Gun injury and mortality rates
News program
5AN radio
6 July 1998
READER……a university report into injury and mortality rates says the number of gun related suicides in rural and remote areas is falling but deaths by hanging are increasing.
A researcher at Flinders University in Adelaide, Stan Bordeaux, says since 1993 there’s been a marked increase in the number of suicides.
Bureau of Statistics figures for 1996 show there were a total of two thousand four hundred suicides, two hundred more deaths than from all road accidents for that year.
Mr Bordeaux says the gun buy-back scheme may have reduced the availability of firearms but young males are still most at risk of taking their own like by other means.
STAN BORDEAUX….. If something major isn’t done, I think in the next few years, if we really don’t tackle this problem completely, we’ll just see this number completely continue to grow quite disproportionately to… to the other types of deaths that occur in Australia today.
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