Keep telling yourself this, champ. Perhaps if you repeat it enough you might even believe it. I know it must be easier to repeat a lie like this than to face your intellectual limitations.
No. That is not what I said or what I would say.
I would say that no single factor is the single factor causing suicides and that it is simplistic to attempt to reduce the variability between countries and cultures to one variable and pretend that all else is the same … even within the same country a study needs to take great pains to control for confounders (as attempted in the link I gave) and I know of no studies that even attempt to do such for international numbers. To compare Russia with its particular circumstances and culture to Norway with its particular circumstances and culture, and reduce that to a single variable with no control of confounders, for example, is garbage analysis.
If there is any single factor that is the highest risk it is likely the rates of serious depression, coupled with access to the potent method of cultural choice, specifically for teens.
And again, the issue is teen access, not necessarily ownership. The issue in rural America is not exclusively ownership. It is the combination of high rates of depression with access to unsecured firearms in a culture that percieves shooting oneself as the way to do it.
Not my country. There are lots of things indicating suicide is a function of convenience of method.
Sure. But the issue is whether it’s legit to ask about these various issues as a physician. If there were a patient who lived alone, there would be many issues a physician should address - depression, social supports…gun storage. If the physician knew the patient were engaged in illicit drug trade, then asking about these issues would also be reasonable. I’m not arguing gun control. I’m arguing about the physicians responsibility to address issues of safety in a person’s life.
Without a citation, this sounds like a paranoid projection. Cite the part where the pediatricians are telling you to get rid of the guns. I did not see that, I’ve only seen that they are no longer able to ask about guns at all, to include gun storage, locks, gun safety classes for the wee ones…
I’ll take a look.
This is true. I don’t personally agree with the NRA 100% of the time (I think they are too moderate). But the goal is not to have ideological purity - it’s to be effective. And if you are a gun rights supporter, you should never not be a member of the NRA. They are the most effective lobbying organization around. So you take some of the bad with the good, and you have the advantage of the big voice.
If there were another more effective organizations I would support them as well. And I do.
I tend to agree. Income mobility is very important. This is a societal issue that impacts everyone. I’m sure there are many worthwhile efforts being made to address this issue, to the extent it exists and is a problem. I am also sure that many efforts being made are not worthwhile. The level of effort needed to address income mobility is large, and likely spread across many levels of society, and not always viewable with a direct connection to the goal trying to be achieved. Banning guns is more direct. It is usually in the form of a specific piece of legislation. It is a much easier target to focus on.
For example, we both want greater income mobility. Does a minimum wage increase work towards that goal? You may say yes, I say no. We both want the same thing but we may disagree on how to get there. If we both want to advance gun rights and there is a proposed gun ban, it’s pretty easy to align our support with our common goals. This just doesn’t happen with the issue of income mobility.
You asked separately what laws were proposed after Sandy Hook. Here’s a brief wiki article on some.
From USA Today:
Other sources will tell you that many of the laws passed loosened restrictions on guns which is true. Many however, did not. Your neighboring city of Sunnyvale banned possession of standard capacity magazines. Residents in that city had to either dispose or remove them from the city. NY passed the SAFE act, making illegal previously legal rifles. Connecticut and Maryland did similar. Colorado banned magazines as well, prompting a recall of state legislators and a major magazine manufacturer (Magpul) to relocate it’s business out of the state. The same for Remmington in NY.
So we made progress in some areas, and lost ground in others. The thing is, progress is easily swept aside in the face of the next round of legislators. Lost ground is often regained through the courts. That takes time and money - and in the meantime those residents suffer a loss of rights. It’s always better to win in the legislature - that means supporting candidates that I align with. Until the issue is settled, that alignment will need to continue. That’s what I mean by vigilance.
In what way was New Orleans “smacked down”? In what way were the victims compensated? The mayor and police officers enjoy qualified immunity. The taxpayers foot the bill for any monetary penalty, and that is only years later. That is a bad outcome any way you cut it. The penalties would need to be incredibly large to affect voter behavior. The people involved need to pay a personal price for their wrong doing. But that’s not going to happen. A good outcome would be for it to never have happened. After that incident, some other states passed legislation directly addressing this type of conduct and prohibited it. I say good.
