This was raised in the comments on the gun posts several times, and I didn’t know it, so I looked into it:
“A lot of people, when they think about guns and violence—suicide is just kind of off the radar screen,” said Daniel Webster, the director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University. Webster added: “People think about the gun problem as something that someone else is going to do to them.”
At the heart of this argument is the idea that the vast majority of people who have committed suicide by shooting themselves would have stayed alive if they had not been easily able to pick up a gun. This can be a difficult premise to process. First, it goes against a common intuition about suicide: that someone who wants to end his or her life will find a way to do it by any means necessary. Second, it presents a destabilizing challenge to both sides of the gun control debate, which have traditionally drawn their emotional power from people’s fear of murder.
The figures are stark. One study found that in a group of adolescents in Pittsburgh who died by committing suicide, 72 percent lived in households with guns; among adolescents who attempted suicide but survived, that number was 37 percent. Another found that across the United States, people who committed suicide in a given year were 17 times as likely to have lived in homes with guns as people who did not
Suicide prevention might be an entry point into a better gun debate, because suicide prevention has always been considered a public health issue, not a gun issue. We’ve talked about how public health initiatives can actually change minds and behavior, sometimes in conjunction with regulation, sometimes not. One sees it in seat belt use and drunk driving, but there are also changes in “softer” areas, where there is less regulation. One that comes to mind for me is little kids, sun exposure and skin cancer. My husband spent his early childhood within walking distance of Long Island Sound, and his mother loves the beach. He’s fair-skinned with blue eyes. He burns. She doesn’t burn. She tans. He spent whole summers on the beach with his mother and he got a series of really bad sunburns. He and his brothers joke about it. They put it in the category of them bouncing around unbelted in the back seat of her station wagon. That would be socially unacceptable now, to allow a 5 year old to get seriously sunburned, repeatedly, even my teenage-parent clients are hip to the whole sunblock-hat ordeal for little kids in the summer, but it wasn’t then.
At a summit on gun violence held at Johns Hopkins this past week, Harvard professor Matthew Miller presented a comparison of people living in “high-gun states,” where there are firearms in approximately 50 percent of homes, with those living in “low-gun states,” where that number is around 15 percent. Looking at these two groups of people side by side, Miller showed that they had similar rates of depression and suicidal thoughts, as well as similar rates of suicide that did not involve firearms, like hanging and poisoning. But the number of people who died by shooting themselves was almost four times greater in the high-gun states. In total, there were almost twice as many suicides among people living in high-gun states as there were in low-gun states
In the public-health community, researchers have widely come to regard it as a basic truth that access to a gun makes it more likely that someone who wants to commit suicide actually manages to do so. A big part of the reason is simply the lethality of guns: Studies show that between 85 and 90 percent of people who shoot themselves die as a result, while the percentage of people who die using other means is vastly lower. Alan Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology, points out that guns, unlike other methods, leave people no time to change their minds. They also require less preparation and planning, provided they’re accessible.
“When you ask people who’ve made attempts and survived,” Miller said, “even attempts that are life threatening and would have proved lethal [without emergency medical care], what they say is, ‘It was an impulsive act, and I’m glad that I’m alive.’”
One striking illustration of this principle can be seen in the experience of the Israeli Defense Forces, which saw a 40 percent drop in suicides after a new rule was introduced forbidding soldiers from taking their guns home with them over the weekend. Though some soldiers may have tried to kill themselves using some less lethal method instead, it appears that scores of lives were saved.
General Stuck
It should be obvious, and I agree that having guns around depressed people is going to produce more gun suicides. So what is the remedy for this? Short of confiscating all guns.
jharp
A few months ago in my neighborhood (middle class suburb) a 15 year old and his Mom got into a heated argument. Kid ran to his room , grabbed a shotgun, and blew his brains out.
Very traumatic for the entire neighborhood. I will never forget his Mom writhing on the ground sobbing.
And I have no doubt that kid would be alive today had there not been a gun in the house.
Incitatus for Senate
As someone who has serious trouble with depression, this is exactly why I don’t own a gun. It just makes it too easy.
Kay
@General Stuck:
Well, the “remedy” would be awareness. The whole focus of public health is collecting and then giving people information. It’s 90% of what they do, education. I think there’s a recognition they can’t regulate this area, anymore than they could require state-mandated sun block, but I now can’t take my son to daycare in the summer at the Y without bringing his sunblock, because they go to the pool every day. It’s not a law, it’s a norm. It’s “soft”.
Robin G.
This isn’t complicated. Slitting your wrists or overdosing on pills takes time, both to act (filling the bathtub and making the incision, which isn’t easy, or collecting all your bottles and swallowing mouthful at a time) and to sit around and wait to die. There’s lots of opportunities to change your mind and/or get caught. It’s also harder to succeed. You might just make yourself very sick. Most suicide methods aren’t foolproof.
Guns are a totally different matter. All you need is to want to kill yourself long enough to get your weapon out of the drawer and pull the trigger. Depending on whether the gun is locked up, that’s probably not going to be longer than five minutes. There’s not a lot of people with mental illness who haven’t had the occasional five minute period where they seriously, genuinely want to die. And while it does happen, it’s pretty hard to fuck up putting a firearm to your temple.
Gun suicides are like gun murders: quicker, easier, and vastly more successful.
Maude
@Incitatus for Senate:
Even without depression, if someone gets enrages or in another high emotional state, it might seem like a good idea for a split second, to aim a gun at oneself and pull the trigger.
aimai
@General Stuck: Kay is arguing, with the sunblock issue and we might add “smoking” that you can work on people’s better natures and better information to reduce the number of households which own guns or own guns carelessly without ever reaching the issue of gun “confiscation.”
I got in trouble with Cornerstone for pointing this out but its quite obvious to anyone who has a wide acquaintance with young families in areas of the country where gun ownership is common. Even women and their families who are proud gun owners (self defined) are highly suspicious of their own family members who also own guns when it comes to child safety issues. If you go to parenting bulletin boards where people are discussing smoking, vaccination, and other hazards of sharing their babies and toddlers with the older generation, or crazy aunts and uncles, there is a whole lot of awareness of the dangers posed by careless attitudes by gun owners.
People run up against their own cultural imperative which is that you “can’t tell someone what they put in their body” so you can’t order your mother-in-law to get vaccinated against whooping cough, but you can refuse to let her come to the house and hold your newborn baby until she does. Similarly people believe that you can’t “tell them what not to smoke in their own house” but absolutely believe that you can tell your in laws and your parents that they must wear clean clothes and wash their hands before touching your child. And, again, similarly, a lot of people from gun culture are proud of owning their own guns but know they have to keep them locked up and quite suspicious of allowing elderly/careless/paranoid grandpa access to toddlers when he always keeps his pistol handy on his nightstand.
There is an extremely recent account of a toddler who killed himself in just this fashion, with his preacher grandpa’s gun. Over the long term sensible parents (if they are allowed full information) are going to avoid the paranoid parents with guns and fewer and fewer people will own guns in houses with children or adolescents. This is 100 percent why the NRA fought so hard to prevent doctors from discussing gun violence with parents. Because they fear a cultural shift from paranoid arrogance to cautious, thoughtful, parenting.
