Joshua Solomon reports in the Times Union New York lawmakers are defending their recent gun regulations with studies showing that states with the lowest rates of suicide are those with the most strict gun laws. Suicide accounts for about half of all gun deaths in New York. New gun regulations were passed recently after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state's concealed carry law. "The legal purchase of a handgun appears to be associated with a long-lasting increased risk of violent death," a 1997 American Journal of Public Health article concluded. Another study focused more on suicide. "Our results support the hypothesis that firearms in the home impose suicide risk above and beyond the baseline risk and help explain why, year after year, several thousand more Americans die by suicide in states with higher than average household firearm ownership compared with states with lower than average firearm ownership," a 2013 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology concluded. While suicide numbers have grown in the past 20 years across much of the county, in New York they are flat, with 439 firearm suicides in 1999, 462 firearm suicides in 2020. In New York, suffocation is the leading cause of suicide, while in states with lenient gun laws, firearms are the leading cause. Read more about this story in the Times Union.