Guns in the Home

To the Editor: The Journal has published several articles asserting that strict gun-control laws reduce the rates of suicide 1 , 2 and homicide 3 – 5 . If such laws had a major effect on both suicide and homicide rates, one would expect that these rates would be positively correlated with each other. We tested this hypothesis by analyzing suicide and homicide rates for all 73 nations that listed these data in the 1991 Demographic Yearbook 6 . We used the computer program SPSS/PC+, version 4.0, to analyze the data. We found no correlation (R = 0.135). A scatter plot and quadratic and cubic . . .