Kay
@Robin G.:
I wasn’t aware of the fleeting nature, the “crisis” that passes. I should have been, they’re called “crisis lines” for a reason, but I think I had bought into the (wrong) idea they talk about here, where people say “they’ll find a way”. They need to buy time.
General Stuck
@Kay:
I fully agree. Let’s do it :)
Roger Moore
@General Stuck:
Use softer methods. Instead of taking guns away, try to convince people that they don’t need to have guns around. Require safe storage so that suicidal people in the household other than the owner don’t have access to the guns. Have doctors encourage people who are feeling depressed and potentially suicidal to get their guns out of the house until they’re feeling better. Require people who are starting to use anti-depressants to put their guns in safe storage, since the period when people are starting anti-depressants is especially high risk.
Remember, the goal is a safer society, not a perfect one. Every suicide prevented is a good thing, so reducing the risk is a worthwhile goal even if we can’t eliminate it completely.
Ben Franklin
Decades ago, it was shown that murder/suicide run in inverse ratio to each other.
It was speculated that there are internal/external mechanisms for controlling the population.
Check out the stats for yourself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Elizabelle
Productive line of questioning, and haven’t the guns rights crowd wanted a discussion on mental health?
They’re thinking the risk is some psychotic with a weapon — let’s stop that person (even though we don’t want to pay one tax dollar for public health services), where the actual body count is average Americans with access to guns. Teens, military veterans, the depressed, lonely and ill, depressed elderly men unhinged by their spouse’s debilitating illness; people whose relationships are heading south.
Bring it on.
General Stuck
@aimai:
I am 100 percent for more gun awareness and education of the people to hear all the bad shit that can happen when you mix familial angst and add children into the equation with guns in the home. We just had a case in Albuquerque where a 15 year old got pissed off about something and murdered his siblings and parents with loaded guns kept in a closet. I also think is some cases, there might be a useful criminal statute for folks that don’t secure guns around children, as some kind of accessory charge. Or even child endangerment. I think these are sensible laws to make in lieu of confiscation efforts.
edit – and it is not possible to get in trouble with corner stone. ever. It is all on the table, as he himself would likely agree.
Elizabelle
Watching the conclusion of Rebel with a Cause. A gun death is involved.
How sad that this movie came out a month after James Dean’s death. He never got the acclaim.
Love seeing the Los Angeles area exteriors and architecture.
Kay
@General Stuck:
One of the things that gun salespeople have done is lobby to NOT collect information. They defunded information collection. They made sure it stayed at the county and state level, where it’s local and never aggregated. “Suicide prevention”, I think, was broad enough that they haven’t focused there. It remained a public health issue, not a “gun control” issue, so people still got grants and did the work.
Robin G.
@Kay: A lot of people think that way, but talk to the ER workers who regularly pump the stomachs of people who OD’ed, or stitch up wrists, or any number of other things. There’s loads and loads of suicide survivors out there, who give it a shot once, fail for whatever reason, then get help. There’s loads and loads and loads more who sit and hold that razor to their skin for twenty minutes, maybe make a little cut or two, and then realize “Holy shit I need some fucking help.”
Not a whole lot of survivors of suicide attempts with guns. And as far as rethinking it, your moment of “courage” is, at the end of the day, just long enough to twitch your index finger.
Elizabelle
@Kay:
That’s going to change. It’s appalling how much the gun lobby got accomplished, under the radar.
Kay
@General Stuck:
He was also suicidal. He told police he set out to kill himself in the course of the murders. You know that the teenagers who go on these sprees often kill themselves outright or do “suicide by cop”. So, maybe that’s the point of entry for really young men or boys. The suicide impulse.
rptrcub
A few years back, living in one of Atlanta’s “transitional” neighborhoods, there was a violent crime “spree” that scared a lot of middle class people. My suburban family members encouraged me to get a gun for protection.
Um, I’m bipolar. Bipolar depression. I don’t need access to the means of my own death.
That usually shuts up the more wingnut members of my family.
Roger Moore
@Robin G.:
On the impulsiveness side of things, there’s a great example from the UK. Given the lack of guns in homes there, apparently the most common method of committing suicide is to overdose on acetaminophen. They were able to substantially reduce the number of successful suicides by only selling it in blister packs instead of bottles. The extra time and effort of getting all the individual pills out of the little blisters was apparently enough to give people second thoughts and stop their attempts.
General Stuck
@Kay:
I would rather keep it focused on securing the guns, rather than go down the blurry road of state of mind reaction. Unless there is adjudication involved with mental illness. A lot of people have suicidal thoughts and impulses in their lives, but the toxic mix of troubled child and loaded guns lying around is some adult being negligent , imo.
Robin G.
@Roger Moore: That’s brilliant. Seriously, just adding on precious minutes here and there makes all the difference.
Kay
@General Stuck:
I worry about it all the time with my juvenile clients, because they don’t have the ability to see out past the current trouble they’re in. They’re impulsive. “Bad now” means “bad forever”. Not to be dramatic, and really, I’ll survive the tension, but it’s always in the back of my mind. I think they believe they are never going to get out of this, whatever “this” is.
It’s the whole premise of the “it gets better” campaign, actually, now that I think of it, and that’s a flat-out brilliant campaign.
Xantar
@Incitatus for Senate:
I’m right there with you. If I’d had access to a gun on October 25, 2006, there would be one less Xantar stumbling around the earth.
Mnemosyne
G’s best friend committed suicide by gun in 2006. G still feels guilty about a call he missed from his friend because we were out on a date and wonders if that was a last-minute reaching out that could have saved Dennis.
gene108
The prep and planning and lack of lethality for other methods of suicide is something overlooked by folks, who think “without a gun, they’ll just do ‘x’ to kill themselves”.
Most other methods require getting materials, setting time aside, etc. and most importantly the risk of possibly permanent injury, if you fail to die and since death isn’t as guaranteed as with shooting yourself; there’s a downside to failing.
Slitting wrists, at the least, would leave scars, if not tendon and muscle damage.
Pills could lead to some internal organ issues, if you need to get your stomach pumped at the ER. Also our bodies are designed to remove harmful substances in our digestive system either through vomiting or diarrhea, so holding down a bottle full of pills may not work out. This is why people throw up, when they drink too much. The body’s purging itself of excess alcohol.
Guns make it much easier to die at your hands.
aimai
@Robin G.:
There are a lot of mental health/medical/addiction problems that are not solved but reduced by changing the method of “delivery” of the dangerous substance. You can prevent kids from sniffing model glue by adding mustard to the glue and the model glue selling companies fought very hard against it (IIRC) because it cut into their profits by shrinking the market for the glue to actual people building models instead of glue sniffers.
You can cut down on drunk driving by taking away people’s keys, or opening up neighborhood bars within walking distance of people’s homes (change in zoning, in other words). Not every effort at harm reduction is punitive, many are quite successful at simply adding time/space/distance between a harmful impulse and its consequences.**
**I’d like to mention a seminal effort here. The idea of the “designated driver” and the “key master” which was promoted as an already existing cultural trope in the movie “Say Anything.” There was no popular custom of taking people’s keys at the start of a party and doling them out only to sober people at the end of the night. That was inserted into the movie as an attempt to create a new custom which would reduce drunk driving deaths.
