(hosted by Neal Conan; Dan Keating of the Washington Post is guest)
KEATING: Well, I mean, it's an interesting - it's an exact mirror in
terms of ratio. So a white person is five times as likely to die by a
suicide by gun, than by a homicide. And African-Americans are five times
as likely to die by homicide from a gun, than by suicide. So quite
simply, you know, for every white person shot in a homicide, five shoot
themselves; and for every black person who shoots himself, five are
killed by homicide.
CONAN: And availability of guns, well, affects both statistics.
KEATING:
Well, it's kind of interesting, because then what really drove my story
was not just the disparity in the rates, but how that applies to guns
and access to guns. So the people that suffer homicide among relatives,
family, friends, tend to have a very anti-gun attitude. And so that's
prevalent in the city across all races and in the African-American in
both cities and African-American community of predominately homicide for
gun deaths, and there's a strong urge for gun control both in the urban
environment and in the African-American community.
But then as
you move out of the city, suburbs and then rural, where the gun deaths
shift to suicide, you also shift to a much lower desire for gun control,
much more support for gun rights. And so what really is interesting to
me about that is that when people die in a gun homicide, the gun is
vilified. The gun is blamed, and people want to stop the guns.
But
in gun suicide, the gun is not blamed. The gun is actually considered,
you know, not the problem, and it's that, you know, they tend to more
put a stigma on the person, oh there was something wrong with him. So in
the reporting on this, it was - you know, and in talking to the
experts, when you go to the academic experts and those kind of people,
they have a very strong conviction, and they look at the data about
access to guns and suicide, and how much more suicide there is in places
where there are a lot of guns.
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