Sure, but the other question is whether suicide rates are substrate-independent. There certainly is no correlation between gun ownership and suicide rates. Nor is there any connection between suicide rates and the method of health care delivery (e.g. government vs. private, or for-profit vs. non-profit): So the question becomes whether fewer people would kill themselves if they lacked access to firearms? It seems unlikely (save for accidental self-killings), although it probably takes more effort to kill oneself by other means. Edit: Looking over the data quickly, it looks like one of the strongest predictors is how cold the country is. That doesn't appear to hold on a state-by-state basis in the US: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/figures/m6345qsf.gifIf anybody wanted to be intellectually rigorous about reducing gun deaths, they would start with suicide. The number of people who kill themselves with guns is an order of magnitude bigger than all other gun deaths in the USA.