LanceThruster
As one who battles serious bouts of depression on a semi-regular basis, a firearm can acrtaully be comforting. Like a spy witha cyanide pill hidden in a tooth, it allows one to not fear suffering the unbearable if one chooses.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. ~ Albert Camus
I like what LGBT groups counsel gay adolescents that feel isolated and ostracized in high school; “Don’t worry, it gets better.” This advice applies across the board (at least there’s always the possibility). Stick around as your circumstances can change quite rapidly. It is also useful to remind people the amount of help they can be to others despite their own emotional lows as they often have needed insight to share.
For myself, I find the option to easily opt out of existence keeps me fmore ocused on those things that will make my existence something to continue. Sometimes it’s something as simple as not wanting to cause hurt and pain to the ones you love.
RSA
This is a good idea. But it will be an uphill battle in some ways. I think there are a lot of people in the U.S. who view suicide not as a public health issue but as an issue of personal virtue or will power or responsibility. They think of suicide as being shameful or sinful. I’m specifically remembering the pushback a few years ago against funding for veterans with PTSD; for example,
Knowing that people who have been in a war zone and have returned to the U.S. with PTSD, with a higher risk of suicide, a Republican House member implies that hundreds of thousands of those veterans might be fakers. I can only imagine what he thinks about civilians who commit suicide.
LanceThruster
@gene108:
I’ve thought it out to the point of what method (using a gun) would leave the most organs intact for organ donation. I imagined that a gun in the mouth would possibly render the eyes unasable from hydrostatic shock.
gene108
@Xantar:
There are several dates, I’d be dead if I had a gun around. Without a gun and being actively psychotic the sort of plans you come up with aren’t as sure fired (badabing).
Maybe talking about gun safety and suicide prevention maybe a way to start getting people to talk about mental illness.
Other than the anonymity offered via the internet, I don’t want to talk about it to people face-to-face.
Kay
@RSA:
Elizabeth Warren wasn’t making much progress on predatory lending until she started talking about 18 year old soldiers entering into usury contracts. That whole “buy here, pay here” discussion on rip-off car dealers really got going when Warren noted they were targeting military. The same was true for rip-off for-profit colleges.
johnny aquitard
And this is why the NRA will try to shut this down. For them to accept this reality means they have to reject their fantasy arguments against gun control.
An entire set of arguments against any regulation whatsoever is based on the refusal to acknowledge that firearms are much more lethal than other means, and indeed that some types of firearms are much more lethal than other types.
No way they will accept this.
gene108
@LanceThruster:
I actually tried killing myself once, almost 10 years ago, by crashing my car at high speed. I somehow managed to walk away with only a few scratches.
For those of you interested a 1998 Mazda 626 is a safety champ at high speed head on collisions, without wearing a seat belt and removing the head restraint from the driver’s seat.
But I know the times I’ve thought about killing myself are much more than the one time I acted on it.
If I had a gun around, it’d have been too damn easy one of those evenings, when I felt totally run down to just off myself.
I’ve thought about other methods and I always come back to the risk of failure, like tendon damage from slit wrists, as a reason to not try those.
Guns really do make it too easy to kill.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Kay: You’ve nailed it (as always). What the NRA has been so successful with is suppressing information by lobbying for defunding its collection. And also that suicide prevention has skirted around the NRA under the radar, because they (suicide prevention folks) cover public health.
And many people don’t truly get that suicide can often be an impulsive act during a crisis of high emotion – it is sometimes the impulsive act of people who are not actually depressed, but in a really agitated emotional state and a goddamned gun is handy. It’s the same with many gun homicides; they might have been nonlethal assaults had not a gun been readily available. Likewise the homicides that are domestic violence – a gun in the household dramatically increases the chances of a woman dying from the abuse.
Between my days in criminal law, and my NAMI work now, I have rather strong opinions on the topic. And of course the NAMI chapter I run is in a tremendously pro-gun county (Warren County OH) so I have to read carefully wit the NAMI public health talks about guns, lest we just lose the potential audience entirely.
I think about your teenage clients and their norms often, Kay, and use the car seat example about how we need to change norms around behavorial health – and that we can! In terms of education, if we can educate that group about the public health dangers of guns ready at hand – so that they will shame their generation out of that norm, we will have some real success down the line.
Which is not to say we don’t need to change the norm NOW. And I supsect that we can, slowly, but it will not be an easy task, because guns are a literal fetish for so many.
Roger Moore
@LanceThruster:
I don’t think any of them are going to do you much good on that point. For most of them to be good for donation, you have to be brain dead but still have your heart and lungs working so the organs continue to get oxygen. Once your heart stops, the organs will likely be useless for donation by the time they can get you to the hospital.
Kay
@johnny aquitard:
I sometimes think they actually believe the first part of their slogan “guns don’t kill people”.
Repeat that enough, and you’re in a place where guns DON’T kill people. I mean, Jesus. Think about that slogan, along with their constant assertion that they are promoting “safety” they repeat this slogan that implies that guns are SAFE. “Guns don’t kill people…..” over and over and over.
gbear
@LanceThruster: @LanceThruster:
As someone who’s also battled depression since my teens and had to take leave of absence from work for it at various times over the last three years, I would like to cancel my subscription to your newsletter.
The gun in the house may be a comfort until the two minutes where you slip and completely lose hope that life is worth living. I have days where I need to focus on the fact that knives are for cutting food; I will not have a gun in my house.
RSA
@Kay:
Good points! (which I didn’t know.) That makes me more optimistic.
Kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I went to the Ohio AG’s site to see if I could find out anything useful on concealed carry. You look at public records a lot, I’m sure, as do I.
It was absolutely spooky how little information they are permitted to collect, by statute. I’m not talking about personal identifying information, I’m talking about stats.
I can find out MUCH MORE about teen pregnancy rates, county by county, in Ohio than I can about concealed carry revocations. They’ve taken this OUT of public health. They don’t want people to know the risk.
Kay
@RSA:
Well, she got Petrause’s wife to LEAD HER BOARD on military and predatory lending. Smart!
Ya know, before he had his giant fall from media-worship, which is not the fault of his wife or Warren.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
The delusion that ‘this’ has always been and will always be is one of the nastiest and most ubiquitous tricks of depression. Depressive thoughts spiral, amplifying themselves and distorting memory and judgment.
Roger Moore
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I think the culture actually has been changing. The number of guns has gone up, but the number of gun owners has gone down. I think that our culture is splitting, with a large minority not owning guns and a small minority stockpiling them. Right now, the minority owns the issue because they’re more committed than the majority is, but there’s no guarantee that will continue to be true.
LanceThruster
@Roger Moore:
I figured outside the emergency room with a large note pinned to the shirt would take care of that (but I also was concerned about traumatizing emergency room presonnel).
Mino
In states that actively prevent Medicaid enrollment, I wonder how many see a gun as their Kevorkian of last resort
?
