Am I the last person on Earth to hear about this 1995 suicide in Australia?
And we’re sure this was a suicide and not a murder? The freaking biathalon this guy went through to get the job done doesn’t seem rea…well I guess that would follow.
Can you imagine what a failure you’d feel like on that 136 meter trudge to reload for your third shot?
No, you’re not the last. I hadn’t heard it.
However, I did hear a similar story from @1990, in which a (USA) man had been shot five times with a bolt-action rifle. It was ruled a suicide, but I haven’t been able to find the story.
I’ve lived in Canberra for more than 25 years, and I hadn’t heard this story until now.
I mean, at this point doesn’t it seem silly that he couldn’t just go to the suicide booth? Dude really, really wanted to go through with it.
Suicides are routinely not widely reported in this country, in order to reduce copycat instances.
Talk about low self-esteam. Someone probably told him he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a shotgun. Oddly, the ad that came up when I clicked on the link was for cosmentic surgery.
Yeah, but… who would want to copy that?! :eek: You’d think that would be a deterrent.
Hell, who could copy that? They grow 'em tough, down under!
He was more determined to die than many are to live. That must have hurt like hell; the kind of hurt that could override that must have been incredible. 
You call that a suicide? THAT’s a suicide!
Paul Hogan will now hunt you down and apply the appropriate beating…
I was a bit too brief in my earlier message. I was just letting the OP know that s/he wasn’t “the last person on Earth to hear about this” and that even a long time resident of the city hadn’t heard of it.
I agree that details of suicides are not normally made public.
I’ve got no idea, but according to Wikipedia almost 350,000 people do.
Of course, the suicide is the only rational result, but why would anyone live in Canberra?
I remember that story, mostly because I first heard about it from a comedian of all places. The comedian (whose name I don’t remember but he spoke with a Texas style drawl) pantomimed exactly what was required to shoot yourself in the chest multiple times with a bolt action rifle, which made it seem a bit silly that the whole thing was ruled a suicide.
(pause to google)
Ok, it looks like the comedian was Ron Shock. Here’s the audio of the routine:
http://www.sketchypremise.com/funny-audio-ron-shock-22-caliber-rifle.html
It’s better when you can see the action. Here’s the youtube video of the same Ron Shock routine:
The bit about the rifle starts at about 2:28 into the video.
“To shoot yourself in the chest five times with a bolt action 22 caliber rifle requires a degree of determination that I do not possess…”
OK, I’m beginning to think that this wasn’t really a news story. I waw the Ron Shock routine myself in the early '90s, and that is a vivid memory. I thought I had previously heard about this story in the news, but maybe not. . . .
That Ron Shock routine was the first thing I thought of when I read the OP.
That’s not a suicide. This is a sui…
I was under the impression that the Ron Shock routine was based on something that had happened fairly recently (recent being current to when I heard the routine in the 1990s), but after spending some time on google I now think that the routine was based no the 1961 death of Henry Marshall.
On June 3, 1961, Henry Marshall was found next to his pickup truck. The details all seem to match Ron Shock’s routine. It happened in Texas. Henry Marshall had been shot 5 times in the chest by his own 22 caliber bolt action rifle. The death was immediately ruled to be a suicide. I can’t imagine that there have been all that many deaths in Texas that have been ruled a suicide from a 22 caliber bolt action rifle.
In the mid 1980s Henry Marshall’s death was changed to a homicide. This would have been in the news in the mid to late 1980s which is probably where Ron Shock picked it up.
Warning - there’s a lot of conspiracy theory stuff involving LBJ and JFK if you try to google this.