The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread - and Why They Stop

by Adam Kucharski

Despite constraints on funding, some evidence about gun violence is available. In the early 1990s, before the Dickey Amendment, CDC-funded studies found that having a gun in the home increased the risk of homicide and suicide. The latter finding was particularly notable, given that around two-thirds of gun deaths in the US are from suicide. Opponents of this research have argued that such suicides might have occurred anyway, even if guns hadn’t been present.[48] But easy access to deadly methods can make a difference for what are often impulse decisions. In 1998, the UK switched from selling paracetamol in bottles to blister packs containing up to thirty-two tablets. The extra effort involved with blister packs seemed to deter people; in the decade after the packs were introduced, there was about a 40 per cent reduction in deaths from paracetamol overdoses.[49]