More Mass shootings

[heironymouspasparagus]

Oh yeah. My dad, while he was an conspiracy theory loving uber-liberal semi-reformed hippy with a PHD among other degrees, he was from Oklahoma and always had guns. Heir on here always reminds me of my dad. One of his guns was a sawed off shotgun in the closet for self defense. the only living thing he ever shot with it was a goat he bought when we lived in rural central Florida (he was teaching at U of Florida at the time) so he wouldn't have to the mow the yard. The damn goat wouldn't eat grass but always ate all the bark off my dad's beloved Kumquat and Orange trees. And the goat was mean. So one afternoon after too many beers watching football he decided to shoot the goat. Ran around the house chasing the goat with my mother screaming at him to put the gun down. Bad day for the goat. We got a riding lawnmower after that.

My mom's side of the family all the men were career military officers. Air Force, but they still had guns.

I was a Boy Scout, got all the gun related merit badges, won a lot of marksmanship awards too. I've shot most everything. All kinds of hand guns, AK-47, AR-15, but I won't have a gun in the house while we have kids in the house.

I'm not saying we should ban all guns. But there need to be actions we can take. Let's study the issue.

It has been studied to death.  2/3 of gun deaths are suicides - and if they are going to that extreme, a handful of the right pills will do the same thing and a prescription of oxycodone is easier to get for most.  And then when you actually look at the numbers that I referred to, when you take black on black crime out, there is a huge decrease again.  That 16:1 ratio is real.  Which tells us that the REAL problem is NOT the guns but the lack of opportunity - all opportunities at all levels - for a huge portion of one race's young men.  As we have also studied to death with NO real action being taken to correct any of the well known issues.

When all the "success" you see around you is related to drug profits, what lesson does one learn?  Drug business.  It is insane.  And we continue the insanity at every level. 

It ain't the guns - that is a way too obvious symptom - but NOT the root cause!   And we still try to choose the Drunkard's Search solution.

[swake]

It has been studied to death.  2/3 of gun deaths are suicides - and if they are going to that extreme, a handful of the right pills will do the same thing and a prescription of oxycodone is easier to get for most.  And then when you actually look at the numbers that I referred to, when you take black on black crime out, there is a huge decrease again.  That 16:1 ratio is real.  Which tells us that the REAL problem is NOT the guns but the lack of opportunity - all opportunities at all levels - for a huge portion of one race's young men.  As we have also studied to death with NO real action being taken to correct any of the well known issues.

When all the "success" you see around you is related to drug profits, what lesson does one learn?  Drug business.  It is insane.  And we continue the insanity at every level.  

It ain't the guns - that is a way too obvious symptom - but NOT the root cause!   And we still try to choose the Drunkard's Search solution.

First, the government is specifically banned from studying gun violence.

Second. It IS the gun when it comes to suicide. You mentioned pills: overdose/poisoning is the most common way to attempt suicide. Guns are the most common way to be successful.

When a person attempts suicide with a gun they are successful 82.5% of the time.
The two most common ways to attempt suicide are overdose/poisoning, which is successful only 1.5% of the time; and cutting/piercing, which is successful only 1.2% of the time.

70% of people that survive a suicide attempt never attempt again and 93% will end up not dying by suicide.

Suicides in the 15 U.S. States with the Highest vs. the 6 U.S. States with the Lowest Average Household Gun Ownership (2000-2002)

                               High-Gun States       Low-Gun States,
Population                     39 million                   40 million
Gun Ownership                  47%                            15%
Firearm Suicide                 9,749                           2,606
Non-Firearm Suicide          5,060                           5,446
Total Suicide                    14,809                          8,052

The lethality of the attempt method is a huge driver of our number of successful suicides.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survival/

[TeeDub]

Are we banning guns to stop suicides now?   This argument has gone off the rails somewhere.

It seems like no matter the argument to ban guns, it seems to be a treatment for the symptoms, not the root cause.

[swake]

Are we banning guns to stop suicides now?   This argument has gone off the rails somewhere.

It seems like no matter the argument to ban guns, it seems to be a treatment for the symptoms, not the root cause.

I'm not advocating banning guns, just pointing out the risk of having a gun in the home and in particular the impact the presence of a gun has on suicides.  Several thousand people die a year because they have access to gun during a suicide attempt that would very likely live if they did not.