The relevance is that it is a data point. It serves as a warning that when push comes to shove, the government may not be there to help. Bad shit happens, and being prepared is important. It serves as a counter example to all the times where people say that the government is not going to confiscate guns. That’s bullshit. They will, if given the opportunity. Just as others have said that the government isn’t going to ban guns…except they have, and they will - if given the opportunity. It’s important they never have that opportunity. Federal, state, or local.
They did ask. I lied. There is no upside in telling the truth, and only potential downside. We don’t childproof our outlets - I don’t believe in it. Is that a discussion I want to have with my doctor - no. The nurse verified we had a properly installed car seat.
I started this thread saying I don’t think the law is a good idea. It never hurts to be reminded of safety. People like me will lie. Some people may benefit from the reminder. But really, I don’t care about this law very much. So doctors are being prevented from asking about guns. I can’t get worked up over it. I wouldn’t vote for it though if I were in the legislature.
Responding to this out of order because this is the main point for this line of discussion.
My view is that I have a responsibility to my family above all things. That includes providing, contributing, and protecting, among other things*.
[ul]
[li]I provide by working and earning income.[/li][li]I contribute by helping and participating with all the activities of the family.[/li][li]I protect by educating, creating a safe environment, minimizing risks, etc. One way to do that is to possess the means to defend the family if it becomes necessary.[/li][/ul]
Gun control seeks to eliminate my ability to defend the family. That’s pretty much it. Gun control says that I should rely on the goodwill of those that would do me harm and hope that I am not a target. Gun control says that I should abdicate my responsibility to defend myself and the family to someone else that does not share my responsibility.
*Guns only enter the equation in one of the three legs above. However, in times of crisis, guns could be integral in the others as well.
So I’m still not hearing why you think a reduction in access to guns would reduce suicide (to any significant degree) when our current suicide rates are so average for welathy western industrialized nations.
We have a lot of tall buildings, rope, trains, etc. too. it might take people a while to figure out that guns aren’t the only means of committing suicide but eventaully they’ll figure it out.
Sure I think they can do that stuff, but the particular issue I have with doctors generally and the pediatrician organization specifically, is that their addressing safety issues seem overly focused on guns relative to the danger they present and seem to recommend getting rid of guns rather than how to safely own a gun (like they do for all the other dangerous things I own)
It was in that brochure that DSEID linked to earlier.
It was a sort of checklist by age.
Morbid curiosity compels me to ask that you elaborate a bit on this. Is it because of that one time they maybe sorta kinda thought about maybe endorsing Harry Reid (but didn’t), or some other failing where they failed to paint a Democrat as the devil incarnate vehemently enough?
I don’t disagree with you here. At the same time, going back to my hypothetical from a few posts ago, would you rather live in a USA in which income mobility is vastly improved but gun rights are lessened, or the other way around?
Looking at that (and, as I said, restricting my comments to federal laws), I sure don’t get the idea that we were super-close to having jack-booted thugs coming and taking your guns away. The only thing that even came CLOSE to that was a renewed AWB, which would have (had it survived a constitutional challenge) prevented you from buying further guns of various sorts, but not all guns, and done nothing to the guns you already own, and it never even made it out of committee, and didn’t seem likely to pass either house of congress, much less both. So if Obama is a president who is so comically anti-gun that his mere existence caused a run on Ammo supplies, and a historical high-water-mark of anti-gun-sentiment came around due to a horrific massacre, and even THEN a bill that would NOT take guns away from anyone at all ever couldn’t even get out of committee… well, I’m not saying that no gun control bill of any sort can ever possibly pass, I’m saying, keep things in perspective.
I don’t have any particular interest or knowledge (beyond one wikipedia article) about that issue, my point is that it’s irrelevant to the question of how likely it is that the congress will pass serious gun-control laws any time soon (and that they’ll make it through the supreme court). I think the mayor acted like a jackass, and I think he should have faced stiffer sanctions for what was pretty clearly a totally stupid and illegal act, but really, that’s just a fairly off-the-cuff opinion.
