US companies push guns as blithely and murderously as they once did tobacco | Rebecca Solnit

Guns are used so often in suicide that if the left were associated with lax gun laws, the right might accuse liberals of conspiring to kill white men

The gunman who a week ago killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, finished his bloodbath by shooting himself. Like many mass shootings, his rampage appears to have been a suicide that took others with him. Mass shootings draw deserved media attention, but they are a small percent of all gun deaths in the US; suicide is the most common way people die by gun. That is, if you own or have access to a gun, the person you're most likely to kill is yourself. Fifty-four percent of US gun deaths are suicides, which means access to a gun is a major risk factor for dying this way.

This fact, often cited but rarely examined, means the gun industry is pushing guns the same way the tobacco industry pushed cigarettes: their intentions toward their customers are blithely murderous. It also undermines the advertisements and arguments claiming that guns provide safety and protection. Of the 48,117 reported gun deaths in the US in 2022, 26,993 were suicides - a stunning number, a gun death every 11 minutes, the equivalent to a mid-sized town being wiped out annually.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell's Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility