those deaths should be discounted from this conversation. How many of those suicides are kids who are able to access the guns owned by their parents/relatives/friends/etc.? I don't think you can take the suicide number out of the equation.
then we'll agree to disagree there, I don't really consider it "justifiable" but it's not accidental and self inflicted...I'll admit that there is a percentage of people who, without access to a gun, wouldn't end up killing themselves, but I feel that it's probably not that large of a percentage (the percentage is probably larger for younger people and gets lower as people age...no evidence to support any of that, just my hunch)
I read somewhere that 40% of teen suicides (in 2010) were caused by guns and that there were about 4212 (in 2005) suicides for people aged 15-24 (suicides for people under 15 were very low).
So "teen suicides" and ages 15-24 aren't exactly the same, but well assume they are, so up to 1600 kids kill themselves with guns/year
You are using gut feelings and translating those into numbers. That doesn't make much of a case.
You're entitled to your opinion, but the site posted earlier has some really interesting real numbers:
High-Gun States Low-Gun States
Population 39 million 40 million
Household Gun Ownership 47% 15%
Firearm Suicide 9,749 2,606
Non-Firearm Suicide 5,060 5,446
Total Suicide 14,809 8,052
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/risk/
These numbers suggest that availability of guns accounts for 6,000 additional suicides in the compared populations over the subject 2 year period.
I certainly can't dispute those numbers other than to say from country to country suicides aren't strongly correlated with gun ownership.
According to Wikipedia (whatever that is worth) the US has 88 guns/100 people and Canada has 31 guns/100 people
The suicide rate is more in the US but it's 12/100,000 and Canada is 11.3/100,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
What's the latest with the white-trash redneck gun lover who kidnapped the boy and is sitting in his bunker? Can't they pump the hole full of sleeping gas?
It's obvious that less guns = less suicides. Common sense.
Here's the way I look at it - when you compare suicide from country to country, cultural differences are going to be more important than gun ownership. Japan has a very high suicide rate and almost no guns - but in Japan, unlike the US, suicide has a long cultural tradition of being an honorable and acceptable way of resolving personal problems or shame. The wikipedia page you posted has a link to a page about Canadian suicide rates that notes a very high rate of suicide among their indigenous population which may be skewing the numbers - again, cultural differences.
Comparing state to state within a relatively homogeneous country is a much better way to isolate the effect of guns. It is not a valid "experiment", if you will, to compare the US to Japan and draw conclusions about guns and suicide, because there are so many other variables for which you can't control.
Shorter Bacon: There's no reason to think what I think, but I'm going to keep on thinking that.