People are so dishonest. Among everybody who rolled out the statistic about the 30,000 annual gun deaths in the US, not a single person was honest enough to mention that two thirds of these deaths were suicides, i.e. not preventable through gun control.
As thet say, don’t trust the stats you haven’t falsified yourself.
I think the suicide statistic is fairly well known. Many gun control advocates (including myself) believe the suicide rate would go down if less people had loaded weapons in their homes. I believe statistics are often dishonest. But I don’t think this particular one is.
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20,000 out of these 30,000 deaths can in no way be prevented by gun control. And that’s not relevant information because people are supposed to guess?
Well, I didn’t guess. And now I feel duped. So now I’m a lot less likely to give any credence to gun control arguments. It doesn’t pay off to inflate facts because that simply repels people.
And it’s exactly the same with global warming arguments. Which is why the issue doesn’t get as much support as it could.
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My search for “30,000 gun deaths” (no quotation marks) yields this link stating most gun deaths are suicides as the second result. The first is a link to the CDC which lists all firearm deaths and firearm homicide deaths.
At any rate, anti-gun control people freak out over doctors asking if you own guns in your house, which is linked to successful suicides and accidents.
There are a lot of very stupid people who handle their firearms negligently and fail to secure them properly.
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Ease of access to guns is pretty contributory to suicide, as it’s nearly a “guaranteed death.” Most gun suicides are by men, and men have an aversion to pills (seen as weak) etc. as a suicide method.
Suicide deaths would probably fall by 30-40% if guns were not easily available.
Australia found this to be the case with more restrictive gun laws.
“So what have the Australian laws actually done for homicide and suicide rates? Howard cites a study (pdf) by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University finding that the firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced, without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides. That provides strong circumstantial evidence for the law’s effectiveness.”
I say only 30-40% for the US as opposed to Australia’s results as the US is a more violent place in general even sans guns and so would still have a higher rate.
But as in all things, people are lazy and guns are an easy suicide. Remove the easy way, many people don’t even try and those who do try will be less successful.
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I believe that people have the right to do what they want with their own bodies. If they want to terminate those bodies, that’s their choice and none of my business. I don’t understand what underlying principle can support abortion rights but refuse suicide rights. I believe that the right to suicide is sacred.
People who really want to kill themselves will kill themselves. The point of pushing them towards the equivalent of coat hangers for women who are prevented from aborting is incomprehensible to me.
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Here’s a link from the NYT, with an interesting finding from Israel regarding firearms and suicide:
Another occurred in Israel, where members of the military had a high suicide rate. In 2006, the army stopped letting soldiers take their service weapons home on weekends. The suicide rate fell there, too, by 40 percent.
This is in a country not exactly awash with arms like the USA.
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I believe that suicide should be lawful too. But I also think that sometimes suicides are made in sad desperate moments and with counselling and meaningful intervention, people can go on to lead happy and healthy lives. I think restricting access to guns can reduce the rate of hasty suicides.
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“But I also think that sometimes suicides are made in sad desperate moments and with counselling and meaningful intervention, people can go on to lead happy and healthy lives. I think restricting access to guns can reduce the rate of hasty suicides.”
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It is a matter of research that suicide rates can be lowered by changing a few things around:
The most visible signs of suicide prevention in Tokyo are the barriers, automatic gates and blue lights on train platforms. Part of the reason the city concentrates its efforts here is because such “human accidents” are costly and can disrupt tens of thousands of passengers for up to an hour, weekly or even daily. Barriers and automatic gates are a deterrent but not a solution, however — motivated people simply climb over them. Less expensive are the aforementioned blue LED lights. A research paper published in the Journal of Affective Disorder in 2013 (four years after the first lights were installed) found that there was an 84 percent decrease in suicides at stations with the blue lights. The exact reason why the lights are effective isn’t known, but some researchers theorize that it’s related to the apparent positive effect of light on mood. A recent study led by Hiroshi Kadotani, from Shiga University of Medical Science found there was an “increased proportion of railway suicide attempts after several days without sunlight,” based on 971 suicides or attempted suicides in Tokyo between 2002 and 2006.
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/how-blue-lights-on-train-platforms-combat-tokyos-suicide-epidemic
Suicide, unlike getting an abortion, is very often a snap decision. Less guns lying around and better mental health services would help things.
