"By the way, gun nuts, did you know that handguns are used for suicide more often than any other use, including homicide?"

Really? Cuuuuuuz I'm willing to bet they're used a lot more for target shooting, protection for police, etc, than they are for people shooting themselves in the face. Now, if youwant to say gun deaths are more likely to be suicide than homicide, you'd be right. But what you wrote doesn't mean what you think it means.

Thank you for that clarification, Mr. GunNut HairSplitter.

Explain to me please why I as a 'gun nut' should be held accountable for someone choosing to commit suicide? If I were a 'pharmacy nut' should I feel worse if they use sleeping pills? As a 'barber' am I complicit in any suicide involving a shaving kit?

And while you are at it tell me why we aren't focusing on mental health care in this country?

Men use guns for suicide more than any other method of self termination. Women prefer to poison themselves.
Poison is, of course, already well-regulated.

@2: Hey, if you're going to try to hold me responsible for some fucking idiot shooting themselves, the least you could do is be intelligent about it. And what was written was wrong. So, kiss my ass.

@4, Poison is well regulated? Have you been to a grocery store (all sorts of poisonous household cleaning products) or pharmacy (all sorts of over the counter ways to kill yourself) or a hardware store (rat poison anyone?) lately?

If you look at the results of Australia's gun ban, there is one study that says that the gun ban may have had a small effect on overall suicide levels. There's another study that says it didn't. Whichever one is correct, I don't know. However, it is clear that banning firearms alone did not have a major impact on suicide. (The results are complicated because two years after the ban, Australia started a huge suicide prevention campaign).

That said, would completely eradicating firearms in the USA reduce suicide rates by some measure-able amount? Yes, it probably would. Not by a huge amount, but certainly by some amount you could measure. Will banning "assault weapons" and/or high capacity magazines have ANY effect whatsoever? Nope. Not at all. You know why? The vast majority of suicides are committed with handguns with a small amount committed with shotguns.

If you gun-control-nuts want to propose some things that might actually have an effect on suicide rates, please do so.

@2: There is nothing wrong with pointing out an error, if it is indeed an error, especially when it is one of the main points of the post. It really should have just said that people shoot themselves much more often than they shoot or protect other people.

@4: Poison is not regulated at all. I mean, you can't just go out an by Zyklon-B or concentrated cyanide, but your local grocer is full of unregulated poisons in eye-catching containers!

Women don't commit suicide by drinking Draino. They use prescription meds. Prescription meds = regulated.

@8 I can't speak for Chicago Fan, but I have no problem saying I want to take away all your guns, including whatever single shot bolt action .22 and air softs are. Why do you think we won't admit it? I know it's never going to happen, but it'd be great if it did.

handguns are used for suicide more often than any other use, including homicide?

Hm. That actually makes me feel LESS in favor of more gun laws.

If someone wants to kill him/herself, let them do it. The world is overpopulated as it is. Why are we trying to stop people from dying when they want to die?

Didn't someone claim that "CHICAGO FAN" was an English professor at some college?

#1 has it right. That statement was incorrect as written.
As for me, I will say that my level of caring if someone I do not know commits suicide is rather low.
I have no reason to pretend to care about people I cannot name, have never met and could not spot in a crowd.
Unlike other people who use such as fodder for their personal agendas.

Here's the facts for the tenth or twentieth time, on why the proliferation of guns increases suicide. The Forbes article points out the states with the most guns have the highest suicide rates.

The saddest part is that it's not just "some idiot" who is likely to shoot themselves. It's you, the gun owner. It's your family, your kids. The data clearly show that the factor that makes all the difference between a seemingly healthy person who commits suicide and one who does not is whether they have a gun sitting there.

The NRA and the arms industry drive their sales numbers by telling you that a gun makes you safer. The data say no. You and your family are more likely to die if you have a gun.

And as far as focusing on mental health, who's against doing something about mental health? Nobody I can name. So what's the plan? Somebody tell me what the NRA's mental health proposal is. Anybody? What's the plan?

@9: Actually, the most common form of sucide by poisoning is through over the counter analgesics, which are not regulated at all. Carbon monoxide is also a big poison used, and that is also not regulated. Hell, I can let my car run all day, make as much of that sweet, sweet CO as I want.

