WRT guns in the home leading to increased murder rates of friends or family family members: Mas Ayoob pointed out in one his articles that criminals have friends and families too. Further, their families and especially their friends are quite frequently also criminals. The majority of shootings, in other words, are criminal-on-criminal shootings. The statistics don’t show that facet of the situation. Innocent victims do, of course, exist and it is in an effort to not be one that I arm myself. On the other hand, I don’t have it in me to really care if one chemically-addled felon shoots another in a squabble.
Suicide? It doesn’t matter to me if you kill yourself. It’s your choice. The means you use are also your choice. I can’t see any reason to limit the non-suicidal portion of the population in what they may own or do just because you have a death wish.
Try reading more than the first sentence before posting a half-cocked retort.
Malthus, the quote function seems to be broken on the SDMB at the moment, so I will not point-by-point your post.
Your point on the presence of a gun making a successful suicide attempt more likely is valid. But it’s not really the point I was trying to make - that the gentleman in question was somewhat blindly applying group statistics to his situation, and thus falling into a factual deception. He insisted that based on general statistics he was safer from a suicide in his home if he didn’t have a gun in his home. My point is that you can’t say that for a specific instance without considering all of the other factors. In a nutshell, that the mere presence of a gun does not mean that people are going to be sitting there thinking “yeah…I was going to go shopping today, but what the hell? Maybe I should try suicide…” There has to be a suicidal urge in the first place, and if he’s honestly worried about it, he needs to be doing some other things too.
If I honestly believed someone in my household was suicidal, I would remove the guns from it (as well as some other things too, like sleeping pills). But I would also do other things, like get them serious counseling help too.
I’d love to see someone get warned for it. Lately however, it has been much more effective to head it off at the pass and call it out with a pre-emptive strike. I can look back to recent threads where some stalwarts of the “SDMB Left” resorted to the compensating for a small penis argument when they had nothing left to argue with. I welcome that comment as it shows clearly how little the person using it can back up their irrational fears and misconceptions about guns and gun owners.
I did, and it changes nothing. You can’t say you’re not talking about responsible gun ownership, when responsible gun owners are carrying to public places all the time - something you say is questionable judgment.
Here let me break down your post for you:
“I think that people who carry weapons all the time, especially to places like kids soccer games, so vastly overestimate the risk of the need to use them in self-defense (not to mention the efficacy), I would question whether their overall judgement is sufficient to be allowed to carry a firearm at all”
- so you say people who carry “all the time” have questionable judgment.
“This has nothing to do with the legal right to bear arms or responsible gun ownership;”
- but CCW and open-carry holders do carry all the time. Thus, you have a dilemma here.
“it’s about paranoid freaks who might be more of a danger to society than the perceived threats to which they are so egregiously overreacting.”
- again, those who carry all the time are paranoid freaks.
So CCW and open-carry permit holders are cool as long as they only carry guns to places you approve of, which I’m guessing is a somewhat vague and moving target. At least that’s the impression you gave in your post. I understand if your post did not communicate the logic you intended to convey; it happens with me all the time. But don’t blame the reader and deliberately insult them with “half-cocked retort” snipes if they can’t read your mind for intent.
Una, quote doesn’t work for me either …
But to address your points, of course I would agree that the presence of a gun does not create suicidial ideation, just as it does not create domestic violence or accident-prone children. Merely that in all of these cases the presence of a gun can exacerbate and already existing issue, to make what could have been a passing bout of depression into a death, or a passing dish-flinging ugly domestic row into a murder.
I would not argue that this of necessity should lead to the conclusion that hand-guns should be banned - I merely state that, if gun control is a question of social utility or risk-benefit analysis, these are legitimate risks to weigh.
[To my mind the best argument against gun control is that it is not a question of social utility but of individual rights - but I digress]
Is it just me, or is the Board seriously broken? I’m only seeing portions of people’s posts now, can’t quote, and whole parts of the thread appear to be missing.
Sure - I see little to disagree with on your points. I’d add that guns are not unique in this (knives are used quite often as substitutes, especially in low-gun-ownership countries), but they have much greater potential for mayhem, true.
Not just you. I can’t quote either. Don’t really know if I’m missing any content from pages. Doesn’t look like it.
And in light of the fact thatI can’t quote you I’ll go ahead and sincerely apologize for glazing over your portion where you addressed accidents in your post. ( Insert obligatory sarcasm since it’s me) It must have happened due to the red haze which overcame me in my irrational paranoia I felt in regards to everyone who has ever owned a gun. 
OK, let me try again, because I didn’t convey exactly what I’m trying to.
I support the right to bear arms, openly or otherwise; however, some of the people that insist on carrying to places like kids soccer games are displaying an overzealousness in excercising that right that makes me question whether they possess the judgement necessary to be bearing arms in the first place. It certainly seems over the top to me, FWIW. These are people that occupy the small end of the bell curve; not the majority of legal gun owners, and I’m not attempting to paint with a broad brush. I don’t suggest any legal means to attempt to curtail their rights, but I believe in the 1st, as well as the 2nd Amendment, and I’m excercising my right to say that woman is cuckoo for cocoa puffs.
I can think of several reasons that she may fear for her safety. You only know of her what you read in the article. What if she has a threatening ex-husband/lover/etc. who has threatened her or her/their kids? Isn’t that reason enough for her to fear for her safety and do something about it, or is she just supposed to hide behind a restraining order or something. God knows, those things never get broken. You can call her crazy all you want. She still has the right and her situation may be just a bit more than a soccer mom showing off her gun.
Something to think about…
Well, if you had a gun you could make all those gun owners pay… 
Alright, I see where you’re coming from much better now. Thank you, honestly, for taking the time to explain. I may have missed it because the thread is wonky, but do you make a divide between promiscuous open-carry and concealed carry in the above?
Well, if that was the case, I would certainly not blame her for choosing to be armed at all times. But it sure seems like that information would be central to her case, and not a bunch of butthurt malarkey from her and her husband.
And I agree completely. Just saying that there may be more to the story than we are told especially since she was able to get her permit reinstated. Either she has a legit need or is not a legit threat. Either way should rule out crazy, in my book anyway. If anyone is a bit nutty, I’d look in the husband’s direction. Trying to get on his wife’s gravy train is a bit unsettling to me.
I don’t have a problem with either one, really, in a legal sense. The soccer mom example is veering into over-the-top territory for me, personally, excepting mitigating circumstances. Like I said in a related thread, it’s like free speech; I staunchly defend the right to it, but I wish some people wouldn’t excercise it so much. 
As I said before, it seems that every person in that article is acting strangely.
The women is complaining about being stripped of her concealed carry license - but she clearly likes to carry openly. Moreover, the complaining about the effect of being stripped of her license seems excessive, to say the least.
The Sheriff attempts to strip her of her license for concealed carry, for openly carrying - which isn’t illegal; the net result is to require her to carry openly if at all, which is what he found offensive in the first place.
The husband - well, all I can say is that his complaint makes their marriage appear somewhat odd.
Suddenly I understand “Happiness is a Warm Gun.”
Someone said this earlier, but it bears repeating: If you think Clint Soccermom was nuts to show up armed at the game, would it have been different if she’d been a uniformed cop? If so, why?