Not if most of the gun violence taking place already is due to the fraction of the population criminal or psychotic enough to seek out guns to enable their victimization of others. We already have guns in the hands of the people who least ought to have them; the people who don’t instigate violence against others are the ones who should have firearms.
Unless of course you have a basically Hobbesian view of society, where almost everyone is a stupid greedy selfish animal only kept in check by the iron fist of the law. In which case, this whole “freedom” thing the Enlightenment philosophers talked about was an absurdity and the goddamn peasants should shut up and do what their masters tell them.
If someone sits in a running car inside their garage do we include those in automobile death statistics?
Not sure on that one but we certainly include people driving off bridges.
Substantive answer to WHAT? Your ridiculous assertion about ‘dangerous weapons’? ALL weapons are dangerous. And ‘automatic pistol’, if you are talking about a semi-automatic clip fed pistol (which you obviously were :p) is just a pistol with a larger capacity for bullets. It uses the exact same bullets as a revolver, and even fires with the same rate, by and large (and is less reliable). Unless you are trying to make it LOOK more ‘dangerous’ by using misleading terms, of course. Same goes for the ‘assault-style’ horseshit. Translation…looks scary, even if in many cases it not only fires the same bullets but has the exact same action as well.
I noticed that YOU didn’t answer anything from my first reply to your post, and instead decided to try and wave your hands and take this all semantic, so I’ll conclude that you don’t actually have anything meaningful to say on any of the points raised so far in this thread or this part of the discussion and just push on.
I already answered this earlier in the thread, but basically suicides are suicides…if someone wants to kill themselves they will. If there is no gun available then they will use something else. So, why include them?
As for accidents, well, as I said earlier in the thread, if you want to include them that’s fine with me. Tell me, including guns, what’s the most likely thing to kill you in the home? Is it a gun or, say, a ladder?
Because the presence of guns increases the suicide rate. No doubt because they make it easy to do so on impulse.
How do you calculate that? What baseline do they use in order to make that assertion? Suicide rates change (IIRC, it’s been going down in the US…despite the changing regulatory environment for guns in the US in the last few decades), and they vary quite a bit from country to country.
Does the US have the highest suicide rate in the world, since we have the most guns? ETA: According to this we aren’t even in the top 10.
Well, we do include people accidentally driving into trees. Or purposefully driving into trees - how can you tell the difference ?
If I had a gun, I probably would have blown my brains out at some point in my depressed youth. Thankfully I didn’t, and it was too short a drop down from my teenager room’s window and way too high a fall from my current pad. Long enough to think “oops”, y’know ? So I’m still here, waiting :).
[QUOTE=Kobal2]
If I had a gun, I probably would have blown my brains out at some point in my depressed youth. Thankfully I didn’t, and it was too short a drop down from my teenager room’s window and way too high a fall from my current pad. Long enough to think “oops”, y’know ? So I’m still here, waiting .
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This implies that access to a gun actually changes the rate of suicide. Yet, I’ve seen no evidence that this is so. As I noted in the cite earlier, the US is not even in the top 10 countries for suicide rate…and most of the countries that are in that top 10 have much more stringent gun control laws than we do (some have outright bans). So, how do you reconcile the fact that in the US there are more guns than people, yet our suicide rate (which, according to you should be higher since the opportunity of access to a gun is so much higher) is in the middle of the pack, rate wise?
2007 data
"Miller and his colleagues Steven Lippmann, David Hemenway and Deborah Azrael, used survey data to estimate rates of household firearm ownership in each of the 50 states and examined whether rates of suicide were related to rates of household gun ownership. They controlled for measures of poverty, urbanization, unemployment, drug and alcohol dependence and abuse, and mental illness. The researchers found that states with higher rates of household firearm ownership had significantly higher rates of suicide by children, women and men. In the 15 states with the highest levels of household gun ownership, twice as many people committed suicide compared with the six states with the lowest levels, even though the population in both groups was about the same.
The association between firearm ownership and suicide was due to higher gun-related suicides; non-gun-related suicide rates were not significantly associated with rates of firearm ownership. Also, suicide attempts using firearms, which constitute just 5% of all fatal and non-fatal attempts, are highly lethal–more than 90% of all suicidal acts by firearm are fatal. By comparison, individuals who use drugs to attempt suicide, which constitute 75% of all attempts, die in the attempt less than 3% of the time."
That part of being licensed to own a gun involve a psychological evaluation (paid for by the applicant) to assess their mental stability that has to be renewed every 5 years (schizophrenia often hits in the early twenties). This guy probably would not have passed such a screening. And obviously closing the the gun-show loophole is a no-brainer.