Furthermore, women do commit suicide by poisoning more than any other method, but it only edges out firearms by about 8% anyway. Just admit that you were trying to make a political point and it was not based in fact. The bigger point is that women use guns just about as much as men anyway, making all this poison chat a moot point anyway.

http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistic…

@10,
What about Nerf guns? Do you take away those too?

How about water squirt guns? Those too?

Do you also want to ban guys with big biceps?

It's a good thing you don't have any authority or power, because proclaiming you want to ban stuff when you don't even know what it is you want to ban is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible.

It's like religious nuts who want to ban books and movies they've never read or seen because "they're just evil!"

@5, @7 - I think we all knew what the meaning of the statement was, and if you didn't, well then you're too stoopid to be contributing. But once again, you GunNuts split hairs in order to make it appear that those in favor of increased gun control don't know what we're talking about. It's the same as when you point out that an AK57 isn't a (insert specialized gun term here). Stop splitting the fucking hairs about gun minutiae, because you both look like the NRA shills that you are. Why don't you have a real conversation for a change, rather than "You're wrong because of this stoopid little mistake"

@11: I guess the short answer would be that most people who commit suicide, especially those with a gun nearby, only want to commit suicide for that fraction of a second it takes to do it.

People who survive suicide attempts often claim that they realized pretty quickly that they did not actually want to die, and that their problems were far from intractable.

But in spirit I am with you: if someone wants to die, who am I to stop them or tell them they cannot choose when or how to die? World needs fewer people anyway.

@16: The term is "AK-47," because it was developed by a Russian named Mikhail Kalashnikov, and stands for "Automat Kalashnikova," the "47" designation is because it was introduced into the Soviet army in 1947.

I mean, if you walk around saying "AK-57" people are going to think you are a fool, and you may ban a gun that does not exist!

@13: I used to babysit this girl named Emily back around 2001, when her mother and mine were good friends. I was about 20 and she was about 5. Sweet kid. Last fall she hanged herself, in her bedroom, after being sent to a care facility and being hospitalized a number of times for suicide threats and emotional issues. There were, in fact, guns in the house. Her mother was Ex-Army. They were locked and secure and every time she'd threatened suicide it was by hanging or pills or cutting. Moral of the story: people who are depressed are sometimes going to kill themselves, guns or no. And it fucking sucks. But they're still going to do it. Talk to any paramedic and they'll tell you: the ones who really want to get it done are going to do it, with whatever they have at their disposal. So you'll have to forgive me if the whole 'we gotta take all guns away because otherwise people will shoot themselves' holds little water with me.

@16: If you can't say what you mean it's not my fucking job to translate your gibberish into meaningful sentences. You're already trying to take away something from other people because you're scared or you're angry or whatever your excuse is. The least you could do is be able to get it out in a reasonably intelligent manner. This post failed at that, and with enthusiasm. Self-righteousness is a poor substitute for accuracy.

@18 - Thank you for proving my point.

@15

Incredibly! Dangerous! And! Irresponsible!

Oh my stars! I'm getting the vapors! Hold me, I feel faint!

There are too many stable, just and free countries that ban guns to reject the idea out of hand. And there's nothing dangerous or irresponsible about holding the opinion that we might be better off if we could be more like those places. Especially when one acknowledges that it's a mere wish with little chance of being attempted.

Everyone has the right to say what they think about guns without fear of a visit from the Thought Police. Having to walk on eggshells lest you hurt the gun loving demographic's feelings is what is harmful. It disgusts me how often we're told we aren't allowed to have "wrong" ideas about guns, particularly from self-styled defenders of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

@19

Yeah, talk to a paramedic if you want quality public health analysis. I do not know how paramedics run statistical regressions behind the wheel of the ambulance. Amphetamines?

My favorites are the urban legends "a paramedic told me" about car accident survivors who "would be dead if they'd been wearing a seat belt". If we'd believed all these apocryphal paramedic stories we'd have 400,000 Americans a year dead in car accidents.