LanceThruster
@gbear:
Of course, my choices are strictly personal. YMMV. There is no choice more personal than suicide. I fear no “eternal” repercussions so the question is always, are there reasons to live? So often it is the simple pleasures that people so regularly overlook that are the reasons to answer, “Yes!”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. – “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
Yutsano
@Mino: Medicaid also has very shitty mental health coverage. But hey they can just go to the ER if they feel depressed or need mental health counseling amirite?
johnny aquitard
@Kay: They do believe that. It’s shocking, and deeply disturbing but the hard core gunnuts really believe that.
You can’t have a reasonable discussion on gun control with people who start from a premise that is not reality. As a result they will refuse to accept many if not all responsibility for owning guns. After all, if guns don’t kill people, what responsibilities do they have?
Even the basic responsibilities such as treating every gun as if it is always loaded, never point it at something you don’t wish to see destroyed, keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot, always be sure of what’s behind your target — these get ignored often enough that I swear most gun owners deep down inside do not believe they have any responsibilities whatsoever. They sure as hell don’t act like it.
LanceThruster
@gene108:
For me that ease means to question instantly leapfrogs from method to the reality of choosing to end one’s being. The hardest parts weren’t when I was most down in the dumps. I was used to that and knew I would come out of it. The hardest part was when fealing pretty good and knowing the anxiety and depression were again waiting just over the horizon.
Yutsano
@johnny aquitard: The gun is a sacred totem. It is their god, their idol, the very thing they have built their identities around. To call into question any limitation upon their absolute certitude that a gun gives them power is apostasy. And they love their guns more than their spouses, children, houses, and even their very lives. the sacred gun must be protected and allowed free reign at all times. They really are cultists if you think about it.
johnny aquitard
@johnny aquitard:
Yes, exactly.
I hate the NRA. Absolutely despise it and that shitlicker Lapierre.
janeform
@RSA: I did a study that involved focus groups with Veterans with mental illness who owned guns about voluntary interventions to delay access to guns (e.g., off-site gun storage with family, friends, Veteran organizations, family education). Most of the participants were very open to taking these measures, in large part out of concern for their fellow Veterans.
Kay
@johnny aquitard:
I have so much trouble with it just as a proposition. Guns are dangerous or they aren’t. They can’t keep telling me they have this awesome respect for the lethality of the weapon WHILE telling me a gun is like a screwdriver. I have a whole bunch of screwdrivers. I have never once worried my teenager would get a hold of one. Either they see and respect the risk or they do not. They can’t have it both ways. EITHER a gun is lethal and worthy of increased attention to safety OR is is a like a garden spade.
Ben Franklin
@Yutsano:
And they love their guns more than their spouses, children, houses, and even their very lives. the sacred gun must be protected and allowed free reign at all times. They really are cultists if you think about it.
RUSirius? If you are, this is peak bullshit.
Yutsano
@Ben Franklin: Prove otherwise. They will accept more regulation on every other thing I listed than their precious guns. But you really don’t care you’re just a contrarian asshole.
Ruckus
Frequently no one knows who people with suicidal tendencies are until after the first attempt. If that first attempt is with a gun there is a very high probability there will be no second attempt possible.
How do you know the person with the key/combination is not the suicidal one?
An elderly friend just got his house broken into in the middle of the night and it was a minute or two until he woke up. When he did, turning on the lights sent the burglars running. Fortunately they didn’t find his gun on the coffee table in the front room because it was under a magazine. Think how much different that could have turned out.
Guns don’t make you able to survive imaginary situations, they only make you think you can, all the while adding a rather large level of risk that unintended consequences will get you killed.
LanceThruster
@Kay:
Compare it to a chainsaw or a nailgun. Useful when used correctly; potentially lethal used incorrectly or if malfunctions occur.
Cigarettes cause for more death when used in accordance to manufacterurs instructions. I’ve had many a relative commit the slow suicide of tobacco use.
johnny aquitard
@Yutsano: I’m a gun owner. How come I’m not a cultist?
I keep my guns locked up in a steel cabinet, unloaded, with trigger locks on every one. I keep the ammunition locked up in another steel cabinet on another floor of the house. I do this because I love my spouse and children. And because if I own something that can be misused so as to easily cause someone’s death, it’s my responsibility to ensure it won’t be.
I would love to keep them locked up at the shooting club I belong to. But I know of no club that does this. This is something I will ask the president of the club when I see him next.
But I think I understand where you’re coming from. I know of way too many people who have the beliefs exactly as you describe.
I’ve discovered since joining my club that a sizeable proportion of the membership ought not to own guns. It’s more than the fabled 27%. I’d say it’s closer to 40%, but this may be because gun ownership is higher among conservatives, who seem more fearful for crazy reasons, and that nuts and guns are like iron filings to magnets.
pseudonymous in nc
@Ben Franklin:
It is speculated that you are full of shit.
LanceThruster
@Kay:
And for the record, it’s the bullets that do the damage (otherwise a gun is just like a club or a hammer).
It’s like that saying, “It isn’t the fall that kills you, it’s the stopping.”
Ben Franklin
@Yutsano:
Prove otherwise
I believe it’s the custom to require proof of those who make the spurious assertion.
No worries, though. Your comments are predominately snark and without genuine substance.
Field Guide
There are crazy ass-tardgun owners and there are crazy asstard people who hate guns.
It is unfortunate that almost the entire debate is driven by these two groups.
donnah
Bitterly aware of what damage a gun suicide does to not only family, but to the friends and community. My teenage son had a friend who was a brilliant kid. He got A’s, he wrote poetry, he played classical piano and was also a painter and photographer. He was only sixteen when for whatever reasons we may never understand, he felt the pressures on him were too much. He took a handgun from his mother’s nightstand and shot himself. She came home and found his lifeless body.
His parents were divorced and he alternated with whom he stayed, but he obviously knew her house had a gun. He may have been clinically depressed but undiagnosed, or he may have just collapsed under the weight of being a “perfect” kid.
The effects on my son were dramatic. He no longer wanted to practice his own lessons on the piano. He said he didn’t want to feel the pressure that Ryan felt and he was afraid. Other friends suffered his absence as well, and the school and community had to take a hard look at what to look for in our teens.
I don’t believe Ryan would have attempted suicide without the gun. He didn’t try it at his father’s house. He waited until he was at his mom’s. It was a terrible solution to a problem that could have been solved.
johnny aquitard
@Kay: They want it both ways. The fact they own guns to ‘prevent government tyranny’ means they understand the lethality is far greater. That the killing power is greater. That’s why they want assault rifles and high capcity magazines — they argue they should be able to own weapons at least as lethal as what the police have.
But they then claim guns aren’t any more deadly than a car or a coil of rope.
It’s ridiculous. It’s asinine. It’s a level of cognitive dissonance few other than right wing authoritarians can tolerate.
