The post says a bunch of counselors all agreed that most mid western home have guns. What other deadly items did they have? Oh okay, just ban everything in the mid west.

unfettered? {sarcasm thingy}

you find the same thing. rural US, Canadians, and Norwegians may be using guns but rural Japanese and Brits are not. Certainly not Japanese and South Koreans.

As someone who's lost three friends to suicide, I can't begin to say how disgusted I am when people use it as a means to attack gun ownership.

Suicide has nothing to do with gun ownership. It has everything to do with mental health and the horrible lack of treatment options here in America. If you're really concerned about suicide, let's work for a system of single payer healthcare so all Americans have access to the same healthcare that the 1% enjoys! Let's do something about bullying in schools! Let's work to change our attitudes toward those with mental and emotional problems so they don't feel isolated and driven to end their own lives.

(BTW: As far as my friends, one slashed his wrists while the other two O.D'ed on drugs, one definitely deliberately.).

more guns, laxer guns laws, welcome donations from right wing gun lobbies, etc., will never support real health care reform, mental health improvements, etc.

Like the one my friend used to slash his wrists. Maybe we should ban them, too?

And we already have laws against cocaine and heroin. Please tell me how our stupid drug laws saved my other two friends. Oh, that's right! They didn't!

I don't care whether someone likes guns or not. If you don't like them, that's fine. But don't go using suicide as an excuse because those are two separate issues. And like I said, it's a scumbag appeal.

I'm a proud gun owner and I'm sure I've done more than most anti-gun owners to educate people on suicide and try to prevent it than those who would use the pretense of concern over suicide as an excuse to trample others' rights.

...of false imagery...

as your being chased by demon possessed large caliber firearms.

Run Hoyt , Run!

If you think your balls are big enough, feel free to come for visit!

From Wikipedia: Greenspoint Mall - Greenspoint area became notorious for its high crime rate. Houstonians began to derisively refer to the once-booming area as "Gunspoint." In 1994

...and field stripping 1911's underwater?

Do you wear your anti-gun superhero cape and costume to bed at night?

Well, unless you are going to shoot a man trying to take your wallet.

Nope, and I don't sleep with a gun either.

When he realized we were evenly matched, gun for gun, he decided my wallet was worth less than his life.

The lesson he learned was: if you plan on robbing someone, have your weapon out of your baggy ass britches LONG before your trained "victim" can draw his!

And yes, I would have shot him stone cold dead to protect myself, my wallet or any other possession of mine had he so much as squeezed out an uncontrollable fart.

I assume you would blame that on me?
Seriously?
That's about the most ignorant comment Ive ever seen from you!
I can't tell if your 15 with no brains or 80 and senile.

I don't give the last two drops worth of my first mornings piss what you think, baggy ass britches is exactly what he was wearing.

I work in the Greenspoint area of Houston, look it up, not a real safe area of town.

You can preach all you want about "gun fanatics", but the truth is you have know clue what you are talking about.

You see, WE live in the real world, and the REAL world is not a very safe place these days.

So you had sit there in your mothers basement and sing along with John all you want, but it ain't gonna change reality!

The first time a POS beats your ass into a 4 week hospital visit for the hundred dollar bill in your wallet, you'll change your mind about self defense, I did!

Your neighbors will arm up and the next thing you know we have the private citizen version of an arms race. We actually have that now to some extent.

I live in the real world too -- where a little sense keeps one safe. Sold my mom's basement along with the house to pay debts when she died.

I've lived longer than you and no one has beaten the chit out of me in quite awhile. In fact, I've had several encounters with friggin guns -- in all cases, it was so-called law-abiding Aholes who tried to use them to intimidate.

Had a few other encounters, that a little sense took care of the situation quickly and without loss of life or resorting to a gun. It's too tempting to pull the gun over a wallet when you tote, especially when you have a chip on your solder and mistrust anyone with "baggy pants," as you put it.

You're inferring that law abiding citizens are somehow responsible for crime?

You really expect ANYONE to have ANY respect for ANYTHING you say after that statement?

You REALLY need medication, or REALLY need less medication.

"especially when you have a chip on your solder and mistrust anyone with "baggy pants," as you put it."

There you go again, talking out your ass.

Get the facts before you open you pie hole.

The goofy little dip shit approached me as I was getting out of my car, lifted his T-shirt to show me his pistol and stated he wanted my wallet and watch!

I offered him something he wasn't expecting, but you're right, I had a chip on my shoulder and I had no reason to mistrust him at that point!

First of all, we aren't seeing that. In spite of decades of ever-more-liberal concealed carry laws, and ever-increasing numbers of firearms in circulation, violent crime has continued to decline over the same period of time.

By your logic, we would expect violent crime to increase. It hasn't. Maybe there is something wrong with your logic.