You're basically arguing that you might as well smoke a pack a day because some people who don't smoke also get lung cancer. It's true that there are many ways to commit suicide, but it's also true that your odds are much higher if you have a gun. The state-by-state data tell us that. The fact that people without serious warning signs of suicide shoot themselves tells us that.

@15 The guns I want to ban are the ones that kill people. if you want to argue that you can kill someone by hitting them over the head with either a ten cent cap gun or a hammer so why do I not want to ban cap guns or hammers, have at it. I want to ban guns with bullets that kill people when you shoot them. Now hair split away.

@21: Thank you for not getting the joke and making it a hundred times funnier!

You know, it is pretty funny on here how the "pro-gun" side labels me as against them because I want real gun control reforms such as universal background checks, banning of high-capacity clips and high-capacity semi-automatic weapons, and I would even be in for a total handgun ban, as unlikely as it is. Also gun buybacks? Go nuts!

Meanwhile, the "pro-gun control" side labels me an "NRA shill" because I am unwilling to label every gun owner a murderous psycho, blame the NRA lobby for all problems, and I do not purposefully remain proudly ignorant on anything relating to guns.

This need for ideological purity kills debate, destroys any meaningful action. I like shooting guns, I grew up around guns, I find gun history and mechanics academically fascinating, and I believe in the 2nd amendment. I also think that there is room and a need for serious regulation in the 2nd amendment, and think that we can and should regulate guns without taking away the freedom to own them legally.

I guess that makes me a paid shill for both sides

@23: Since when do you give a shit about statistical analysis? There are about 30,000 gun deaths a year in a country that has over 50 MILLION armed households. Statistically speaking, that's a frigging blip.

So which is it? You want to ban guns because you have an emotional, visceral response to them - in which case it seems no one's opinion is valid but yours? Or because they're such a public health threat - which, if you're actually one of the 2.4 million people who die in the US every year, gives you a 1.2% chance of having gun violence, self-inflicted or otherwise, being your method of leaving this vale of tears?

@26

A blip? No.

In Washington guns kill more people than traffic crashes. Nationwide, the approximately 30k annual US gun deaths is rising, and the approximately 30k or so annual traffic deaths is falling, which means by 2014 or 2015, gun deaths will surpass traffic deaths nationwide.

When you consider how many of these deaths are young people, the number of years of lost life are even more striking. Same with homocides. Things that kill in childhood, youth and the prime of life should be given particular attention.

The reason traffic deaths are falling is because we have treated it as a public health problem, and have applied law enforcement, social pressure, and technical innovation to drive that number down. With guns, not only have we not done those things, we've actually passed laws against studying the problem. The NRA's lackeys even added a rider saying pediatricians couldn't ask about guns in the house. We've buried our heads in the sand, because ideology trumped science.

It's not a blip. It's a scourge robbing people of the best years of their lives.

@24,
First, in your post @10 you write:

I want to take away all your guns, including whatever single shot bolt action .22 and air softs are.

Then in your post @24 you write:

The guns I want to ban are the ones that kill people. ...I want to ban guns with bullets that kill people when you shoot them. Now hair split away.

Google "airsoft." It's a gun that doesn't kill people. Yet you still want to ban them, "whatever they are!"

You don't know what you're talking about and apparently aren't interested in figuring it out. Instead you make sweeping generalizations and contradict yourself, and then you complain that "gun nuts just want to split hairs over the little details!"

Like I said, I'm glad you don't have any power or authority over gun laws, because that would be like giving power over the auto industry to a person who can't tell the difference between a real car and a matchbox toy.

@25

Maybe reason both sides dislike you is your straw man fallacies. Can't win many friends with that classic dick move.

once again, this thread is pointless.

our resident gun nuts and gun hair-splitters (that's a special new category for you, Gorath) already know that firearm suicides make up the largest portion of american firearm deaths. they just don't care.

this was today's murder-suicide. there was a horrific one yesterday at a courthouse in delaware. there will be another tomorrow. where, no one knows. it's american as shaving your balls, and nothing can change because Tyranny. just pray you don't get in the way.

@22,
Yeah, you and others have the right to voice your opinions on guns... as do I. I never suggested anyone couldn't.

