OH no, he is Jason the… custodian isn’t the right word. He is the head guy who cleans an fixes stuff at his kid elementary school.
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When did that ever happen?
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A good start would be to repeal the second amendment. Americans have shown time and again that they cannot be trusted with guns.
I would be satisfied with much smaller changes, eg an efficiently enforced decision to outlaw civilian ownership of automatic weapons.
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I mean, it’s already the case - e.g. the shooting where the student pulled the fire alarm to get kids out of classrooms, because he knew the active shooter drills. The fact that these “solutions” have already been invalidated before they were even proposed doesn’t seem to stop anyone, weirdly.
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Maybe, but the evidence proves that “wanting to kill yourself” isn’t remotely the same as “actually kill yourself” when certain means are taken off the table. That is, many of those who want to kill themselves (often in a relatively brief moment of dispair) don’t end up doing so when guns aren’t around. The “number of people wanting to kill themselves” may remain the same, but the important thing is: they don’t.
Again: we know for a fact that the dynamics (of violence, of suicide) are fundamentally different once readily-available guns are involved. It’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
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It’s amazing the hoops the majority has to jump through so that the neurotic minority can possess lethal weapons.
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These would never go off accidently during a fire.
Money is merely a tool, a construct with no value other than what we humans choose to afford it. GREED is the true culprit, along with a lack of empathy for anyone else.
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That’d fuck up most of our comments around here…
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Similarly someone could wait until school is starting or almost over, or wait for recess, prom, a school trip, etc.
A school could enact “solutions” for all those scenarios but it still fails to address why the problem is there in the first place. Obviously i’m preaching to the choir here on that.
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Good luck with ever getting that to happen.
Your charts end at 2013. Not only is the data sorely outdated, using age adjusted populations for gun deaths seems incredibly disingenuous.
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If you mean…“with guns,” then that is only true if you needlessly discard solutions that reduce access to guns.
It’s not magic. It’s policy. We know it is doable because it’s been done.
There has been a great deal of investment in understanding the triggers and resolution of suicide attempts. There are two areas that are ripe for progress: 1. eliminating the societal stigmas against mental illness and seeking help; and 2. getting people through that first 5-7 minutes after the onset of the suicidal impulse. A key to #2 is reducing access to guns. They are one of the only means of immediately acting on the suicidal impulse.
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Good eye, didn’t notice that. I will try to dig up newer figures, though I know the CDC takes a couple years to release reports. IIRC last year the NSSF said that the accident rate was the lowest it has been. I’ll try to confirm newer stats.
The 2nd chart is from MotherJones, and appears to get their stats also from the CDC. I can try to find newer stats for the last several years, but like I said, the stats take a few years to be published, so 2016 might be the newest we have.
The over all point: Accidents down, suicides up, homicides down - stand even if I haven’t posted the newest data.
I conceded the point that guns make suicides easier and more likely to succeed. I have acknowledged in the past that there is a correlation with access to firearms making suicides rise. Though it is only one vector, as there are examples of several countries with much tighter gun laws with much higher suicide rates.
Now - what laws, specifically, can one enact to prevent the ~22,000 people a year (.0275% of gun owners) from committing suicide? The drastic step of banning handguns with a forced turn in would probably lower suicide rates. But I am not going to agree that is a prudent measure. If that is ones’ solution good luck with that.
So what other sort law can we enact? Waiting periods? That might stop the first impulse. Licensing? Would help stop the first impulse again.
What about people who have owned guns for years and years already, such as the acquaintance who took his own life a little over a year ago who had both a wife and a sister in law who were MDs, yet, missed all the signs he was suicidal (even after he had tried to OD on something a week before.).
Now, one thing I could see is getting your name frozen in the NICS check if a family member is worried about your safety and willingness to cause self harm. This would need to probably be signed off by an MD of some sort. And with my example above, it won’t stop all of them, but I could see that reducing someone who doesn’t currently own a gun from getting one.
But beyond that, I am curious as to the specific laws one might come up with. “Reducing access to guns” can mean a lot of things.
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Stop proliferation by throttling back firearm sales. Limits on number of firearms per individual. Required licensing for collectors if they want more than 1 or 2 guns. Buybacks. Require firearms to be secured in gun safes unless there is a credible threat to the household or individual. Stop drive-through Concealed Carry.
Not specific to suicide, but absolute ban on anyone with a history of domestic violence owning a gun (including ones already owned). These are the people who are most likely to commit gun violence.
Unpopular doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
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Meanwhile, in Canada there hasn’t been a double-digit mass shooting since 1989, and in Australia, there hasn’t been once since 1996. And both countries have elections, freedom, journalism, dissent, etc. No need for smoke cannons or glass doors: Just actual laws and the will to make them stick. But in America, we waste Tax dollars on this because some people really, really like bang-bang toys, which is idiotic.
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Your over all point is supported by 5 year old data that is manipulated to exclude certain age ranges. That is to say, not really supported at all by the information you provided.
Furthermore, you’re attempt to turn the conversation entirely to suicide is ignoring the elephant in the room.
Civilian vs. Civilian mass murder is being enabled by easy access to powerful firearms. Full stop. It needs to change.
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Yes, all those things. Hell, even just mandatory training, insurance requirements, safety requirements that cover design and manufacturing etc. - i.e. exactly the kinds of things that car owners have to deal with - would make a difference. But yeah, there are a lot of things that would have an impact, and just throwing one’s hands up and saying, “Oh, that’s not realistic and/or popular!” is effectively implying, “We just can’t do anything about it!” when that’s not true.
Domestic abusers definitely shouldn’t have guns - the side effect would be to take guns away from a lot of cops, too…
And lives - don’t forget the lives! Lots and lots of wasted lives.
Turning the gun violence conversation to gun suicides to say, “Oh, gun suicides, there’s nothing we can do/those people would kill themselves anyways!” doesn’t even work as intended. For one, we have studies that show when a ubiquitous, easily-accessible means of suicide is eliminated or made less accessible, suicide rates go down - and stay down, long term. The elephant in the room is that easy access to guns increases incidents of both violence against other people and suicides.
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American’s didn’t even blink at Sandy Hook. The idea that our gun obsession wastes money might engage even the most reptilian-brained bang-bang toy fetishists.
Side note: I’d love it if we taxed the living holy hell out of ammo and guns. But, say, maybe in a way where your first gun was tax-free, the second at 8%, the third at 15%, and on and on to a point where if you want to buy your tenth gun, 100% of its cost will be levied in taxes for cops, gun buy-backs, etc, etc. You have the right to bear arms; you don’t have the right to be some creepy collector who can have unlimited weapons without some social and economic cost.
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