It seems to me that if that’s your priorities, you should be STRONGLY in favor of things such as background checks and registration laws. You are (I assume) an upstanding law-abiding citizen. You already own guns. And if you want to buy more guns, you can presumably pass a background check, show that you are proficient and knowledgeable, etc.
On the other hand, at least some percentage of the people who might attack your family, against whom you’d be called upon to defend yourself, would NOT be able to overcome all those hurdles, due to insanity, a criminal record, etc.
There’s a frequently made comment about gun control laws, which is that they make it harder for law-abiding folks to get guns, but not criminals. And that would make sense if you were discussing a law which would outlaw pistols entirely. At that point, law-abiding citizens would find it impossible to get pistols, kind of by definition, and criminals could still just buy them from other criminals. However, the types of laws I’m discussing, at least if properly implemented (and not just as backdoor attempts to make it prohibitively difficult to legally buy a gun at all), would have only a minimal impact on law-abiding citizens, but would put up obstacles at least for SOME people who might commit violent crimes.
My somewhat superficial observation is that people who are pro-gun tend to be rabidly unyielding, not so much because they actually think that more extensive background checks are a bad thing, but because they figure as long as they never budge even a millimeter, then the slippery slope towards gun-confiscation will never begin. However, if you really want your family to be safe, you’re MUCH better off living in a country where guns are rare and restricted, but you have them because you were willing to put the effort into proving your ability and legality, than in a country where guns are incredibly common, so you have them, but so do tons of bad guys.
Actually of the choices during that election, I’d rather have Reid in there than crazy Sharon Angle. It makes no sense to torpedo the senate majority leader in a position of power who we know is at least luke warm on gun rights, in favor of a likely more anti gun person who would take over the role should Reid have been defeated.
I would prefer the NRA use the bully pulpit more to bring local governments in line. Either through supporting opposition candidates, or through litigation. Every city and local government who enacts or retains unconstitutional anti gun laws should be sued into bankruptcy (I get to decide what I think is unconstitutional, natch).
Start with small towns who don’t have the budget to defend the lawsuits, and build from there. Get states to pass preemption for gun laws, then overwhelm the state legislature with pro-gun candidates. There are only 10 states left that are not ‘shall issue’ or constitutional carry. Pick the easiest one and turn it then move on. Rinse, repeat.
I fully accept I do not know the inner workings of the NRA and they may be doing everything they can. There are other entities who are more geared towards strategic litigation like the SAF. These orgs need to work together more and coordinate their efforts. Right now there is some infighting behind the scenes.
This has never been a real world choice. I know it’s a hypothetical, but I can’t fathom a scenario where this would be the choice at hand other than magic. A specific issue, or specific piece of legislation or trade would have to be concocted to flesh this out.
It’s not informative to restrict the discussion to federal laws. Individuals are impacted by federal and state and local laws. What difference does it make if the feds are silent but my state is authoritarian? There is still no relief.
The mantra of, ‘not all guns’ is similarly not persuasive. Assault weapon bans based on features are a non-starter. It’s a clear indication of a law intending to ban something simply for the sake of banning. It is an effort as I described earlier, to divide the population so opposition is less. So what if it’s not all guns. Today it’s gun X, tomorrow it’s gun Y. A ban on any gun is still a gun ban. I know you may not share this view, but it’s how gun rights advocates would typically treat it.
As to whether it impacts guns already owned? Consider NY where it did just that. Owners of previously legal rifles had to dispose, modify, or remove from the state. CA did the same thing with the SKS rifle previously. Yes it wasn’t at the federal level, but what difference does that make to the resident of CA or NY? Connecticut residents were told to register their rifles, but thankfully most of them have not complied.
So yes, the latest efforts in the Congress were stymied, but at the state and local level they were not. Losing rights via the congress or via the State has the same impact.
I didn’t engage in any panic buying, nor do I think Obama is some scary bugaboo. He’s the president who supports some policies that I disagree with, and other that I agree with.