Second of all, it sounds like what you are proposing, then, is that we should all just submit to criminals so that we can hope that they won't visit violence upon us. You are free to try that approach if you like, but don't expect or force others to join in.

Seriously, are you for real?

Well, I might feel a little bad for two or three seconds...

You think the contents of your wallet are worth killing for. Oh boy.

why do you assume that giving him my wallet will keep me safe? There are thugs out there killing people for "disrespecting" them - I will never assume a criminal has no intention of hurting me.

You decide what you do, not me, not the government, just you. I don't trust criminals and I don't trust anyone who is carrying a loaded gun. I trust my judgement, that's all I have. You should never assume anything in life, including, that by carrying a gun, you are in some way going to better your chances of living a peaceful life. If your lifestyle brings you into contact with these kinds of people, then I can understand your need to carry.

from thousands. Am I not correct?

and possibly put him on the street, perhaps. The fact that giving up the wallet is no guaranteeing that the robber won't kill him just for the hell of it? Yeah.

Are you serious? First of all, he's already on the street, but secondly and seriously, how could losing a wallet put a family on the street? Some guy carrying his paycheck in cash? Who does that anymore? I'm sure a few might, but for the thieves, the pickings would be rather slim. There are people out there who kill for the hell of it. Not too many of those are robbers/muggers. Those who kill for the hell of it are mentally deranged, they are sociopaths and psychopaths. Very unlikely that having a gun would help during one of those encounters.

and working poor, which is rapidly become a distinction without a difference, don't have bank accounts.

Are they trading in their bank accounts for handguns to protect their empty wallets? Makes no sense. Why would the working poor not have bank accounts? I know lots of working poor. I don't know anyone over the age of ten without a bank account.

in the south, many don't. Part of it has to do with min. balance etc. I take it you haven't noticed Wal Mart and other places making money off of cashing pay checks.
They are also the least likely to have a CCW. In the west, they might own a pistol, usually long guns. In the south, they are more likely to own just a long gun if any, if they live in a rural area. In an urban area, no they would not own any.

But yes, there are check cashing places. Point is, though, that anyone reduced to that kind of poverty is unlikely to be protecting his wallet with a gun. So, I find it hard to imagine anyone doing so, in this day and age, when the only time one is vulnerable is at an ATM, which has cameras and lights and hopefully, users who keep their antennae up. Bottom line, to get mugged, you've really got to work on it.
Think about it. If you were a robber, who would you rob? A poor guy who just cashed his measly paycheck and might fight you to the death, because he has kids to feed, or a convenience store with a nice fat cash register?

But if I were a robber, liquor stores are always popular. A better target would be gated community resident who moved from NY to get away from the snow and grand kids.

I'm having a hard time figuring out why you don't like that solution.

I have no desire to kill anyone over material shit and I have no desire to spend the rest of my days in prison. Of course you're having a hard time, because your way is not a solution. I hope you never get to realize that, but I've heard many read the same lines.

Typical gun nut.

You have already decided I'm a bad person because I dared to question your bona fides, how about producing some evidence to prove it?

if you have the cojones to do so.

Who is the aggressor and who is the victim?

What state of mind is the aggressor in when robbing/stealing by knife/firearm? What right does a criminal have to infringe on my privacy, safety, and possessions?

but what do you mean when you say "I'm a proud gun owner"? What's with the "pride" thing? I sometimes hear folk say "I'm a proud parent or grandparent", but "proud gun owner", WTF?

How does an accident of birth justify pride?

For most of us, our children are not an "accident of birth", they are young humans whom we raise and nurture and, if and when they accomplish goals, we are proud of them. Pride is an emotion.
What makes you proud of your guns? Is it because they go bang when you pull the trigger? What is this emotional attachment you have to a killing tool?

would be to convince those progressives who do support health care reform to abandon gun control, because it is toxic to their careers and it doesn't actually help anyone. Let's focus on things we can agree on and make some positive changes.

You could be wrong.........................again.

Cousin Steve: Drug dependent/drug culture; shotgun in the mouth. Severly depressed.

Sister#1: Attempted carbon monoxide in the garage; middle of an ugly divorce/child custody w/a biker husband who smacked her around. (no gun). Courts were totally useless in stopping the abuse during and after the divorce.

Uncle V: Death by alcohol and car, severe PTSD (WWII). Several prior attempts, finally did himself in. Covered by VA medical.

Someone even closer: Attempted death by pills, teenage depression.

Four of my dad's former co-workers: Death by driving their car into the path of oncoming 18 wheelers; depression, lost jobs at the steel plant.

Random college students have taken dives from the top of various college buildings (my campus), I didn't know them personally. But I do know this group did have access to mental health counseling and didn't take advantage of it. Pressure from parents relative to grades seemed to be a common factor.

