US suicide and prescription rates rise while gun violence drops
Suicide rates rising in the US https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States Gun violence is falling in the US https://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/gun-violence/pages/welcome.aspx US prescription drug use at a high https://www.webmd.com/drug-medication/news/20170803/americans-taking-more-prescription-drugs-than-ever-survey
National Institute of Justice
WebMD
Gun related incidents seem to be rising and not falling. Depends on your point of reference of course. This is just recent years, but splits the category pretty well. http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls I think your connection to pharmaceutical drugs is definitely worth exploring. But then again population growth is increasing which adds more statistical samples of crazies into the pool. Could just be an underlying trend that is being exposed more. Either way, we need to study this. Unfortunately the fed is banned from any such research into gun violence, so we need to rely on the private sector.
no part of the federal government is banned from doing research into gun violence, least of all the federal reserve
for example, one Obama Era study that actually reaches several conclusions that disfavor popular gun control strategies https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1#R1
IMO this could explain the high profile suicide-style mass shootings which may result from prescription drug use. I have yet to see the media follow up on autopsy reports that show what prescription drugs were in a shooter’s body. The FDA does minimal research on the effects of combining prescriptions, as well.
This really makes sense when gun violence is down overall, but mass shootings are on the rise.