Several hundred people die each year in gun accidents.

For homicides 35% of victims are related or in a relationship with the killer. Most of those wouldn't end in death without a gun present. Another 5% of homicides are between friends. Most of those likely wouldn't end in death without a gun. Another 40% of murders the victim knows the killer as an acquaintance, coworker or neighbor. Some of these would not end in death without a gun present.

Only a small minority of gun deaths have anything to do with criminal activity. 75% or more are suicide, accident or crimes of passion that the presence of a gun makes you less safe.

https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4557

[Conan71]

I'm not advocating banning guns, just pointing out the risk of having a gun in the home and in particular the impact the presence of a gun has on suicides.  Several thousand people die a year because they have access to gun during a suicide attempt that would very likely live if they did not.

Several hundred people die each year in gun accidents.

For homicides 35% of victims are related or in a relationship with the killer. Most of those wouldn't end in death without a gun present. Another 5% of homicides are between friends. Most of those likely wouldn't end in death without a gun. Another 40% of murders the victim knows the killer as an acquaintance, coworker or neighbor. Some of these would not end in death without a gun present.

Only a small minority of gun deaths have anything to do with criminal activity. 75% or more are suicide, accident or crimes of passion that the presence of a gun makes you less safe.

https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4557

Many drug-related suicides are likely called "unintentional overdose" when the intention is completely unknown to the writer of the death certificate but was completely intentional by the decedent.  In my personal experience of people I've known who couldn't take it anymore, 100% of the attempted suicides by hanging were 100% successful and they seem to be about equal with the number of successful gun suicides of people I've known who chose that route.  People who chose to go about it at a slower pace with years of alcohol or drug abuse have so far been pretty successful at ending their painful life not quite as abruptly as other quicker methods they could choose.

People who are looking for attention take a handful of Tylenol or a shallow slash across the wrists.  People generally choose a gun, a jump from a high object, jumping in front of a vehicle, or hanging because they are just done.  I'm sure there's people who given 24 hours to cool off without a gun in reach might not have done it.  There's probably equal numbers who chose an alternate method of suicide we could be talking about in the present tense if they would have only taken 24 hours to cool off.  Yet again, there are people who commit suicide by years of deliberate poor life choices which finally result in their death, perhaps not as quickly as they would have liked.

The fact of the matter is, some people are completely committed to going out and some are seeking attention.  According to this article from Psychology Today which I believe we can all agree is not typically a publication stained by political bias, Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and one of the lowest gun ownership rates.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-new-brain/201607/fact-check-gun-control-and-suicide

This argument is much like how to deal with poor educational outcomes.  The easy answer on education is to pour more money into a system where many indicators of student failures lie within the family structure, failed social structures, or students with emotional and mental issues.  Increasing teacher and administrative pay doesn't seem like a logical solution when there are bigger social issues at hand but social issues take hard work and hard choices American society doesn't seem to have the fortitude to deal with.

Restricting gun ownership is somewhere between a lazy and irrational solution to deal with mental illness.  People are literally dying every day because they cannot get the mental health help they need and because we have probably made the bar too high for invountary commitment for inpatient treatment.  It is an embarrassment that we make mental health services hard to obtain or that we consider forcing treatment on the most mentally ill to be some sort of civil rights violation while we argue about limiting a single manifestation of mental illness while paying lip service to actually dealing with the underlying disease.

[swake]

Many drug-related suicides are likely called "unintentional overdose" when the intention is completely unknown to the writer of the death certificate but was completely intentional by the decedent.  In my personal experience of people I've known who couldn't take it anymore, 100% of the attempted suicides by hanging were 100% successful and they seem to be about equal with the number of successful gun suicides of people I've known who chose that route.  People who chose to go about it at a slower pace with years of alcohol or drug abuse have so far been pretty successful at ending their painful life not quite as abruptly as other quicker methods they could choose.

People who are looking for attention take a handful of Tylenol or a shallow slash across the wrists.  People generally choose a gun, a jump from a high object, jumping in front of a vehicle, or hanging because they are just done.  I'm sure there's people who given 24 hours to cool off without a gun in reach might not have done it.  There's probably equal numbers who chose an alternate method of suicide we could be talking about in the present tense if they would have only taken 24 hours to cool off.  Yet again, there are people who commit suicide by years of deliberate poor life choices which finally result in their death, perhaps not as quickly as they would have liked.