Someone with severe chronic depression who is intent on suicide is likely to kill himself one way or another regardless of whether or not a gun is available. But other suicides are impulsive rather than carefully plotted, and I would expect those are the ones that would go up as access to guns increases. I’m not sure mental health screening would necessarily help with those either.
I don’t know enough about the Wisconsin shooter to comment. However in Colorado, James Holmes was able to build quite a formidable (and completely legal) arsenal via the Internet (emphasis mine):
Regulating large (or not so large) sales of ammunition via the Internet might have averted this tragedy. One clue is that about a month before the shooting Holmes emailed an application to a local gun range, but got spooked when the owner called him back to invite him to a mandatory orientation meeting. I wonder if he would have been similarly spooked if he had been required to buy his ammo in-person at a local gun shop.
Of course, NRA shills like Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson will throw up their hands and tell us “nothing can be done”:
Please, restrict my freedom to buy 6000 rounds of ammunition and a drum magazine at a throw. I’m not saying this is the 100% solution for this problem, but it sure as hell would have helped avert this tragedy. And such a restriction won’t matter a bit to this gun owner–and I suspect wouldn’t matter to any law-abiding gun enthusiast.
[QUOTE=Untoward_Parable]
The association between firearm ownership and suicide was due to higher gun-related suicides; non-gun-related suicide rates were not significantly associated with rates of firearm ownership. Also, suicide attempts using firearms, which constitute just 5% of all fatal and non-fatal attempts, are highly lethal–more than 90% of all suicidal acts by firearm are fatal. By comparison, individuals who use drugs to attempt suicide, which constitute 75% of all attempts, die in the attempt less than 3% of the time."
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So, even though other methods of suicide than a gun are attempted (you say that drug overdoes ‘constitute 75% of all attempts’), most of them fail. If using a gun, however, most succeed. That seems to be a variable that the folks in your article are glossing over, and a key piece of data. It kind of skews their point about ‘The researchers found that states with higher rates of household firearm ownership had significantly higher rates of suicide by children, women and men. In the 15 states with the highest levels of household gun ownership, twice as many people committed suicide compared with the six states with the lowest levels, even though the population in both groups was about the same.’, since it’s unclear to me if in the non-gun households those attempts using less reliable methods are being factored in to this sweeping statement.
What’s really interesting to me, is how other countries with more restrictive access to firearms have higher suicide rates than the US, with all our access to guns.
XT, there was nothing from your post to “reply” to. I’ve said my bit. Based on your need to respond to each and every comment here with a lengthy diatribe I can only conclude you’re on the NRA payroll or something. Moving on.
It was the part with the ‘?’ thingies in it. That’s ok though…please, thanks for playing the SDMB edition of Gun Control. We have some lovely parting gifts for you, including this SDMB board game edition and this fabulous ceramic dog with it’s head tilted to the side, indicating puzzlement. Watch the swinging door on your way out…
How would you tell if it were so ? If easy access to guns did (or, as the case may be, did not) promote suicide ?
Say I posit that the rate of suicide for this or that specific time and place (as caused by X, Y and Z social, economical and psych factors) is going to be ~5%, and easy access to guns and alcohol makes it 7%, how are you ever going to ascertain that the “natural” rate was 5% ? All you’ve got is 7% dead guys. Where do you assess the 2% difference ? What stat gives you that knowledge ?
What I’m saying is: so the US suicide rate is this. Or that. How can you tell it couldn’t be *better *?
Not that I’m arguing it should be, really - I think suicidal people still walking the Earth is some of the most sad, dysfunctional shit since Jesus - but still. You’re the one harping on suicide rates, so…
[QUOTE=Kobal2]
What I’m saying is: so the US suicide rate is this. Or that. How can you tell it couldn’t be better ?
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Exactly the point I was making. To me, the availability or lack of guns isn’t going to substantially change the suicide rate. Other factors are going to shift that. Which, getting back to the original point, is why I discounted for suicide rate and accident, especially since this event was neither…it was basically premeditated mass murder by a person who was obviously mentally disturbed.
I’m getting really, really annoyed that every news article on the shootings has to include a “what the fuck’s a Sikh?” section for the clueless.
Well not everyone in the US took a comparative religions course, knows a sikh or was ever all that interested to look it up before so it doesnt seem that unreasonable with their fairly low population numbers in the US. Best way I can describe them is as a fusion between popular Hinduism and Christianity(Im sure they would hate that summary). IE they think you get reincarnated until you get it right then you get to go to heaven to be with God. The turban hides their long hair which is a tradition in their faith that originates with a founder refusing to cut his hair which symbolized his Sikh faith and being killed for it along with most of the other Sikhs at the time. Its a way of saying “We are Sikh and will not hide that fact for our own protection.” It’s a cool history and of the Sikhs I’ve met they’re typically very friendly people even under personal stress.