To suggest that we should ban "whatever single shot bolt action .22 and air softs are" as @10 said, is ignorance. An airsoft gun is used for games. It's not lethal. @10 just blathered out an emotional response without knowing what he/she was talking about.

If that had been someone who actually had power, that'd be irresponsible and dangerous.

If you don't believe that, read up on the history of the war on drugs. A war started and perpetuated by people who didn't know what they were talking about.

@27: Ah, so we're back onto the visceral response. Check. It's so hard to keep track of which argument you're making at any one time. From now on I'll just assume it's the opposite of your last one.

So, for now your focus on guns is that deaths caused by them is qualitatively worse than deaths by other things. Check. While I'm sure that's a comfort to the families of those killed by guns, I'm not sure how the significantly larger percentage of families who lost loved ones due to other means will feel about it.

Look, I have never once argued that gun safety cannot and should not be improved upon. I don't think I've heard anyone hear argue that. And the NRA are fucking tools, and always have been. But both sides - though, clearly, I think yours is worse - get so caught up in self-righteousness it becomes quite easy to think that you don't actually give a single shit about what happens to who. You're just frightened of guns. And considering how few people they actually do kill against their actual numbers and how many people have them, that's a little sad.

You're outraged people can kill themselves with guns instead of being pissed people are killing themselves. Trust me when I tell you that when someone you know kills themselves, you couldn't care less how they did it. And you're pissed people are killing other people with guns, instead of being pissed people are killing people AT ALL. Or at the very least that's how you come off on it.

What Max said.

I don't give much of a fuck if someone uses a gun strictly for suicide only.

It's cases like Max pointed out above-the neverending stream of murder/suicides via guns that need to be curtailed. Cases that are rooted in passion, anger, and too-easy access to guns, especially handguns. Cases where the victims stand no chance (armed or not).

Edit to my own comment at 33: I suppose you do care how they did it when someone you know kills themselves. You just care a lot less about the how than the result, which is someone you knew is dead. And it sucks however they do it. But I'm not going to support the banning of belts because someone I knew hanged herself, and I'm not going to support a prohibition on gun ownership because someone I didn't know shot themselves.

@34: No argument there's far too many of them. Which is why at least some states (and all should) have a mandatory clause in their restraining orders that, should you have an active restraining order against you, all your firearms are confiscated and you can't buy any more. It doesn't cure the problem by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a step in the right direction. But stopping them completely? Might as well tell everyone to 'avoid the dude with the crazy eyes'. It's never going to stop all of them. And no, I don't think more people wandering around armed is the answer either.

@33

I don't know why you call it visceral. Look at the numbers. Years of lost life in high income North America shows that the impact is huge. Homicide and suicide are the top killers for young people. That's exactly where the data tell us our attention belongs.

"Trust me when I tell you"? I don't trust you when you tell me, because your reasoning is poor. You're stubbornly committed to anecdotes as a way to navigate through life. That's fine for your personal choices but bringing that attitude to a public policy discussion is a distraction at best.

Your approach boils down to doing nothing because human nature is flawed. We've had success with traffic deaths, with alcohol, with many things. Other countries have proven that you can reduce gun deaths: Australia put a stop to mass killings. European countries have a far lower rate of homicide. Why? Gangs? Drugs? Ennui? They have all those things. What they don't have is our massive numbers of guns.

The irony is the romantic notion that underpins "gun rights" the silly idea that gun owners will rise up and fight off tyranny. It's childish, and unrealistic. And it even distracts from taking real action against civil liberties abuses. Yet those who want to address the gun problem are driven by emotion?

We should rely on science and reason the way they have in Europe, Japan and other developed counties. It's a not complicated argument.

@37,

I want to print out your comment and frame it.

@37: You're absolutely right. It's not complicated. You don't like something\are afraid of something, so you don't want other people to have it. And you justify your feelings by using the shitty actions of a few as a blanket condemnation against the many. You don't care that less than 0.04% of legal gun owners are ever involved in a gun death, because that tiny number is enough justification for you. And sorry, that argument just doesn't fucking work for me.

