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There is a gun for nearly every person in America. The overwhelming majority of people who die from guns in the US do not die because someone shot them — they die because they shot themselves.
Guns killed 33,636 people in the United States in 2013. But while homicides and mass shootings dominate the headlines, nearly two-thirds of those deaths — 21,175 — were suicides. That's the real gun problem in the US, and we barely ever talk about it.
The idea that limiting access to guns could reduce suicides gets a lot of resistance from folks who question whether the method of suicide actually matters. Won't people who really want to kill themselves do it anyway, after all?
The video above explains just how serious our gun suicide problem is, why the means of suicide really do matter, and how gun control measures can help.