Depression, drugs, alcohol any questions? Maybe we should legalize drugs so we can increase the blame on guns.

…rather than having them be "part of the furniture".

Surely that is a good idea anyway. Even the NRA agrees. They sell gun safes on their website.

In a house with children, to leave a loaded gun unattended is gross negligence and child endangerment.

To a depressed person, having killing machines as "part of the furniture" may well bring the idea
of death and suicide to the forefront in a way that it would not otherwise be.

I don't like guns, and I don't need guns, so I don't own any.
I recognize your right to own them. Please keep them locked up when you're not using them.

They just can't live.

The OP is insulting to those who have to struggle against the disadvantages of rural life only to have some academic offer up a "tailpipe solution" because it's easier to demonize an inanimate object that to treat people like human beings.

There is a shocking lack of mental health support and resources in this country, especially in rural areas. But when it comes to suicide, there is evidence to suggest that suicide in many cases may be more impulsive and preventable than many people think - suicide survivors often don't try again, or don't make another attempt if balked in their first plan, or report the initial suicidal thoughts only very shortly before the attempt. So making people aware of ways to recognize depression, and of relatively simple ways to discourage the act like locking up firearms, is extremely valuable.

A big difficulty when it comes to firearms, though, is disentangling the policy side from the awareness side. I always think that the real message of articles like this, and all those 'a gun in the house makes you a jillion times more likely to shoot your mom' studies is that individuals need to pay attention to risks and opportunities to reduce them, and that gun owners should make careful assessments of the risk/reward structure in their own personal situations. Unfortunately, those findings too often get spun into support for firearms restrictions. and so the useful stuff gets lost in the noise.

The therapists in the OP report that a '2A' response is common when they suggest locking up guns - that implies that there could be real value in developing a way of communicating that message in a way that doesn't suggest gun control advocacy...

gun culture or depressiong conditions. Who among us has not had thoughts of offing self due to the sheer volume of bullshit swirling down the peublic bowel at an ever slowing rate. less voters on the wrong side of what y'all preach. Fuck it. just give up.

generations of potential carbon footprints stopped in their tracks...

If anything gun culture should make for a happier person.

As for me and my family we're a delightful fucking bunch.

My home as a child we had many instruments of death, without any death, same for my fathers boyhood home, and his fathers, and his fathers...death spewers about by the dozens and dozens on our family farm. I'm a first generation gunsafe owner.


On the other hand, I've had four friends (travis, david, mark and Zack) who have used firearms to cut their days short. (mark was an adult)

Two weeks ago my SIL's brother took his own life, a month prior he won a 750k lawsuit against a hospital...one would think happiness would have been the result but alas seems not to be true.

His two kids now live with her.

suicides to happen.

On the opposite side, take a hypothetical situation where allow people who wished to commit suicide could be forced to do it by jumping out of an airplane at 15,000 feet wearing a parachute. Now, each person would have the right to pull the rip cord to save themselves if they were to change their mind on the way down about whether or not they still wished to die.

My guess is that a large percentage of the jumpers would back out of suicide due to the reality of their obvious quick demise. They were given a second chance. But, the person that chose to use a firearm had no such "reconsideration" period.

Suicides can be prevented by intervention. It happens regularly.
If that is correct, it would be safe to say that readily available guns
are dangerous to people with ideations of suicide.

"We hereby declare that all people contemplating suicide must report to the airport in the morning..."

Most of the people I've deal with who are contemplating suicide have given it plenty of thought. I can't go so far as to say they're rational but they've thought it through. The ones that really want to die always will find a method. The ones who don't really want to die generally don't stick a pistol in their mouths and pull the trigger. They try something a bit more dramatic and reversible.

jump out of an airplane. Just trying to make the point that many could be prevented by certain types of intervention.

including the UK, where they blame it on booze.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6213654/Suicide-rates-in-rural-communities-linked-to-number-of-bars-says-study.html
Japan
http://persquaremile.com/2011/04/19/the-counterintuitive-case-of-suicide-and-population-density/
Australia where they look at social isolation and guns
http://www.mcsp.org.au/resources/Suicide-in-rural-and-remote-communities.pdf

If it were just the US, Canada, and maybe Australia where rural gun ownership is common, you might have a half way valid point. Rural UK, not so much. Rural Japan, no fucking way.

My vote is for social isolation and lack of health care.

The Harvard School of Public Health has a good webpage with info about how access to lethal means makes a significant difference when it comes to suicide.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/

the suicide rates are because they are rural, has nothing to do with guns. When actual experiments are done, like Australia and Canada, in 1980s and 1977 respectively, they found that gun suicides dropped slightly. The suicide rate did not. Hanging increased slightly to fill the void. Nice theory, but was kind of debunked by actual experiment.

