More people die from suicide than war and natural disasters combined.

[Angrboda]

If guns made a difference - why is the US suicide death rate comparable to the Australian death rate - where guns are far less available?

And why are some of the highest suicide rates in countries where firearms are not publicly available?

It seems that may lead to some credence to the idea that many who choose suicide by firearm would simply choose another method if guns were unavailable.

Anybody who thins gun access correlates with suicide is a shallow thinker

If we assume that the deaths by intentional self-harm should be the same, excluding individual factors of each country, then it makes sense to conclude that access to guns does not appear to result in fewer suicides based on his comparison. But there are a number of problems with this argument, the first of which is that the rates of suicide would be the same, and there is no reason to think they necessarily would be. The rates of death by intentional self-harm vary radically by country and so assuming two specific countries should correlate is simply arbitrary. As a matter of fact, the rate of death by intentional self-harm is 25% higher in the U.S. than Australia. In the U.S. guns account for over 50% of all deaths by intentional self-harm, whereas in Australia, they only account for 5%. It would appear from this that, at the very least, removing guns would change the method by which people choose to suicide (hanging appears to be the primary choice in Australia). It's impossible to say that suicide rates would remain as high if guns weren't available. Suicide by hanging is not as reliable as suicide by firearm. In a U.S. study, fatalities by hanging/suffocation were successful 61.4% of the time, and suicide by firearm were 82.5% successful (Lethality of suicide methods). If my math is correct, if that difference were applied to suicides in the U.S., that would result in about 15% fewer deaths by intentional self-harm, a figure which appears to be in the ball park of the difference between the U.S. and Australia, so suggesting that access to guns isn't an issue doesn't appear to be correct. Either way, it's impossible to tell just by comparing the U.S. to Australia. What are you basing your statement on?

(Note: The 15% figure was derived by assuming that all suicides by firearm switched to hanging. As noted, in Australia, 5% continue to suicide by firearm, so the actual calculation given that some percent still suicide by firearm is a good bit more complicated than the assumptions which I used.)