There is virtually a consensus that the ratio of suicides committed with guns to total suicides is the best way to indirectly measure gun ownership across different locations. However, such a proxy is not accurate for any locality with low population density in view that suicides are rare...

There is a consensus that the proportion of suicides committed with a firearm is the best proxy for gun ownership prevalence. Cerqueira et al. (2018) exploit the socioeconomic characteristics of suicide victims in order to develop a new and more refined proxy. It is based on the fixed effects of...