The US suicide rate has increased markedly over the past 8 years

The US suicide rate has increased dramatically (via Kevin Drum whose commentary is excellent as usual)

I have two thoughts about possible causes

One hand gun ownership. I know the rate of gun ownership has declined (always explained by the alleged decline in hunting). It is rare for people to kill themselves with rifles. I have a sense that handgun ownership has increased, but google didn’t send me to handgun specific data in5 minutes. Gallup & GSS give contradictory numbers. I will look at Gallup. Here there is a strong geographical pattern with increases in the East and MidWest. That can be compared to suicide rates by someone less lazy than me.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/150…

Suicide rates by sex shout out that it has a lot to do with guns. I think the evidence is mainly state level correlation http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ne…

The other idea is recent wars and suicide. The rate of suicide among veterans is far about that of the general population. The increase in suicides in your graphs is roughly equal to total suicides by veterans. Suicide rates are highest for young men. Young veterans with recent service are most at risk. This can’t be the whole story (the numbers are change compared to total) but the correlation is in the time series.