sig226
Member
Statistically, there have always been gender differences in suicide methods.
Woman generall preferred pills, hanging, or jumping to gunfire, and even when gunfire is selected, women tend to shoot themselves in the chest, where men tend to shoot themselves in the head.
I would guess that hanging surpassing gunfire is primarily more due to the uptick of female suicides than any other factor.
The article addresses this question here:
The study also documented a change in suicide method. In 1990, guns accounted for more than half of all suicides among young females. By 2004, though, death by hanging and suffocation became the most common suicide method. It accounted for about 71 percent of all suicides in girls aged 10-14, 49 percent among those aged 15-19 and 34 percent between 20-24.
Since firearms accounted for "more than half" of all the suicides at one point, hanging could be at most 49%. Now hanging accounts for 71%.
IIRC John Lott discusses this in one of his books, calling it substitution. A study compared the rates and methods of suicide in several countries. Two of them were Japan and the United States. Japan has a higher rate of suicide than the U.S.A., but a far lower rate of firearm ownership. The Japanese found other ways to commit suicide.
It might be in a different author's book.