The fact of the matter is, some people are completely committed to going out and some are seeking attention.  According to this article from Psychology Today which I believe we can all agree is not typically a publication stained by political bias, Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and one of the lowest gun ownership rates.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-new-brain/201607/fact-check-gun-control-and-suicide

This argument is much like how to deal with poor educational outcomes.  The easy answer on education is to pour more money into a system where many indicators of student failures lie within the family structure, failed social structures, or students with emotional and mental issues.  Increasing teacher and administrative pay doesn't seem like a logical solution when there are bigger social issues at hand but social issues take hard work and hard choices American society doesn't seem to have the fortitude to deal with.

Restricting gun ownership is somewhere between a lazy and irrational solution to deal with mental illness.  People are literally dying every day because they cannot get the mental health help they need and because we have probably made the bar too high for invountary commitment for inpatient treatment.  It is an embarrassment that we make mental health services hard to obtain or that we consider forcing treatment on the most mentally ill to be some sort of civil rights violation while we argue about limiting a single manifestation of mental illness while paying lip service to actually dealing with the underlying disease.

This is from the study I linked to:
Fatality rate by suicide method:
Gun – 82.5%
Drowning – 65.9%
Hanging – 61.4%
Poison by gas – 41.5%
Jump – 34.5%
Poison Ingestion – 1.5%
Cut/pierce – 1.2%
Other – 8%

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-fatality/

[TeeDub]

This is from the study I linked to:
Fatality rate by suicide method:
Gun – 82.5%
Drowning – 65.9%
Hanging – 61.4%
Poison by gas – 41.5%
Jump – 34.5%
Poison Ingestion – 1.5%
Cut/pierce – 1.2%
Other – 8%

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-fatality/

Not to discount the effectiveness of the method, but maybe gun suicides are just more serious.   (ie. Not just a cry for attention, but rather really trying to kill themselves.)   Who's to say that without guns, it wouldn't just raise the death percentages of the other methods?

I can't imagine that those shooting themselves are EVER just a cry for attention.

[swake]

Not to discount the effectiveness of the method, but maybe gun suicides are just more serious.   (ie. Not just a cry for attention, but rather really trying to kill themselves.)   Who's to say that without guns, it wouldn't just raise the death percentages of the other methods?

I can't imagine that those shooting themselves are EVER just a cry for attention.

That's what this data was trying to determine:
Suicides in the 15 U.S. States with the Highest vs. the 6 U.S. States with the Lowest Average Household Gun Ownership (2000-2002)

                                High-Gun States       Low-Gun States,
Population                     39 million                   40 million
Gun Ownership                  47%                            15%
Firearm Suicide                 9,749                           2,606
Non-Firearm Suicide          5,060                           5,446
Total Suicide                    14,809                          8,052

Higher gun ownership led to more successful suicides overall for relatively the same population. In states with fewer guns there wasn't substantial rise in successful non-gun suicides.

[TeeDub]

USA
Drug overdose, the most widely used method in suicide attempts, is fatal in less than 3 percent of cases.
(From your Harvard source.)

UK
Apparently hanging is much more popular...   35% of women kill themselves by overdosing.   Unfortunately I can't find anywhere if that is higher (or lower) than the 3% number.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2016registration

[Conan71]

This is from the study I linked to:
Fatality rate by suicide method:
Gun – 82.5%
Drowning – 65.9%
Hanging – 61.4%
Poison by gas – 41.5%
Jump – 34.5%
Poison Ingestion – 1.5%
Cut/pierce – 1.2%
Other – 8%

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-fatality/

Still, the point remains: guns don't cause suicide, mental illness and depression does.  Clearly, we have a mental health epidemic we are not properly addressing.

Japan started an initiative to combat their high suicide rate and stats show they have made progress:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/30/national/social-issues/preventive-efforts-seen-helping-2016-saw-another-decline-suicides-japan-21897/#.Wdv_qEyZPq0''

The #1 method in Japan is hanging.  Gun ownership is quite low there.  Is it because it's hard to regulate belts, rope, garments, sheets, etc. or that the government of Japan realizes it's a mental health epidemic and not ownership of things one can hang themselves with so that is why they went after the root cause and have made progress.

