Connecticut made it harder to get guns — and suicides fell significantly

In 1995, Connecticut established a "permit to purchase" law, which required a background check and eight hours of safety training for those seeking to buy a handgun.

Missouri used to have a law like that, too, but repealed it in 2007.

New research shows what happened afterward. Firearm suicide rates fell 15.4 percent in Connecticut — but rose 16.1 percent in Missouri. The study, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, only confirms what other papers have found: Making it harder to access guns correlates with fewer suicides.

Most gun deaths in the United States are suicides

There were 33,636 gun deaths in the United States in 2013. While homicides and mass shootings dominate the headlines, nearly two-thirds of those deaths — 21,175 — were suicides.

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