LanceThruster
My post at HuffPo on Cornell’s Suicide Gorge –
In my darkest moments, the desire not to cause loved ones pain is often enough to get past the despair. For me, the worst was not when one’s emotional state was he lowest, but when feeling more or less OK and having the lurking anxiety that the cycle of sadness and despair would come again. Meds help and the cycle’s frequency is greatly slowed, but there’s rarely a time when I am not well aware that an “out” of last resort has been contemplated. Strangely enough, there’s even a certain amount of strength and comfort derived from that. For me it means remaining focused on what will help keep me from spiraling into that emotional state in the first place. Finally, one needs to be reminded of one’s ability to help others.That sort of caring helps reconfirm the notion that others need you, just as you need others. Know that if you truly reach out, you are never really alone.
– and a response –
I never imagined that someone would articulate my flirtation with suicide as thoroughly as above. I never attempted suicide because, as much as I hated myself, I knew I was loved and I could not bring myself to hurt those who loved me. I instead daydreamed about taking my own life, picturing myself committing the act, and imagining the immense relief that would come. I have since sought help; however, I continue to fantasize about suicide almost daily. As someone who does fantasize about suicide, the convenience and beauty of jumping into a gorge is appealing and, while I don’t believe that suicide can be prevented simply by making it more inconvenient, creating barriers (both literal and figurative) to common suicide methods does force those contemplating suicide to pause and put more thought into their decision.
trollhattan
I’m so done with gun-fondlers and their shuck-and-jive attitudes, excuses and obfuscations. Hey, best way to have your kid learn about guns: give him a gun. Relax, it’s just a toy.
My 11YO’s best friend’s dad has a lot of arms, and three boys. It’s all kept in a safe but I’m always thinking about the day one of those clever lads (all under ten at present) figures out the combination.
Stipulating that everything’s safe 99.99% of the time, what about that 0.01? There wouldn’t be an airline industry with a 0.01% failure rate.
http://www.news10.net/rss/article/166458/2/Family-of-pellet-shooting-victim-wants-to-prevent-similar-tragedies
Corner Stone
@Ben Franklin:
You don’t consider using LOLcat speak to be substantive?
Corner Stone
@aimai: Sigh.
Ruckus
@Kay:
As we get older we have the experience that tells us, usually things at least change, maybe for the better. We know there are opportunities, even if they are small, almost invisible ones. We know we can probably survive, because we already have. Children and teenagers don’t usually have that level of awareness, they generally can’t because they haven’t had those opportunities, or maybe even seen them.
gbear
@LanceThruster:
How’s this: You don’t use a gun for home maintenance.
Kay
@johnny aquitard:
Right. That’s the capacity, the nature, of the thing itself. It’s WHY they purchased it. It can’t be absolutely essential in the war against tyranny yet just like a chainsaw of a nailgun, or they wouldn’t be freaking out over regulating guns. This is a simple admission. It’s logical. Yet we can’t get there. Guns don’t kill people, but guns are the only acceptable defense, and gun owners are fully aware of the lethal nature….of their guns that don’t kill people. WTF? Which is it? They’re everything and nothing at all.
Yutsano
@johnny aquitard: I am being hyperbolic, but for a good reason. There is this attitude that is pervasive among the gun nuts that whatever you do you cannot blame the gun and you cannot place any restriction upon that ownership or usage or display ever. It’s quasi-religious if not downright idolatry.
pseudonymous in nc
@Roger Moore:
The thing about aspirin or paracetamol overdose is that you had a lot of evidence that people took a fatal dose, got past the urge, called for help and by the time they got to hospital, their livers were shot and there was nothing to be done unless there’s a liver transplant available at that moment. And that’s a horrible way to die. The evidence is clear that changing the pack size and format made a difference.
Ben Franklin
@pseudonymous in nc:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f03/web2/nkaim.html
According to the psychiatrist Karl A. Menninger, murder and suicide are interchangeable acts – suicide sometimes forestalling murder, and vice versa.[1] Following Freudian logic, severe repression of natural instincts due to early childhood abuse, may lead the death instinct to emerge in a twisted form. The cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, whose theories on the human notion of death is strongly influenced by Freud, views the fear of death as a universal phenomenon, a fear repressed in the unconscious and of which people are largely unaware. This fear can move individuals toward heroism, but also to scapegoating. Failed attempts to achieve heroism, according to this view, can lead to mental illness and/or antisocial behavior.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder–suicide
Corner Stone
It’s pretty obvious at this point that the HGTV producers of Property Brothers write some of the script for the house buying clients. I think the law of averages has to rule out that the people they do work for are 100% dickheads.
LanceThruster
As a somewhat off-topic aside, I saw “Zorba the Greek” for the first time the other day on TCM. If Irene Papas’ character had an assault weapon, she might not have ended up being stoned or having her throat slit. I was quite disturbed by the nonchalance of the town over this (spurred by the suicide of a youth from jealousy and unrequited love IIRC).
RepubAnon
Having guns around is like having junk food around – yes, you can cook fattening foods yourself, but when it’s so very easy to just open the package and start chomping…
Same thing with guns: it’s so easy to do the wrong thing on impulse. We probably need to put up a body count list of people shot by mistake, suicides, murders, and successful self-defense stats (“bad guys” frightened off and/or killed in self-defense). The gun nuts won’t like the numbers and will claim some conspiracy by “gun grabbers” – but it should get some attention.
Kay
@LanceThruster:
I don’t think that’s a good comparison, because of the risk to others. You and I both know no one is grabbing a chain saw and carrying it into an elementary school. The worst thing that happens with your chain saw is YOU get hurt. That’s why we spend so much time talking about “responsible” gun owners. There’s a recognition that guns aren’t chain saws.
scav
@Field Guide: Yes, the large industry-led and funded antigun lobby is monolithic and a media force not to be ignored. The laws enacted exempting them from being sued are a model that other industries aspire to but do not attain.
Haydnseek
@Field Guide: Perhaps, but the crazy asstard gun owners persist in killing people with their guns in all sorts of ways. The crazy asstard gun haters? Not so much.
LanceThruster
@Ben Franklin:
I’d love to see PSA’s against murder/suicide. If you feel rage so intense that you want to kill others and then kill yourself, do this instead – kill yourself first, and if you still possess the rage to harm others, then have at it (seriously).
I’d like to bribe those who would commit murder/suicide with drugs or hookers, or whatever. Now that would be a good start for a mental health prohibition on gun ownership.
Kay
@LanceThruster:
What risks to others are we referring to when we talk about “responsible gun owners”?
Unsympathetic
@Ben Franklin:
Objectively wrong. Here’s a study for those of us who care about addressing reality on reality’s terms:
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/34/4/837.full
“Our analysis indicates, overall, the correlation between homicide and suicide rates across all nations is very weak and statistically insignificant.”
So: If suicide increases due to guns, you cannot assert ANY decrease in homicide would result. They’re two entirely separate issues.
RepubAnon
@LanceThruster: Re Zorba the Greek: if the widow’s neighbors had had assault weapons, she wouldn’t have been stoned or attacked with a knife. Instead, she’d have been shot and killed by the youth who was stalking her, or by her neighbors, or the youth’s father.