[swake]

Still, the point remains: guns don't cause suicide, mental illness and depression does.  Clearly, we have a mental health epidemic we are not properly addressing.

Japan started an initiative to combat their high suicide rate and stats show they have made progress:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/30/national/social-issues/preventive-efforts-seen-helping-2016-saw-another-decline-suicides-japan-21897/#.Wdv_qEyZPq0''

The #1 method in Japan is hanging.  Gun ownership is quite low there.  Is it because it's hard to regulate belts, rope, garments, sheets, etc. or that the government of Japan realizes it's a mental health epidemic and not ownership of things one can hang themselves with so that is why they went after the root cause and have made progress.

Guns don't cause suicide. But suicidal crises are almost always transitory, that's why if you can survive an attempt 93% of the time you will not end up ending your life with a suicide. But guns in the hands of a suicidal person ends a life more than 80% of the time instead of less than 2% of the time with the most common attempt methods, pills and cutting. The gun doesn't cause the suicide attempt, but it damn sure makes it successful almost every time.

If you have a gun in your home you are at risk of a gun accident, the risk of which is basically zero without a gun.

If you have a gun in your home you are three times more likely to die of suicide.

If you have a gun in your home you are two times more likely to be murdered.

A gun in your home does not make you safer. It makes you much, much less safe.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gun-suicide/gun-access-tied-to-greater-suicide-murder-risk-study-idUSBREA0J1G920140120

[Conan71]

Guns don't cause suicide. But suicidal crises are almost always transitory, that's why if you can survive an attempt 93% of the time you will not end up ending your life with a suicide. But guns in the hands of a suicidal person ends a life more than 80% of the time instead of less than 2% of the time with the most common attempt methods, pills and cutting. The gun doesn't cause the suicide attempt, but it damn sure makes it successful almost every time.

If you have a gun in your home you are at risk of a gun accident, the risk of which is basically zero without a gun.

If you have a gun in your home you are three times more likely to die of suicide.

If you have a gun in your home you are two times more likely to be murdered.

A gun in your home does not make you safer. It makes you much, much less safe.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gun-suicide/gun-access-tied-to-greater-suicide-murder-risk-study-idUSBREA0J1G920140120

Guns in the hands of responsible owners DO make them more safe in the event of a home invasion or an attack out in public.  Guns when not in the hands of their responsible owners are unloaded and locked up.

Guns in the hands of morons and irresponsible gun owners results in accidental deaths and injuries.  Someone who really wants to end it and doesn't have access to a gun will have good chances of success with a rope.

Hanging is a very successful method of suicide.  If guns didn't exist on a large scale in the U.S. I suspect hanging would become the #1 cause as it is in Japan. 

You can keep repeating this meme, but it doesn't apply to all gun owners.  From the article you cited, the expert on injury prevention from Hahvahd says most people are NOT murdered with their own gun.  I also note from your story that the latest analysis involves previously published studies from 1988 through 2005.  So the latest research seems to be about 12 years old.

In an accompanying editorial, David Hemenway writes that gun access may not have increased the likelihood of death from homicide as much as suicide because most people are not murdered with their own gun.

Hemenway is an expert on injury prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

He also told Reuters Health the new analysis may underestimate the relationship between gun access and deaths because it only included studies comparing individuals and not large populations. But he agreed with the main finding.

"I would argue that there's not nearly enough research in the firearm area," Hemenway said. "But if there is one thing we know, that's it."

The researchers point out the analysis is only as reliable as the studies themselves, and some could have been flawed in the way they collected information on deaths and gun ownership.

Certainly the gun homicide rate in Chicago would be a lot less with less guns on the streets, but even with tough gun laws in Chicago, the guns are making it to the streets.  Guns are only the tool by which people are dying in Chicago.  There's an underlying issue which is causing all these deaths.  Much as there's are underlying issues which account for our high suicide rate.  But you want to keep ducking that issue and apparently so do our policy makers.

[swake]

Guns in the hands of responsible owners DO make them more safe in the event of a home invasion or an attack out in public.  Guns when not in the hands of their responsible owners are unloaded and locked up.

