[lazerpants]

The implied gun ownership rate given by the firearm suicide rate in Hungary, for example, is rather high. It is also surprisingly high in Austria. Neither are like the US of course, but unless the primary reason people own firearms in those countries is for suicide, more people own guns than you may imagine.

Granted, I did research on proxy gun rate estimators many years ago, using even older data, so it is possible that things have changed but I don't see why that would be the case.

[reillyse]

There are lots of things that could skew this data. What suicide rate seems to be measuring is access to guns.

Lots of people in the police or other security forces have access to guns. Often people who have done military service have an issued gun at home (eg Switzerland I think). Military service generally overlaps with a time in life when males are more vulnerable to suicide.

[teknopaul]

For sure, owning a gun is a long way from carrying a gun around while committing crimes.

In most of the world, if you want to do a robbery, carrying a gun is not a sane option. You are more likely to end up in jail or dead or both.