The larger issue in Zorba the Greek is how women were viewed: as the property of a man. The widow didn’t belong to some man (and was not allowed any choice in the matter) – and so was fair game for a man who these days would be viewed as an obsessed stalker. How many instances of workplace violence do we see because a spurned man has a firearm, and kills the object of his desire and anyone he blames for not getting his way?
Ruckus
@LanceThruster:
Having been depressed before(and probably again) I know this is not the same thing but I suffer from migraines(about 40yrs worth) and can remember the worse ones like they are happening now. Just because the problem is not here, right now, doesn’t mean that I don’t know that sometime in the future(any where from now till who knows when) it is highly likely that I am going to have an extreme level of pain, for any where from hrs to days.
That knowledge can eat at you.
Ruckus
@pseudonymous in nc:
It’s not a speculation.
eemom
@Field Guide:
Let me see if I can work out a compromise for you. I’m an asstard hater myself, but if some asstard owner were to shoot that subhuman garbage Wayne LaPierre in the face with his precious assault rifle, I do believe we’d have something we agreed on.
LanceThruster
@Kay:
I think it’s a better comparison than a screwdriver (which is also the basic configuration of a prison shank, btw).
Tree trimming poses risks to those in the immediate vicinity. Suicide by car sometimes involves other people. Drunk driving often kills others. Yet no one is making a credible case to do away with cars or booze. Regulation makes sense, but also acknowledge how many of the new regs proposed would have done nothing in the case of Sandy Hook.
gene108
@RepubAnon:
They’ll claim a conspiracy by gun grabbers to forcibly take all their guns, if a sitting President authorized gun owners to check in guns on Amtrak and carry guns onto National Parks.
Field Guide
@Haydnseek: The both perpetuate the problem.
LanceThruster
@Kay:
Most instances of hurting someone unintentionally with a firearm would move someone into the category of “irresponsible” gun owner.
Ash Can
Late to the party here, but that first bolded sentence makes no fucking sense. How does the suicide issue “destabilize” the gun-safety/gun-skeptic side of the gun debate? It does the exact opposite.
Ben Franklin
@Unsympathetic:
From your link (emphasis, mine)
In conjunction with statistical data on the subjects, the idea that homicide and suicide be explained analogously in terms of aggression furthers the argument that the two are mutually associated. A similar position is expressed by Hentig:8 ‘murder and suicide are complimentary phenomena: the total amount of available destructiveness is discharged in two psychologically similar, socially distinct Gestalten’. The understanding that both homicide and suicide are antithetical to cultural norms and that each involves some element of self-destruction (with regard to both the killer and the individual killed)—there is some evidence that many homicides are victim-precipitated and represent suicides—has provided the stimulus to show that homicide and suicide are not unrelated and that one should consider them in aggregate, as a summation of deaths.9,10
From my link, above.
Like all of death, self-destruction is ubiquitous, occurring on many levels – cell (3), organ, human, animal, plant – and, like all of death, self-destruction is a vital component in the survival of life on earth. (4) The purpose of all death, regardless of its form (and including suicide), is to promote the survival of life elsewhere. Most directly, cells and organisms unsuited to cope with some aspect of their environments die so that similar cells and organisms, who are competing with them for space and resources (i.e. food), can get what they need to survive. It is a matter of investing energy and resources in the members who will contribute the most to the overall community – whether the community is the collection of cells in a living tissue or organism, the organisms in a clan or society, or even the whole of life on earth. An exercise in Utilitarianism, in sacrificing the lost sheep for the herd. And so antelopes killed by lions yield their places to other antelopes with the skills to escape the lions. Old people, and old cells, die once their systems have atrophied a certain amount so they will longer consume time, energy, resources needed by the more efficient bodies of their children, or children cells. Children who die of cancer sacrifice the resources afforded them to other children with the strength to survive (or altogether escape) the blow of cancer. Nerve cells in a developing fetus who cannot hook up properly to one another will die, leaving the job to those remaining neurons that can (6). (It is “survival of the fittest,” as Herbert Spencer said, both for organisms and for cells!!) In all of these instances of self-sacrifice, death by self-destruction forms no exception. Lymphocytes, white warrior blood cells in animals’ immune systems, self-destruct if they cannot kill invading pathogens so that the resources needed to create and sustain these lymphocytes go only to those fighters who can vanquish their enemies (6). On the macro-level, female octopi starve themselves to death after the birth of their offspring so their children will not have to share resources with them (1). Some lemmings, though their case is hotly disputed, probably walk off of precipices when their community gets too densely populated, so as to thin it out to a healthy number (2). In suicide, as in all death, the movement toward the greater good prevails.
Field Guide
@eemom:
The biggest problem in America that we are a violent culture that devalues life in so many ways.
Comments such as yours have no place in a civilized society.
aimai
@LanceThruster:
This simply isn’t true. If Nancy Lanza had received some education on the dangers of holding guns in a household with her crazed and suicidal/homicidal son she might have chosen to keep her guns at a shooting range. At any rate no one is arguing that any specific indicident could be avoided, just that we could aim for harm reduction and pick off or prevent some fraction of incidents which occur because of promiscuous gun ownership by people who are not paying attention to proper storage or usage, or are unaware of the dangers posed to society by permitting dangerous people access to one’s weapons.
Again, and this has been said over and over again–lots of medications which people need to save their lives come with restrictions on how and when they can be used and disposed of. Swimming pools are governed by laws such as “attractive nuisance” laws. Even if we analogize a gun to a tool, or a gun to a hobby/sport/fun thing, or even a necessity like medicine each of these things are understood to be regulated and regulatable by the government for the greater good. And every one of those “uselesss” regulations was prompted by an incident–a drowning, sale of controlled substances, etc..etc…etc… which at the time was denounced as useless or nanny statism or whatever.
Ben Franklin
The Zeitgeist around murder/suicide is in play here.
Cellular murder and cellular suicide in humans as well as ant behavior is discussed in the 2nd link, as well
The increase in murder/suicide where the perp offs himself after murdering another is a recent phenom, and probably distorts the current data (Emile Durkheim)
johnny aquitard
@Yutsano: What I want to see for gun control is:
Universal background checks
Require gun locks
No open carry handguns, except during hunting seasons or at ranges.
No concealed carry
No private sales
No gun show sales
Prohibit the sale or resale of any firearm capable of firing more than 7 rounds.
Buyback program
A permit to own each firearm, all paid by the applicant, where each firearm requires :
40 hours safety training, with federal standards
Instruction regarding under what circumstances a gun owner may lawfully use deadly force
Personality test or psych eval (the military does this to screen those unsuitable for training on how to use weapons, we should too)
Plus
Enforce criminal penalties for gun owners who allow non-permit holders to access and/or misuse their guns.
But hey I’m a cultist so I’m probably being unreasonable.
edit: also, each permit must be renewed each year, with attendant training, eval, and costs. Too expensive and burdensome for those 23 guns you own? Tough shit. Get rid of most of them (see buyback program).
LanceThruster
@gbear:
I like to hike a lot and my new community is perfect for it (high desert). My neighbor warned me not to do it without a ‘snake gun’ particularly in the ‘busy’ season. Last summer, several calves and a resident where killed by rattlesnake bites.