I’m not totally against background checks - I could even be in favor of them. But I do see it as a government intrusion in an area they don’t belong - this rationale applies to many other hurdles that would be conceived. Any time government is involved in the transaction, they have the ability to impose limits or restrictions. You can see it right now at the state and local level. There are efforts to increase the population of folks that are classified as prohibited. While not banning guns, simply saying a person is now prohibited has the same effect. I expect rampant abuse. Lautenberg amendment rings a bell. I might compromise on it if I had any trust in the opposition. I don’t.
I sure as fuck would never ever support registration. I know people who fell for that trap and as a result their rifles were lost to them. Fuck that shit.
A couple things -
First, the law won’t prevent criminals from obtaining weapons. Come up with a law that wouldn’t impact law abiding people, but would impact criminals and we can talk about the specifics.
Second, even if criminals magically didn’t have guns, they would still be necessary for defense as a force multiplier.
Third, I’m not sure what you mean when you say, “the types of laws I’m discussing”.
I disagree. I don’t think that proposition is based in reality and it’s more likely that restrictive laws would actually lead to confiscation or burdensome restrictions. But yes, I do share this view on compromise. There’s no value in it at the moment. We’re winning.
Sadly, too many people who think like that own guns.
And I do not comprehend your confusion, honestly. It confuses me.
In any given culture you can reduce completed suicide rates in several ways. You can reduce depression (solve economic hardships, change the weather, change the gnetic predispositions, the family structures, whatever) or identify it earlier and treat it more effectively (more achievable). You can reduce access to that method that is percieved within that culture as the effective method of choice, which varies between cultures. Within America we have regions with higher suicide rates than average (including international average) and districts with lower than average. The higher than average ones are often rural regions.
Why would you think that being average as a country means that those approaches to suicide reduction would not apply to particular districts with both higher than average suicide rates and higher than average teen access to firearms? Hell even if the district was average, why would the approaches not apply?
Now you may think that kids will just learn to consider other methods of offing themselves, but so far the data is that within a culture it tends to not happen, at least in the moderate term. For example in the UK suicide by coal gas ovenwas a preferred method and suicide rates were decreased by a switch to natural gas. Sure they could just as easliy become jumpers instead … but they did not. Further reductions in overall rates has been achieved there by limiting the number of tabs of acetaminophen in a bottle bought. The amount of pesticide accessible on impulse in Asian countrysides is another current focus as that is an effective impulsive method of choice there.
I thought the US was an awesome place to live. Shouldn’t the suicide rate be really low? Maybe the access to weapons is artificially elevating the rate. Maybe the US should aspire to Mexico’s level of suicide.
Nope. Reducing easy access to the means reduces the rate. Suicide seems to be surprisingly spur of the moment. Here’s an easy cite, but there are lots. The UK gas example is nice, but there are others.
Are you actually talking to real doctors?
I’m still trying to sound out exactly how important gun rights are to you, and why. So I’m trying to come up with some way to weigh them against other American values, and it’s hard to do that directly with anything other than a fairly unlikely hypothetical. So here’s another hypothetical… you free a proverbial genie who gives you one wish, and with that one wish you can pick one fairly specific issue facing the USA right now, and you can magically fix that issue to be perfectly the way you personally want it to be forever. How likely would you be to use that wish on gun rights? Would your answer be different if your side was currently “losing”?
I guess what I’m getting at is that most of your positions on gun rights are things where I either agree, or my response is “well, I see what motivates you, but I weight things slightly differently, so I’d come to a somewhat different position”. But then you say that you’re a single issue voter about it, and that just baffles me. That seems (to me) like someone who ignores all the other troubles facing the USA today and votes for candidates SOLELY based on their position on the federal speed limit, or something like that. (OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration). I’m not saying you’re stupid for taking that position, but I’m trying to understand what really motivates you to take it, what its limits are, etc.
I’m not saying that state gun issues aren’t important, I’m just saying I personally don’t know much about them, or care, and to the extent that I am interested in this discussion, it’s in the federal context, so I just don’t have much to say or contribute when discussing state or local gun rights.