I have a personal interest in suicide, since one of my great-grandfathers committed suicide in Texas over 90 years ago.
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“Suicide, unlike getting an abortion, is very often a snap decision.”
“Part of the reason the city concentrates its efforts here is because such “human accidents” are costly and can disrupt tens of thousands of passengers for up to an hour, weekly or even daily.”
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Where did I state that abortions should be investigated?
And yeah, if your commute were stopped by somebody who was threatening to commit suicide, you’d feel a bit differently about it. If drinking sugary drinks caused people to turn into bloody messes that someone had to clean up and deal with, you’d bet your tuchus that there would be justifiable laws banning them enacted P.D.Q.
Who pays for the clean-up? Do we send a bill to the family, the way the Chinese bill the family of an executed convict for the bullet?
You really should familiarize yourself with the literature about suicide and suicide prevention.
The theme song from the movie M.A.S.H.
Suicide Is Painless Lyrics
Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see…[REFRAIN]:
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.I try to find a way to make
All our little joys relate
Without that ever-present hate
But now I know that it’s too late, and…[REFRAIN]
The game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I’ll someday lay
So this is all I have to say.[REFRAIN]
The only way to win is cheat
And lay it down before I’m beat
And to another give my seat
For that’s the only painless feat.[REFRAIN]
The sword of time will pierce our skins
It doesn’t hurt when it begins
But as it works it’s way on in
The pain grows stronger… watch it grin, but…[REFRAIN]
A brave man once requested me
To answer questions that are key
Is it to be or not to be
And I replied ‘oh why ask me?’[REFRAIN]
‘Cause suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
… and you can do the same thing if you please.
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“The theme song from the movie M.A.S.H.”
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Well I guess I don’t see a link to abortion because I don’t connect abortion with death. I don’t believe the fetus to be a person and so there is no death in an abortion in my view.
Suicide, on the other hand, is linked to the death of a person– and usually linked to the death of sad and unwell person. So if we can reduce suicide–not by making it illegal– but by restricting hasty and easy access to weaponry, I think it’s a good thing. Again, I think suicide should be completely legal.
At any rate, I think linking suicide and abortion plays into conservative rhetoric that suggests abortion is murder.
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“Well I guess I don’t see a link to abortion because I don’t connect abortion with death. I don’t believe the fetus to be a person and so there is no death in an abortion in my view.”
I can only understand positions based on logical, consistent principles. My brain doesn’t process anything else. It is either my business what other people do with their bodies or it isn’t. If it isn’t my business at the moment of abortion, drug intake, piercing, smoking, alcohol intake, plastic surgery, eating garbage, etc., it isn’t my business at the moment of suicide.
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Again, I’m not disputing the right to suicide. I believe that suicide should be legal. I’m simply asserting that if restricting access to guns prevents hasty suicides, that’s a side benefit of gun control.
I feel that I’m being quite logical myself. I just don’t think suicide and abortion are similar. It’s like comparing suicide to getting a tattoo. To me, they are just different things.
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” It’s like comparing suicide to getting a tattoo. To me, they are just different things.”
This is why I believe that a person’s right to introduce anything they want into their own body – tattoo, abortion, smoking, drug intake, amputation, plastic surgery, suicide, eating doughnuts, etc. – should be sacrosanct and never discussed in the context of “how can this be prevented” or “how can access to this activity be restricted.” Because the moment we start allowing this approach to be adopted in response to one of these activities, all the rest are open to the same kind of control as well.
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I believe that the right to suicide is sacred.
You also come out pretty strongly on the side of children needing their parents, and of parents being completely accountable for their parenting decisions and the effects thereof even when their kids are adults. Say a dude has three children for whom he cares for. To clarify, let’s assume he’s completely physically healthy, is not likely to die soon otherwise, and is a good parent. Does his right to kill himself trump his kids’ right to have a father? How do you reconcile the two in your mind?
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“To clarify, let’s assume he’s completely physically healthy, is not likely to die soon otherwise, and is a good parent. ”
No, I don’t support preventing suicides under the pretext that people who want to kill themselves are needed by their children or anybody else. I also don’t support banning divorce under the principle that it’s “bad for the kiddies.” If we start applying this logic, we will end up in a terrifying place where a diabetic woman can be arrested for eating a cookie because she might die and deprive her children of a mother.