Here is a concrete example of being prepared with the right “tool.”
aimai
@LanceThruster:
Its really funny you should say that because it seems that “responsible gun ownership can never fail, it can only be failed.” We don’t have strict liability for accidental or negligent gun discharges–hell, we don’t even have strict liability for deaths resulting from gunshots. I can’t find the link but I think Wonkette just had up a comparison between the fates of two grandfathers, one black one white, who both allowed their toddler grandchildren to be shot by the grandfather’s weapon. In one case (the black guy) ends up being jailed and in the other, the white guy, goes scott free.
Ruckus
@LanceThruster:
Remember Sandy Hook is only one of many and is a focal point, but it is not the out of the ordinary, other than being mostly children. And to be honest I don’t see Sandy Hook as being any thing special. Only the age and numbers make it different.
It doesn’t matter if you are a 6yr old or a 60yr old that bullet doesn’t give a shit. That bullet that takes a gun to be dangerous. That gun that takes a trigger pull that most any 6 or 60 yr old can manage, to fire that bullet and kill with.
Ben Franklin
In addition; The wiki murder/suicide by country shows almost no suicides, but extremely high murder rates in many Central American countries, but that could be reporting due to the Catholic culture, or poor investigations by police.
LanceThruster
Sort of OT – on Bill Maher’s show the other night, Sam Harris said both sides of the gun debate made good and bad points. What he said that I thought was incorrect was that assault rifle rounds were less likely to penetrate walls and cause collateral damage. I thought ist was just the opposite but I guess it deopends on what round is being considered, and what other weapon it is being compared to.
Also too, Maher shocked my by admitting (when discussing the Hagel nomination) that all Israel wanted was to attack Iran, and would beat up on anyone trying to discourage that action.
Wow! Bizarro world.
Haydnseek
@Field Guide: In the last nine years or so, there have been around 270,000 gun deaths in the home. I would submit to you that very few of these deaths were caused by asstard gun haters.
Unsympathetic
@Ben Franklin:
“Some” is not “Conclusive”
The text you posted is exactly the same level of proof that deer antler spray works.
pseudonymous in nc
@RSA:
Based on what I’ve heard from people in a (professional) position to know, the decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan is going to be a “gift” that keeps giving for the next… well, fifty or sixty years.
Ben Franklin
@LanceThruster:
Hoodathunk Maher would take issue with Israel? Last week he said “I have a gun…….I love gunz”
Gentlemen….reverse your engines.
Ben Franklin
@Unsympathetic:
Heh. Throwing out Emile Durkheim with the bathwater, becomes you.
Thanks for your deeeeep insight.
Yutsano
@johnny aquitard: I’m sold! How do we get you to Congress?
LanceThruster
@RepubAnon:
Once you posit everyone else having guns, it becomes a bit of a MAD scenerio. It would have put the fear of escalation into the rest of the town. She would still be dead, but short of a sucker punch, others would have risked their own safety to bully this woman. If the widow had immediate family, then there would be the fear of a vendetta.
I was surprised that Anthony Quinn did not escort her away from danger more closely. I was also chagrined that after it happened, everything went back to ‘normal.’
pseudonymous in nc
@Ben Franklin:
i.e. you want to make sure that we all know that you’re full of shit.
Thrice-regurgitated Freud with a smattering of bullshit anthropology? It’s not 1913, you twat.
trollhattan
@LanceThruster:
I thought Harris was muddled and pretty awful on the topic, and I got the sense he never took physics. Sometimes a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
trollhattan
@aimai:
After all, “Hasn’t he suffered enough, already?”
sigh
I suppose the liability shield for the firearms industry is warranted because they all pay the price of being sad when their products are used for something non-productive.
johnny aquitard
@Yutsano: Sorry, missed that. You’re absolutely right, it’s like a religious belief for way too many. They think it’s goimg to keep them from not mattering in the world. These are the people who are desperately climgimg to their guns and religion as changes in the world they don’t understand or cannot accept take place around them. Changes, by the way, that anyone else who was paying attention to the rest of the world these last 20 years could see was coming.
But not this bunch. They’re crazy, fearful, paranoid, and most of them are white, with a huge overlap with evangelicals.
Ben Franklin
@pseudonymous in nc:
Yes, yes, I know. Science is beyond you.
you twat.
I believe the scientific term is vagina, but you can carry on.
pseudonymous in nc
@Ben Franklin:
The 20th century is apparently beyond you.
Here’s a scientific term: “go fuck your mother, like everyone else in your town.”
That’s suitably Freudian, right?
Ben Franklin
@pseudonymous in nc:
Uh, this is the 21st century, for everyone else in your town.
johnny aquitard
@Yutsano: The amazing thing is, what I proposed in no way prevents me or most people from owning frearms. it in no way takes away my 2nd amendment right. I can still own a gun. It would be just one, but I can deal with that.
trollhattan
@Ben Franklin:
Oh, I think he meant to type exactly that.
Arclite
@Robin G.: Except that suicide rates for countries with strong gun control are just as high or higher than US.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
Unsympathetic
@Ben Franklin:
Your inability to respond on topic means you have conceded the actual discussion.
But keep the insults coming – I understand, you’re just not smart enough to defend your point without personal insults!
I don’t expect any more from a Republican.
LanceThruster
@aimai:
I think there is a reason the 2nd Amendment is seond. That is where the comparison to other acts and activities end. I’m pissed at all the other ways I feel the govt has shat on the Bill of Rights. Why let them do it to the 2nd too? Change the 2nd, or make the regulations in line with the 2nd (the latter being harder to clarify it seems).
There is also a big push for more gun safety training. Good for the mom, useless for Adam. The prepper mom should not have had her firearms so readily accessible to her unstable son. Mine are locked up or secured (I have no kids) . My ‘arsenal’ is potentially in danger, not because anything I have done, but because what others have done or might do. I’ve compared it to cutting off every man’s dick because some men rape.
To argue for greater restriction is fine. I’m all ears. But the argument muast be made in a way that does not make a case for complete confiscation for “our safety” because some are making that argument. I said that I, as a gun owning citizen, would voluntarily and willingly allow a buy back of all my ‘scary’ firearms, based on what ‘might’ be done with them if the govt eliminates its nuclear weapons based on what ‘might’ be done with them. Which poses the greater threat to massive loss of innocent human life? Have you seen the saber-rattling some members of congress regularly do?
Do the deaths not count as much when they’re foreigners (Iraq, with a population equal to certain states in the US, lost from the hundreds of thousands to the millions depending on estimates. Compare the number of deaths by % if it happened in the US).
I do not feel out of place making arguments based on what the law says versus what what ‘the majority’ want. Civil Rights were upheld despite what the majority wanted at the time. It seems the push re: guns is geared towards mandating less effective weapons and regulations that largely impact those not misusing their weapons. The 2nd Amendment is not about hunting, and the rifles allowed at the time of the ratification of the 2nd Amendment were to most modern and lethal for their time (essentially combat arms).
aimai
@Arclite:
That link doesn’t say what you represent it as saying and, rather delicately, refers to itself as “having some problems.” You would have to know a whole lot more about a lot of things to compare suicide rates between places as different as the US and, say South Korea than just the availbility of guns.