I think you’re being overly cynical here with this discussion of dividing the population so opposition is less. I think the vast majority of people who support an assault weapon ban do so because they honestly think that assault weapons are (a) a fairly clearly designated class of weapons, (b) which have far fewer applications for home defense and hunting and target shooting, and (c) are vastly more deadly when used by someone shooting up a school or movie theater.
I’ve read enough on the SDMB (and other places) to know that (a) is nonsense, and without (a), (b) and (c) become somewhat irrelevant, but I think that that motivation there comes from a genuinely reasonable place. IF in fact there was a clear dividing line as described above, I might support much heavier restrictions on their sales (although I’m FAR less sanguine about anything that siezes property that is already legally owned, as opposed to forbidding future sales). And in that hypothetical where assault weapons were a clearly defined category, and I supported restrictions, that wouldn’t necessarily mean that I was just taking my first step towards my ultimate eventual goal of banning .22 rifles and handguns, nor would it mean that I was consciously trying to divide the pro-gun crowd and make them turn on each other, or something like that. (Although presumably in that hypothetical there would be SOME people wanting to ban guns entirely who would of course support these additional restrictions.)
Why does the government not belong there? Guns are inarguably extremely dangerous. You have to get a government license to use explosives. You have to have a government license to drive a car on public roads. If you want to sell certain kinds of industrial equipment they have to be inspected and regulated. It’s hard for me to see any reading of the 2nd amendment which says “the government shall be utterly unable to in any way ever make any law of any sort concerning guns at all”.
That’s true, and it makes the issue legitimately complicated… I think it’s worth discussing the difference between how things would work if you could be absolutely certain they would actually end up staying that way forever, vs how they should work when you’re (not unreasonably) worried that societal priorities might change. So for instance, one might imagine that you’d in the ideal support training classes for gun owners, but you’d also be afraid that records from those classes might allow gun owners to be identified, and guns to confiscated, in the future. So you’d LIKE training classes but not actually SUPPORT them, etc.
Aren’t background checks at least a step in that direction? If we agreed (I’m not sure if we do?) that in an ideal world it would be possible for any law-abiding citizen to own a gun, but very difficult for criminals and insane people to get guns, then we should try to move society in that direction, and we should NOT say “well, right now there are a billion unregistered black market guns floating around, so any criminal can get guns easily, so it’s hopeless, so let’s never even try to make things better”.
I’m not talking about compromise. I’m talking about actually getting precisely what you want. If the NRA community as a whole actually wants there to be NO background checks and NO waiting periods and free sales of any gun to anyone at a gun show, etc, etc, and they have the votes to get that done, then they clearly should, because hey, that’s how a democracy works (more or less). But I have a suspicion that the super-hard-line positions the NRA takes on all of those issues is not necessarily because the consensus of NRA members is “this is how we really want it to be”, it’s because built into their organizational culture is a certainty that they should always be pressing for more gun rights.
So imagine a scale from 0 to 100, with 0 being all guns forbidden always, and 100 being you-can-buy-bazookas at 7-11. So for each NRA member you can say “where would you ideally want the USA to be on that scale”, and you can average out those numbers, and you can say “ahh, the NRA as a whole wants us to be at 83”. But then two things happen:
(1) We’re already at 86, and a proposal comes up that would push us back to 84, and in some hypothetical sense the NRA SHOULD support this move back to 84, because the NRA really SHOULD want us to be at 83, but… the NRA just can NOT support that proposal because decreasing gun rights is just NOT WHAT THEY DO
(2) The NRA actually wants to be at 83, but they really really really REALLY don’t want to be at 70. So as long as they keep us at 90, then we are nowhere NEAR 70, even though we’re also not at 83, where they’d prefer us to be.
(Meanwhile, you personally wish we were at 95, and you agitate and vote in ways that get us closer to 95, as is your right.)
Granted, I’m not saying that the NRA is foolish for acting in that way, since they’ve obviously been very effective in recent years. I’m just trying to point out a dynamic which I think makes the whole issue particular intractable.
One magical wish? No doubt in my mind it would NOT be related to guns. It would be something that would help society and make me wealthy at the same time. Maybe a patent on the cure for all forms of cancer.
