Note the passivity of these conditional sentences. Physicians can counsel patients and family members. A PTP law that would restrict access to handguns could prevent suicide. The phrasing is in no way declarative, or in any way suggests that the researchers advocated taking away anyone’s guns. Instead, the argument conveys a measured position taken by scholars who knew they addressed just one possible intervention into a sensitive topic, and without the usual support of multiple other studies on the same topic in top journals as there are with every cause of unnatural death except guns.
