Connecticut law allowing gun removal likely prevented suicides

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According to a study by researchers at Duke, Yale, and the University of Connecticut, dozens of suicides have likely been prevented by a law that was passed following the mass shooting at the Connecticut Lottery in 1998 allowing police to temporarily remove guns from potentially violent or suicidal people.

Researchers, who were to present their review of 762 gun-removal cases to the Criminal Justice Policy Advisory Commission Thursday, calculated that for every 10 to 20 instances of temporary gun seizures, one suicide was prevented.

“Ten to 20 gun removals to save one life — is that high or is that low?” Jeffrey Swanson, professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine, said. “That may be for the policy makers to decide. But we’d like to put this information in the hands of the policy makers so they know what’s hanging in the balance of risk and rights when it comes to preventing gun violence.”

Over half of the suicides in the U.S. are completed with guns, and many of those guns are legally obtained. And a “substantial proportion of those at risk for committing violent crimes with guns do not have a record that would prohibit them from purchasing or possessing firearms,” according to the study that will be published in the journal Law and Contemporary Problems.

The Connecticut legislation enacted in 1999 allows officials to remove firearms for up to a year from any person a court finds to be at high-risk of violence or self-harm. Since then, Indiana and California have enacted similar risk-based gun removal laws.

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