Guns in the hands of morons and irresponsible gun owners results in accidental deaths and injuries.  Someone who really wants to end it and doesn't have access to a gun will have good chances of success with a rope.

Hanging is a very successful method of suicide.  If guns didn't exist on a large scale in the U.S. I suspect hanging would become the #1 cause as it is in Japan.  

You can keep repeating this meme, but it doesn't apply to all gun owners.  From the article you cited, the expert on injury prevention from Hahvahd says most people are NOT murdered with their own gun.  I also note from your story that the latest analysis involves previously published studies from 1988 through 2005.  So the latest research seems to be about 12 years old.

Certainly the gun homicide rate in Chicago would be a lot less with less guns on the streets, but even with tough gun laws in Chicago, the guns are making it to the streets.  Guns are only the tool by which people are dying in Chicago.  There's an underlying issue which is causing all these deaths.  Much as there's are underlying issues which account for our high suicide rate.  But you want to keep ducking that issue and apparently so do our policy makers.

You missed the study then that I have cited twice. ~40 million people live in states with the highest rates of gun ownership and ~40 million live in the states with the lowest rates of gun ownership. There are 46% fewer deaths due to suicides in the low ownership states and it due to the vastly larger number of suicides by gun. These aren't small numbers. It's thousands more deaths.

Again:
                              High-Gun States       Low-Gun States,
Population                     39 million                   40 million
Gun Ownership                  47%                            15%
Firearm Suicide                 9,749                           2,606
Non-Firearm Suicide          5,060                           5,446
Total Suicide                    14,809                          8,052

You may not like the facts, but this what the facts are. And a responsible gun owner can become depressed, or angry or drunk and turn into an irresponsible gun owner very quickly.

As for Chicago, The gun laws in Chicago are irrelevant when the south side of Chicago is just 10-15 miles from Indiana, where gun laws are very, very loose.

But yes, let's study. Overturn the laws that make it illegal for the CDC to study gun violence.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Are we banning guns to stop suicides now?   This argument has gone off the rails somewhere.

It seems like no matter the argument to ban guns, it seems to be a treatment for the symptoms, not the root cause.

Exactly.  As I have mentioned repeatedly here and elsewhere.

[heironymouspasparagus]

First, the government is specifically banned from studying gun violence.

Second. It IS the gun when it comes to suicide. You mentioned pills: overdose/poisoning is the most common way to attempt suicide. Guns are the most common way to be successful.

When a person attempts suicide with a gun they are successful 82.5% of the time.
The two most common ways to attempt suicide are overdose/poisoning, which is successful only 1.5% of the time; and cutting/piercing, which is successful only 1.2% of the time.

70% of people that survive a suicide attempt never attempt again and 93% will end up not dying by suicide.

Suicides in the 15 U.S. States with the Highest vs. the 6 U.S. States with the Lowest Average Household Gun Ownership (2000-2002)

                               High-Gun States       Low-Gun States,
Population                     39 million                   40 million
Gun Ownership                  47%                            15%
Firearm Suicide                 9,749                           2,606
Non-Firearm Suicide          5,060                           5,446
Total Suicide                    14,809                          8,052

The lethality of the attempt method is a huge driver of our number of successful suicides.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survival/

You are trying very hard to come around to the right way to look at this, but just can't see to quite get over that last little step to enlightenment - gun deaths ARE a symptom - NOT the cause!

You bring up suicides and how less successful they would be without guns, but the reality is MUCH different.  Conan posted a link about Japan's suicides - huge problem.  They have MORE per year than we have gun suicides (21,000+ in 2016) and they have essentially no guns in the country comparatively.  We have about 19,000+.  They have 125 million people - or about 1/3 our population.  So they have 10% more successful suicides by actual count with 1/3 the people - guns aren't the problem nor the solution.   To paraphrase a Jurassic Park comment - death finds a way!


We do an abysmal job of addressing mental health issues in this country, and not likely to change.  The big lie behind all the gun regulation clown show is that IF the gun regulators were truly concerned about real people and real problems, they would be working to address the big problem - NOT just try to treat a symptom.

But they aren't - they have an anti-gun agenda and are full steam ahead regardless of reality.