My approach boils down to doing nothing? So in practically every thread, where I and pretty much everyone you label as 'gun nut' has agreed that mandatory gun registration, mandatory background checks, mandatory safety courses, owner licensing, trigger locks when not in use, etc. should be required counts as nothing for you? What exactly are you looking for that has even a prayer of succeeding?

And maybe, just maybe, if you stopped dismissing gun owners as eagerly awaiting the Democratic Party's hostile takeover of the country, you'd get a little further in attempts to genuinely limit unnecessary gun deaths. I suspect, though, it's more fun for you to argue about it than try to accomplish anything.

@13, What that study doesn't point out is that non-firearm related suicides are higher as a percentage of suicides where firearms are not available. For example:

New York, which has the lowest suicide rate in the country as well as, one of the lowest firearm ownership rates in the country, has 2.2 firearm suicide deaths per capita and 4.49 non-firearm suicide deaths per capita. Hawaii, which has the lowest level of firearm ownership in the country has a firearm rate of 2.56 and a non-firearm rate of 12.46.

Conversely, Wyoming, which has the highest level of firearm ownership, has a firearm related rate of 13.76 and a non-firearm related rate of 8.61. Alaska, which has the highest level of suicide in the country, has a firearm related rate of 15.43 and a non-firearm related rate of 7.49.

Is there a higher level of firearm related suicide in the states with higher levels of gun ownership? Yes. No question. All of those states are also A) very rural and B) have higher suicide rates than the median (rural areas have much lower amounts of suicide prevention programs and less personal support). Does a low level of firearm ownership necessarily relate to a low suicide rate? No, it does not. In fact, the 10 lowest suicide rates by state, except for Nebraska, are all states with high population densities.

Suicide Data from here:

http://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.ex…

@37, So what exactly is your reasonable proposal that will actually have an effect on firearm related violence?

Sorry, but turning all the firearms in the country into magic pixie dust is not a good answer. Banning "assault weapons" which account for a tiny percentage of firearms violence (and close to zero suicides) is also not a good answer. (Also, an "assault weapons ban" is likely to reduce the Democrat's control of government which will make other programs that I think a majority of Slog readers support more difficult.)

As NateMan points out, pretty much everyone here who is labeled a "gun-nut" has proposed or supported things that will have a meaningful impact. The response from the "gun-control-nuts" has been derision, name-calling and cat-calls.

@39: According to the WHO (or, at least, Wiki's report from the WHO), the US is 34th on the list for suicide rates, significantly lower than a number of countries with more strict gun control laws, and virtually identical to Canada and the UK. It suggests to me that access to guns is not a causative link to suicide rates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cou…

@43, NateMan - everyone knows, or at least according to Ph'nglui, that Wikipedia is run by ultra-right-wing-conservative-gun-loving-nutjobs and only has pro-gun information. So clearly any data showing that the USA is actually number 1 for suicide rates would be suppressed.

I mean, really, China and Japan have close to zero firearm ownership but they are ranked 6th and 7th for suicide rate??? That can't be possible!

@31
"our resident gun nuts and gun hair-splitters (that's a special new category for you, Gorath) already know that firearm suicides make up the largest portion of american firearm deaths. they just don't care."

I've posted specifically that I do not care about the suicide of someone I don't know, have never met and could not pick out of a crowd.

Neither do people like you.
You only care about whether you can use them as STATISTICS. to push your personal agenda.
You don't know their names.
You don't know what their reasons for suicide were.
You just want to use their deaths as an excuse for your personal agenda.

The same way that people like you love to quote statistics on how many people were shot per year.
But you do not know the name of the last non-white person shot in Seattle this year.
Because you do not care.
Not until they've been sanitized into clean statistics for you to use.

PTSD induced suicides among vets familiar with firearms seem to prefer handguns slightly over long guns. I think they are the largest single suicide demographic today.

@45: "people like you"? you mean people who feel that there's too much gun violence in america? AKA the majority?

it's true, i don't know the name of the last non-white person shot in seattle. in fact, i don't know the name of the last PERSON shot in seattle because i don't read the Times or listen to local TV/radio. do you, or do you plan to taunt us with that fact in perpetuity?

i do know the name of the last non-white person killed in Tacoma, though. Tyliah Young.