It's a "study" published in The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, a law review edited by a conservative/libertarian student group at Harvard Law School. It was not peer reviewed, and the people writing it are pro-gun ideologues, neither of whom, to my knowledge, have ever published a peer reviewed study on the effect of guns on suicide.

Also, as I pointed out last time someone brought up this hilarious piece of junk, that "study" actually uses false data...

nt

I read this paper after a pro-gun friend of mine said I should read it...so I did, and followed up many of the sources (I wonder how many people on this thread have done that?). DanTex is correct in saying that this is not a 'Harvard study' in any meaningful sense; it was clearly not peer reviewed, and neither of the writers had or have anything to do with Harvard. Both work for libertarian-leaning 'think tanks': Mauser for the Fraser Institute, and Kates for the Independent Institute. Both of these groups have also published papers 'questioning' the effects of second hand smoke (funded by tobacco companies) and human-driven climate change (funded by oil, lumber and energy companies), and are far from non-partisan. If anyone wanted to read research by actual Harvard professors, there are plenty of papers on the Harvard School of Public Health's website: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/ .. most of which generally directly contradict Kates and Mauser's 'research'.


Even on my first reading, I found several easily verified half-truths, cherry picked references, shoddy comparisons, and glaring inconsistencies in this paper. The stat about Luxembourg's murder rate of 9.01 for 2002 jumped out right away to me as an obvious anomaly, if nothing else. Kates and Mauser refer to this figure in two tables and a few times in the text, so it was clearly an important point for them. So I downloaded the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics papers cited in the footnote (the only reference for this figure) from 1997-2004. This annual report is really only about Canadian homicide statistics, and each year gives one small chart of other countries. In all the years I looked into, Luxembourg is only listed in one year, 2002, and indeed there is the 9.01 figure.

One would now assume that any competent and honest researcher would see that this was, at the very least, an unusually high figure for a country like Luxembourg. One might consider checking this number against another source for global homicide data, like say, the UN, which collects and publishes crime data for most of the world's countries annually. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime report for 2002 gives Luxembourg a murder rate of .9 per 100,000 residents. This figure is fully consistent with the preceding and following years for Luxembourg and with other available data sources, and is also consistent with the general low levels of homicide in Western Europe. This also supports what DanTex suggests above, that the number referenced by Kates and Mauser may be just a decimal point error in the JURISTAT table.

Again, one would hope that any researcher would follow up on this obviously odd figure, then find conflicting figures that are consistent with the country's recent history and it's region, and would then not use this statistic! Instead, Kates and Mauser highlight this number several times, and, like DanTex says, really base a substantial part of their argument in those sections on this 'fact'. Kates and Mauser even offer a tepid preemptive concession hidden in the footnotes (a tactic they use frequently throughout the paper), saying that the cited Canadian report "gives no explanation of why it selects the various nations whose homicide statistics it covers. Also without explanation, the nations covered differ from year to year".

To any critical reader, the quoted comment from Kates and Mauser above, and an examination of the source itself and other sources for related data, immediately begs the question, "So why use these stats, when consistent international homicide figures were and are readily and easily available?" A further look at the tables which use the Luxembourg figure shows even more inconsistencies. The only reference given for Table 2, which compares murder rates and handgun ownership rates, gives only the Canadian report as a reference. But nowhere in those cited reports, in any of the years cited, is any homicide stat given for Belarus. So, where did this data come from? A figure like this without any reference (or even worse, an incorrect reference) would never make it past any real peer review.

... and it goes on from there...Kates and Mauser rely heavily on comparisons to Russia in these tables, which they call an industrialized nation in the first pages, as if Russia (particularly in 2002) is ever considered a developed economy on par with Western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan by any typical standard (IMF/ UN/ World Bank reports, GDP per capita etc), not to mention the massive upheaval in Russia and the region during the post-Soviet era of the late 80s and 90s. They say handguns are 'allowed' in Poland, without any sort of explanation or details as to what that means exactly....while in reality Poland before and after this per have had quite tight gun regulations in general, and tighter regulations on handguns. The whole premise of this table, which lists handguns as either 'banned' or 'allowed' without any decent details of what the actual laws are in those countries, is a typical example of the broad stroke, no-depth, skewed and misleading comparisons used throughout Kates and Mauser's paper. They leave out comparisons to the US whenever convenient, such as in this table, which would obviously tilt the data against the authors' intended message. There are more examples I can illustrate if you like...

To me, it's easy to see why the suicide rate is so high.

1) There are no jobs and mosre poverty, which means a higher depression rate.

2) There isn't shit to do, which also doesn't help depression.

3) Drug and alcohol use is extremely high (largely because of 1 and 2).