To the Editor:

“With Guns, Killer and Victim Are Usually Same” (front page, Feb. 14) justifiably focuses the relationship between gun laws and psychiatry on suicide prevention.

Psychiatrists see people who are suicidal with a treatable mental illness far more frequently than those who are homicidal.

I, like many other psychiatrists, frequently evaluate people who have a new lease on life after surviving pill overdoses and knife wounds.

One reason they may use less lethal methods is the ambivalence about the wish to die, resulting in a cry for help. Since suicidal behavior often has an impulsive component, those who are more determined can be saved if the method is made more difficult. This can be aided by reduced access to guns.