It’s a fairly tangible issue that has a chance to actually be impacted in the near term. We all have our issues.
That’s fine - just know that there are non-federal laws that are important and impact this area of discussion. Without understanding the interplay between federal and non-federal, you could draw conclusions you wouldn’t otherwise draw if you had that understanding. A common one is the declaration often made that “we’re not banning/confiscating guns”. That’s just not true.
Possibly. I’m definitely cynical, but I don’t think overly so. If you consider how often gun control tries to align itself with the hunting population, making assurances that they don’t want to impact hunters, or how many firearm laws exempt current and former police, it’s clear they are trying to not offend certain groups while targeting others.
I’m sure there are folks who believe all of those things. I couldn’t guess the population, but I would expect that a significant portion of these people simply see it as a way to ban guns, any gun. Posters on this board have expressed that sentiment. Feinstein has expressed that sentiment. One of the leading researchers at the CDC expressed this sentiment. They want to ban, and see it as a means towards that end.
I don’t think it’s the government’s business what I buy as long as I use it for legal purposes. This is a philosophical point. If something had no legal purpose whatsoever then perhaps government should get involved.
I feel this way about many proposed gun laws. There could be improvements - but there is no way I’d trust them to be implemented and the prudent course of action would be to oppose all of them, without compromise.
I agree an ideal situation would be where non-prohibited people could acquire guns without restriction. I’m not sure that background checks wouldn’t impose a burden greater than their benefit. I also don’t believe that the goal of gun control supporters aligns with this either. Their aim is not to create an environment where regular folks can acquire weapons easily. It’s not less guns for bad guys, and more guns for good guys - more like, less guns, period.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case, and it is how I would expect and want them to behave.
You had me on licensing and registration right up until you say we should be ina country where guns are rare and restricted. I think the rarity should depend on people’s desire to own a gun and every restriction should be measured against the both the constitution and the net benefit (if any) it provides. Clearly things like an AWb are so fucking useless that they cannot be justified but registration (at least of handguns) might be.
I agree, the NRA needs to litigate more but I don’t know if they are the best people for the job.
emphasis added.
Yep.
And that’s why federal pre-emption would be a good thing, no?
I think the dynamic in California is diffeerrent than it would be at the federal level.
Over the short run, you can’t disarm criminals. You probably can’t do it over the medium term either but over the long run, restricting the flow of guns into criminal hands can make a difference. the problem is that the gun control folks think that banning guns entirely is the only way to achieve this reduced flow of guns into criminal hands.
Every day cops confiscate guns from criminals. Every day, some guns get lost or thrown away or broken. There are really only two ways guns enter the crimnal world. A criminal buys it from someone who legally owns the gun or it is stolen. The number of stolen guns (while surprisingly high) is much lower than the number of guns confiscated by police when theyarrest someone, serve search warrants or serve arrest warrants. Registration would reduce the sale of guns to crimnals significantly and over time the number of guns confiscated/thrown away/lost/broken would exceed the number of guns stolen by enough to reduce the stock of guns in criminal hands.
Meanwhile you could buy as many guns as you want, take them to any state in the USA, carry them in any state in the USA and only have to worry about one set of federal laws. BUT, you would have to get a gun license to prove you could buy or possess a gun, and you would have to register your guns. The gun registry could be confidential and it wold be against the law to use the registry for anything other than its intended purpose. It is difficult to overcome this confidatiality through legislationbecause it is PII and the ACLU would be just as upset about it as the NRA.
California will always be restrictive compared to most states unless you get federal pre-emption. Would YOU personally be willing to get a license and register your guns with a gnome in Zurich who promises to never divulge your identity to anyone unless they have a specific permissible need for the information if it meant you could own and carry any firearm you liked (subject to reasonable restriction) anywhere you like in the country (barring private property and government property where armed security guards are present)?
OK, so what you are saying is that suicide methods are “sticky” if not set in stone. People do not substitute methods very easily.
I am aware of the UK and carbon monoxide example. Do you have anything to cite other than that?