So the best approach is probably expanded background checks, training, testing, and licensing of gun owners.

Like with economics and drug policy, I'm a big believer in demand-side solutions rather than supply-side.

I had thought universal background checks were obtainable this year, but I seem to have been wrong, barring some end-of-year deal that's off of everybody's radar right now (but then again so was DADT). If we can't even do that, we need to really reassess what we can do here.

Most are Republican, but there were about 8 Democrats that voted with them. As Bill Clinton says, those who want fewer guns need to be as single minded in their political determination as those who want expanded gun rights.

It seems like we accept it as a matter of choice, rather than seeing it as a preventable outcome of distress associated with a transient crisis.

Of course assumptions in any direction about specific persons aren't going to always be correct...

Adults vs kids? Which might be translatable to owners vs non-owners? Proper, secured storage of firearms easily takes away the ability for them to be used in suicides for the non-owners.

US is 18th on the list of suicide rates by country (here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html ) and I am guessing that every country above us on the list has much more strict gun control than we do (and less guns in general).

You can try to control one tool people use to kill themselves, a noble goal to be sure, but it does not seem to do much good elsewhere in the world.

You could point to 'people in the US use guns to kill themselves more than anywhere else in the world' but that really doesn't mean anything since, obviously, people all over the world manage to kill themselves quite well using other methods.

So let's say the magic gun fairy appears and hands all your weapons to the tea party folks in government (we only trust people in government with guns, and since liberals are supposed to hate guns and the people who choose to own them the only people left to give them to are the rw'ers in government. Comforting thought I am sure for some.) Now people are still killing themselves, using differing methods (knives, overdose, cars, by cop, etc). Now which method should we attempt to control?

20 die a day. Out of 300,000,000+ people. The other 299,000,080 are not misusing guns they own (if they do - more like 50,000,000 who own them). Should we base things on what the few are doing or the many? A few misuse many things, so we have laws making what they do and not what they have illegal.

The solution is not more controlling of others, it is implementing solutions to the core problems people face that result in the doing such things.

That leaves 299,999,998 other users of water who don't have anything wrong with them. But you better believe we all have to obey regulations about what can go in water because of that.

Guns included - example, you aren't allowed to shoot a gun at others or at yourself.

So we need to think of something else.

I'm not advocating a particular policy; I'm advocating that we make handguns and suicide front and center of whatever gun policy we do put forward.

Because there will always be a method.

I get what you are saying. Back when I was a deputy I had my share of suicide watches on the 3rd floor (and sometimes the 6th, which was protective custody area). We took away anything they could use outside of a bed sheet. Pens, metal trays for food, plastic knives, etc.

That won't work in a huge country

That's what's driving our abnormally high gun death rate. Not crime, not drugs, not gangs. Suicide. We need to fix it.

I know there are huge cultural and gender differences in suicide methods, but isn't the overall rate at least somewhat consistent across national boundaries?

I suspect that people who really want to die find a way. A young man my dad knew killed himself decades ago with a shotgun by aiming it at his head and pulling the trigger with his toe.

As a classic example, putting up netting on just one side of a bridge also stops suicides on the other side. Go figure.

Having a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide, so removing that gun decreases the risk (I have no idea if it decreases the risk of suicide attempts -- that would be good data to find -- but since the "success" rate with guns is higher than any other method, that at least makes sense).

For parents whose children have suicided. You do not want any guns in your home of any type no matter how well you think you have them locked up.