:dubious: So just as the fall from 7 billion people to 6,999,999,999 diminishes your physical body in some mystical way by 0.000000000015%, I should be given to understand that you’re 52% female, 48% male, and 5% gay? I’m astounded by the linkage between the statistics of humanity and your physical personage.
Explain “diminish” to me in a way that doesn’t involve any sort of mystical fallback to “good” and “bad” as things ordained by some greater entity or otherwise just commonly known.
Isn’t that more related to shooting other people (on purporse or by accident) rather than oneself?
This is exactly the assumption that the article linked to in the OP convincingly showed was false.
I wonder if such efforts have ever been successful? Cigarettes are the only item that comes immediately to mind that may have taken a similar tack. Have the efforts helped? I suspect they are not enormously successful. The teen commercials strike me as extraordinarily preachy and trite.
I think it might be mostly a matter of awareness of the possibility of having an impulsive moment that ends in tragedy. Most of us, I think, are of the “That can’t happen to me” mindset, but one of the main points I took from that article was the very short decision-making-period some of these individuals had before choosing to kill themselves. We don’t have any way of knowing when such an impulse might spring up since these are, by definition, not premeditated suicides but out-of-the-blue suicidal impulses that find quick, permanent in many cases resolutions because of the availability of a quick, permanent in many cases tool.
The article points out that even a slight delay can make a huge difference. That creates quite a balancing act between availability and safety and I do not presume to have the answer.
I had a strange vision of a gun that operated like those cookie jars that make pig noises. “Danger! If you are considering suicide call 1-800-DONT-DIE.” Perhaps a klaxon.
I hope all know that I am not making light of the deaths, just sharing a strange idea.
As that article said , he was a completer , so we will never know in his case. That he used a firearm supports your case and had he not had access to the weapon , he may have gone on for a different method or he may have showed some warning flags.
But as I asked you earlier, whats your proposal, ban firearms ?
Or was that our job after you presented the study link and debate question , to come up with a group think ban on firearms.
Declan
And I am astounded by your failure to recognize one of the most famous literary passages in the English language and also by your apparent, or at least claimed, inability to feel compassion for those who die needlessly.
Are we even? Are we done?
Then either contain yourself or recuse yourself from the conversation if you cant handle it.
In a word , no
Declan
Your participation in this series is remarkably nonresponsive to any of my actual points. You appear to be standing on a very tall soapbox in the corner, yelling at the wall, vigorously. Arm waving may or may not be involved. Apostrophes do not appear to be.
And in lieu of guns, they’ve been employing another easy, painless method:
That article shows a definite “public health” menace in that passersby and hospital workers are threatened by the behavior. That is obviously (obvious to me, that is) more serious than a successful suicide that threatens no one else.
Question mark. What points ?
Firearms are an easy way to commit suicide
Let me get out my ouigi board , since I have never tried. It is however a very final method.
Do you care
No
Then why dont you actually come out for a firearms ban and use this as your reasons.
Declan
No, I’d still like for you to describe how trying to impose your morality on other people’s major life decisions is in any way justifiable?
How is, “He died needlessly.” any different from “He had a choice to marry a woman, but he’s going to waste his life with another man.” or “He could have accepted the word of Christ, but instead chose the life of a heretic.” On what basis are you deciding the good or bad of something that doesn’t effect you in any real way such that if you can prevent it, you will seek to do so?
A rather more famous guy than John Donne once said, “It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg…” He was talking about the freedom of religious choice, but I think it’s a fairly useful principle to decide policy on. If the only thing being injured so far as any third parties need be concerned is their sensibilities or sense of right and compassion, then there is no place for any of them to have any sort of legislative weight.
No.
Weighing in on the OP, I fully support using a gun to commit suicide. Because the second-most readily available and effective method I can think of for a serious suicide to use would be death by deliberate car accident. Which is potentially dangerous to others.
No, I don’t care. I had a friend in high school who commited suicide by breathing carbon monoxide fumes in a closed garage. I’m not opposed to either cars or garages, either. People will find ways to misuse a variety of legal products. I don’t think that these products should be regulated based on the possibility that someone somewhere will use them to harm themselves. If someone wants to commit suicide it is certainly tragic but, ultimately, it’s between him and God. Trying to prevent someone from harming himself is not proper public policy in my view.
I don’t have a cite (you’re right, btw), but I have read that some of these people actually leave a warning about the fumes on the door of their apartment, etc as their suicide note.
It’s at least creative, if not dangerous to the public at large.
I’d still like for you to demonstrate how I have imposed anything on anyone.
Not that I have a dog in the gun-control fight, but I have to take exception to that.
As I understand it, this is a popular misconception. Let me restate it, pardon me for putting words in your mouth, “If you save someone from killing himself he is just going to do it successfully next week or next year.”
Studies (which I heard of on TV, so they must be correct) show a large majority of suicides-attempters once saved never try again. They are going through a difficult time and once through it, never try to hurt themselves again.
Anyway, argue on.
That is the entire point of the article I linked to, the article that only a handful of people are reading before they comment. This series is evolving into something like a Turing test for posters and only some are passing.
Then explain to me how it makes any difference whether guns facilitate murder or not such that you feel the need to point out that this is somehow “different” enough to warrant a discussion and that Airman Doors and myself and the other “don’t cares” are somehow missing some sort of vital point in our responses.
If you don’t care, don’t argue against statements of non-caringness.