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“My search for “30,000 gun deaths” (no quotation marks) yields this link stating most gun deaths are suicides ”
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Well I still don’t think it makes much sense to compare abortion and suicide. But if you wanted to push the abortion/suicide comparison, I think perhaps it makes sense to compare increased gun control restrictions to increasing access to affordable birth control. Generally when women have easy access to affordable birth control, the abortion rate goes down. I happen to think that’s a good thing and it doesn’t decrease my support of abortion rights in any way.
So just as I can support increased access to birth control and abortion simultaneously, I support gun control legislator and suicide rights simultaneously.
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As I said before, I have no position on gun control and no interest in the issue. I am bothered, however, by the discourse of “let’s prevent people from doing what they want with their bodies for their own benefit” because I can easily imagine situations where this logic can be used to complicate my life.
If there are other arguments in defense of gun control, why not use them instead?
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Who are the vested interests supporting keeping suicide illegal? Clearly the religious right. However, the backers include the insurance industry. As of now, life insurance generally doesn’t pay out on suicides. That gives rise to “suicide by other means” so as to allow survivors to collect. However, “by other means” often involves putting others at risk.
Back to your original point, the most current data:
Homicide isn’t in the top 10 leading causes of death for the population overall. However, it is the #3 cause of death among people in the 10-24 age group (CDC data for 2012). Suicide affects a broader swath of the population.
The FBI shows 8,124 gun homicides in 2014. That’s still too many.
Interesting fact: In states with relatively lax gun laws, over half of robberies involve the use of guns. In states with rigorous gun laws, the percentage of robberies involving guns drops to about 1/3. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-21
Gun control affects more than homicides. It’s a quality of life issue, a peace of mind issue for many.
However, I didn’t see in the discussion any attempt to mislead with statistics. The suicide data is widely known, or so I thought, especially on college campuses.
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If I were to say, “Ambien should be outlawed because it’s dangerous, it kills tens of thousands of people a year” and then it turned out that the overwhelming majority of this people die because they choose to, that would not be dishonest? Really?
P. S. I’m in favor of outlawing Ambien no matter what.
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I haven’t seen statistics on suicides by Ambien. Stats on suicides and suicides by gun are widely published and something that, when I write, I would expect educated readers to know. Not saying something you expect the reader to know is not the same thing as lying.
By the way, we classify certain drugs and prescription because there is a risk of misuse if left in consumer hands. I have no clue why we can’t have a similar system for guns.
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And I haven’t seen either.
Lying by omission is still a lie. And the responsibility for one’s expectations rest on those who choose to expect.
At this point, the proponents of gun control are losing every battle they engage in. I couldn’t care less about the issue but I’m pointing out how gun control proponents repel those who might not have made their mind so far. If the best strategy gun control proponents can come up with is telling people they are uneducated, good luck to them with ever making their issue resonate with anybody who is not already a believer.
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The gun control fight is a battle of ideologues, with both sides more interested in hearing themselves talk than in coming up with a practical and workable solution. As with the global warming debate, inertia favors the do-nothings. That bias is something the proponents don’t get.
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This statement I agree with completely. As somebody who is sympathetic to global warming activists and indifferent to gun control issues, I find everybody in this debate to be remarkably uninterested in an actual resolution.
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“Suicide” per se isn’t illegal — one accomplished, the dead person is obviously beyond the reach of the law. “Attempted suicide” is a crime. Insurance companies have a number of legitimate exclusions to their policies besides suicide — death from “acts of war” and in many policies, specified “dangerous activities” like race car driving or general aviation.
“I’m in favor of outlawing Ambien no matter what.”
WHY? Ambien is a legitimate prescription sedative medication that can safely be used to benefit persons who have persistent difficulty falling sleep, even with healthy lifestyle behaviors. Many older patients have difficulty staying asleep all night without some type of prescription sleep aid.
Ambien is much safer than the class of prescription medications (barbiturates) that were very widely prescribed for home use several decades ago.
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I’ve seen people in Ambien. They represented a grave danger to themselves and others. But I agree, barbiturates should be ditched as well.
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As a person with long time cop, chronic depression, my first rule of survival is: don’t buy a handgun.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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