If most gun deaths are from suicide, what are you complaining about? Figured you'd be happy the gun nuts are offing themselves.

randoma, not going to filk this for the rest of my day, but it's interesting to note that when you feel like arguing that guns don't affect the homicide rate, you prefer to compare (carefully selected) US states. But when you're in the mood to argue that guns don't affect suicide, then you suddenly feel comfortable comparing the US to other countries, like the UK or Denmark.

How come the UK's suicide rate is comparable to the US, but their homicide rate isn't? How come Alaska, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming have such a high suicide rate?

I'll only mention that there might be one or two other reasons why certain countries, like Ghana, Japan, or Russia, have a high suicide rate that doesn't have a lot to do with guns.

@48
"you mean people who feel that there's too much gun violence in america? AKA the majority?"

Argumentum ad populum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_…

"do you, or do you plan to taunt us with that fact in perpetuity?"

I plan on using that fact to illustrate your faux outrage every time it comes up.
You love the statistics.
But you are indifferent to the lives of the people who make up those statistics.
You only care about whether their deaths can be used to further your personal agenda.
After someone else has sanitized them and washed all the brown out of them.

@50, Did you read my entire post in @41? You know, the one where I looked at the highest suicide rate (state), highest firearm ownership (state) compared to the lowest suicide rate (state) and lowest firearm ownership (state)?

Where I then pointed out that all the states with high firearm ownership and high suicide rates, including the ones you mention, are extremely rural states with low population densities and low amounts spent on suicide prevention?

I've been more than happy to compare the top 5 to bottom 5 or top 10 to bottom 10, and so on. I'm not sure how that is "carefully selected". In fact, the only way to show that more firearms == more homicides is to include Louisiana without including a fair range of other high-firearm ownership states. And that's because Louisiana has a homicide rate almost double the average - it is, as you put it, as "well chosen outlier."

I've also been more than happy to discuss any aspect of firearms in the UK, Japan, China and Australia as they've come up. I Don't think we've ever talked about Denmark in any aspect though.

And since we've shown that A) more firearms != more homicides and B) more firearms in similar population densities != more suicides, please tell us, why is the UK suicide rate as high as the USA's even though they have somewhere between 1,000 and 2million (depending on whose figures you use) firearms in the entire country?

You keep telling us that more firearms == more suicides. So, assuming that the UK is more or less equal to the USA, and since the USA has at least 150 times as many firearms as the UK, you would expect there to be a more significant difference, wouldn't you? (For the record, I don't think the US and UK are equal for a whole variety of reasons - I'd much rather compare American States as I think there are fewer blatant cultural differences, but I didn't bring up other countries - I was simply responding to NateMan.)

I've never understood why so many on the Right in the US want guns but also claim to follow a Christ who said, explicitly, "Turn the other cheek".

I would also like to point out that someone who hangs themselves with a belt, or ingests poison, does not first strangle a bunch of other people with the belt, or go force poison down the throats of roommates.

@30: Please point out one of them.

All this spewing is fun, but avoids the main fact: the greatest public health hazard of gun ownership is the single-issue political dead end it represents. If all the voices and votes of the gun-clutchers went toward something constructive (pick one of dozens of issues), their lives might actually change for the better, along with the rest of America. But they fight this common sense like rabid raccoons because it would clash with Freedum 'n' Indipendance.

People who argue for guns as catch-all Tools Of Freedom are the handmaidens of the 1%. Though gun control is actually a rather peripheral part of our national madness (more a symptom than the disease), I hope we see more of it, especially in Washington. Once we get past the "They took my metal binky!" part, maybe we'll evolve a little. Maybe.

@55, I completely agree.

"If all the voice and votes of the.." gun-grabbers "..went toward something constructive (pick dozens of issues), their lives might actually change for the better, along with the rest of America."

"Gun control is actually a rather peripheral part of our national madness.." And, gun violence is, statistically speaking, on the small end of the scale of things we could be worrying about.

"Once we get past the.." We don't want someone else to have a metal binky! "..part, maybe we'll evolve a little. Maybe."

Thank you, couldn't have put it better myself.