Thank you. I didn’t take your comment personally.
I realize the debate is over impulse suicides, but still I’m struck by looking at a list of countries by overall suicide rate - the US seems to be in the middle of the pack and some of the real leaders, like Russia and Japan, aren’t known as gun-friendly havens.
Is this a debate over a non-issue, at least from the gun side of things? I’m leaning in that direction. I think more attention to public mental health would pay off more here.
This is correct. You’ll notice that there is no law stopping you from driving without a license if you’re not on public land. You can (and I did) drive a pickup truck, or a tractor, or a dune buggy on your own land at age ten. In fact, many many kids do exactly that. I was driving a tractor and driving a pickup truck at age 12. On the farm’s property. A not-insubstantial number of children have been killed in farming accidents, doing activities that would be illegal on public land.
For me, the equivalent to driving on the road is concealed carry - I think it makes perfectly reasonable sense to demand that someone be licensed to carry a gun in public, and that licensing can even have reasonable restrictions on it, such as a firearms safety course and laws penalizing carry in certain areas - a law court, for example. As soon as you’re out among the public, you have to obey certain rules to protect the safety of the people around you. No problem.
Choosing to own a gun in your home is like choosing to teach your kid to drive a pickup at age 12. You think it will do him some good, and make him more independent and useful on the farm. You’re satisfied that he’s responsible enough to do it safely. But still, you know the risks. You know you are putting your child at some additional risk by doing this. But in your role as parent, you decide that the benefits outweigh the risks, and proceed. Parent’s have that right, unless they cross the line into reckless endangerment. Choosing to own a gun is nowhere near that line, so you should mind your own business.
Easier than starting a car in your garage (friend of mine).
What makes you think you’d be sparing the maid?
EMTs aren’t responsible for cleaning up after the people they collect. They may gather up the larger bits, but someone is still going to have to scrub the walls, throw out the linens, and wetvac the carpet. Since you chose an Econo Lodge, you can pretty much guarantee they aren’t going to have the cash on hand to hire a crime scene clean up crew.
And why put the EMT crew through that? It may be a nanometer better because they don’t know you, but it’s still another human being with a great big hole in its head they have to pick up and put in a body bag.
In Russia, self kills you.
I would never commit suicide, mostly because of my traumatic experience with my friend’s dad doing it when I was a kid. The idea of it just scares the hell out of me. I want to live. If I could, I would live forever.
I certainly wouldn’t shoot myself, because that would give the anti-gun crowd another statistic to use against us.
Nothing is ever simple, and one study does not end the discussion. From “The Effects of Detoxification of Domestic Gas on Suicide in the United States”, DAVID LESTER, PHD, American Journal of Public Health, 1990:
So. Detoxification of gas made a big difference in England, and made no difference in the US. No clear answer there. The study also finds:
I’d say that the OP’s premise (guns facilitate suicide) is untrue in Toronto, at least.
w.
I wanted to post a couple of days back, but the board wasn’t cooperating then and I didn’t get back to this thread until now.
If someone else wants to kill themselves — with or without a gun — no I don’t really care. It’s their problem, not mine. And yes, I did know someone who committed suicide with a pistol, so it’s not like I have no experience with it and am arguing from a point of callous ignorance. What struck me with my experience with my friend is that he was a great guy, fun to be around, had supportive friends, and yet he still felt isolated and unloved. We’d had a few conversations that raised some warning flags for me, unfortunately only in retrospect. There was a huge disconnect between objective reality and his beliefs, and obviously nothing any of us said or did had much effect.
As a couple of people pointed out earlier, Japan has a high suicide rate, much higher than the US. Even worse, they do it socially. There are suicide message boards where people go to research methods, find partners, relate their plans for offing themselves. The government has discussed cracking down on these like they did for phone clubs and websites that enabled enjo-kôsai (among other grey-area uses they might have had). It’s questionable whether the suicide clubs enable or discourage more suicides. In some cases, the sense of belonging and community might actually keep someone from doing it. On the other hand, there’s solid evidence that people have used the information culled from the boards on methods of committing suicide as a model for their own deaths, as related in the “poison gas” article linked earlier.
It used to be that jumping in front of a train was a popular way to go. I’ve actually seen one of those happen. Every so often, there will be a train delay notice with no particular reason shown; those are almost always caused by some dipshit taking a deliberate dive in front of a JR train. It was so bad at one point that they actually had a public service announcement that asked people not to inconsiderately cause difficulties for others by killing themselves in that way (it sounds better in Japanese). What was finally effective in reducing the prevalence of this particular form of suicide was legislation that held the family of the deceased liable for the costs involved in train delays and clean up. The burden of debt made most people think twice about committing suicide by train. But the overall suicide rate hasn’t dropped appreciably.
As I have pointed out myself in other threads, you can’t cross-apply most things between cultures because there are so many factors that are different, so the Japan example is just an illustration of what happens elsewhere. It probably is true that if you were able to take guns away from everyone in the US, the suicide rate would drop for a while. I’m doubtful of whether it would stay that way though. While putting in barriers of accessibility to reduce impulsive suicides obviously does have an impact, one that lasts for a while, it’s probably a more complex problem than a simple “take guns away, stop suicides” prospect in the long-term.
Even if it were that simple, infringing on the rights of a large majority for the benefit of a very small minority doesn’t seem fair or right to me. Less than 1% of people who attempt suicide? Seriously? That’s how small a benefit we’re talking about? In a risk/benefit analysis — particularly in a case where no one but the primary is at risk — it’s hardly even worth considering.
I would much rather spend the effort on improving anti-suicide measures like suicide hotlines, more or better-trained personnel for mental health clinics, perhaps better dissemination of information concerning warning signs along with contact information resources to help people who might be considering suicide.
The article in the OP gave me another couple of ideas that may or may not be original to me: a program similar to Outward Bound, and of course trained mental health professionals involved as counselors. That’s one idea. The changed outlook from an unsuccessful suicide attempt reminded me of the state of mind that people who have done some kind of spirit quest report afterward. Privation, inward focus, and altered state of consciousness from a similar undertaking might have good outcomes on suicide.
These are very different approaches, but could work for different people. The Outward Bound-ish program (I envision more extreme activities than standard OB) would do two things: build a sense of connection and trust between people in the group (which is the demonstrated effect of Outward Bound) and it would give them a sense of what real danger feels like; not pleasant without someone to help your ass out. The spirit quest program could cull from any number of traditions for a framework. That’s a really rough idea on my part right now. I’d have to do some research to flesh it out.