Ben Franklin
@Unsympathetic:
I ended it when you displayed your disinterest in reading the bolded text which supported your opinion (some is not most)
Why should I waste my time with a semi-literate?
sb
@johnny aquitard: Looks good to me.
eemom
@Field Guide:
You will need to extract your head from your pompous ass before you are in a position to survey any society, civilized or otherwise, much less to opine what it may encompass.
aimai
@LanceThruster:
I think the civil rights argument cuts right against your position, actually. But clearly our mileage varies. I’m not at all interested in convincing the “responsible gun owners” of the rightness of my cause because the rampant paranoia of the minority of gun owners who fear total confisaction bears no resemblance to any arguments made by people in power so its not really susceptible to factual or rational discussion. Every gun owner is a “responsible gun owner” until, suddenly, he or she is not and then we have to hear “hoocodanode” about Adam Lanza’s mother, or that woman shot by her boyfriend the footballplayer with her three week old baby in her arms although she “owned” eight guns.
LanceThruster
@trollhattan:
Where he seemed to be on track is the question of putting the genie back in the bottle (300 million+ guns owned by a pop of 360 million), and the ackowledgement of the statement (by NRA head) that the most effective defense against a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun. Sad, but often true.
Re: enforcing the laws to reduce gun crime/violence…it is my understanding that gun charges are the first things to be plea bargained as they carry so much additional penalties if convicted that it is a good ‘plum’ to offer for a guilty plea. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of the statutes, no?
Field Guide
@eemom:
It’s very sad that we live in a country where it is acceptable to suggest that people with whom one disagrees should be shot in the face. Oh, just joking, just rhetoric, I get it.
Well, let’s go get ready to watch a bunch of steroid infused idiots advance their head trauma.
Gotta love Murica!
scav
Imagine our drug laws if pharmaceutical companies convinced everyone that policy should only be based on the behavior of law-abiding and responsible drug users and all data on the behavior of others shouldn’t even be collected on a national level. Requiring prescriptions from a MD were a dangerous infringement on the right to life and the pursuit of happiness.
Ben Franklin
http://www.wfaa.com/news/crime/rough-creek-189536271.html
Navy Seal shot to death, not by Taliban; by a Marine with PTSD.
LanceThruster
@aimai: I live in CA. Sen Diane Feinstein was and is in the forefront of weapons bans (though her husband made much money on military weapons of death and destruction). She also thought at one time her life was important enough for a CCW permit.
She helped outlaw ‘scary looking’ weapons while allowing the same firepower if it did not look ‘scary.’ The state would have tried to give my $120 for my $250 SKS rifle but I did not have the three requisite features for a buy back (i.e. folding stock, pistol grip, removable high capicity magazine, flash suppressor, or folding bayonet).
Field Guide
@Ben Franklin: I though it was Obama that put the hit on him because he was speaking out against gun control.
Oh, wait Obama IS Taliban …. the call is coming from INSIDE the house …
Ben Franklin
@Field Guide:
The Taliban only have opium. We have a supercalifragilistic array of psychotropic drugs which are the panacea to all emotional/biological deformities, and we use them.
johnny aquitard
@LanceThruster:
He is full of shit. Rifle bullets are way more likely to go through multiple walls than pistol bullets or shotgun pellets.
The guys at that link found that if a bullet is powerful enough to penetrate a person deep enough to reliable stop him, it is more than powerful enough to penetrate multiple walls. IOW, if it’s good for home defense, it is also a lethal danger to other occupants in the house.
Or in the case of rifle bullets, even in the house next door or across the street.
This must be something the NRA is pushing– that assault rifles are ideal for home defense, so as to manufacture a redeeming quality for owning them. What bullshit.
LanceThruster
@Ben Franklin: For the record, the Taliban reduced the poppy harvest. US forces are instructed to pretty much ignore it (lest the CIA be unable to fund their ventures with drug money).
Field Guide
@johnny aquitard: ?
http://www.olyarms.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=26
LanceThruster
@johnny aquitard: Wasn’t the debate over small arms in Vietnam that the .223 round (of the M-16) was lighter and slowed down more by jungle foliage than the larger, heavier 7.62 round of the AK 47? An M1 Garand rifle (WWII) has an effective range of 1000 yards. Modern assault weapons were designed reflecting the data that most firefights happen within 300(?) feet.
A pistol or a shotgun have their own pros and cons for home defense, but a hunting rifle would also have the wall penetration power.
aimai
@LanceThruster:
This is a highly misleading statistic:
(300 million+ guns owned by a pop of 360 million), The population of 360 Million includes some millions of children who do not own guns and even more millions of adults who do not own guns. The proportion of the population who own guns is shrinking while the number of people who own multiple guns is growing. In other words: the market is becoming saturated and in order to keep going the NRA and the corporations that support it need to
1) fend off sensible gun laws
2) prevent loss of their target market of criminals, straw gun buyers, and the mentally ill/paranoid/prepper and lifestyle owners.
The NRA has been quite explicit about this: they must market to men with mascuilinity issues, women who are afraid of the end times, criminals who can’t pass background checks, and to children or they won’t have a sufficient market.
There may be 300 million guns in private hands in this country but they are not owned by a majority of people in this country, not by a longshot. And the number is shrinking as hunting goes by the wayside and more and more people move into cities for work.
The NRA has done a good job of marketing guns to people as a lifestyle choice and an ego boost but that doesn’t make guns or your gun ownership any more respectable or honorable than any other hobby.
LanceThruster
@Field Guide:
Interesting data. Thx.
johnny aquitard
@johnny aquitard: The guys doing the test didn’t know how many 3/4 inch pine boards a 5.56mm bullet from an AR-15 would gonthrough as the ones they fired were still going after they zipped through 12 such boards.
And if you’ve ever done construction you know interior walls of most home construction ( i.e., most of houses and apartments) are made of much less resistant stuff– a bullet only has to go through two 1/2 inch layers of gypsum board for most of the wall. A person can put their fist through a 1/2 inch of drywall. Not so with a 3/4 pine board.
An AR-15 bullet will zip right through your house, right through a floor or roof, and likely right through your neighbor’s house.
Ben Franklin
@aimai:
The NRA has done a good job of marketing guns to people as a lifestyle choice and an ego boost but that doesn’t make guns or your gun ownership any more respectable or honorable than any other hobby.
Neither does it make them less honorable. I am not, nor have I ever been an NRA member, nor do I buy any gun periodicals. I have several weapons, including a pellet-gun (single shot) and I didn’t arrive at those purchase decisions based upon what other people think.
Monkus
Two years ago, my wife’s friend (Texan living in Arizona) went off her depression meds. One night, she made some disturbing phone calls to her ex-boyfriend, which prompted him to ask the police to check on her. When they arrived at her apartment, she wouldn’t let them in, all the while warning that she was about to kill herself. Eventually, they determined it necessary to force their way into her apartment, and she shot herself in the head.
I don’t know if that was bad police work; and this certainly isn’t a typical suicide situation. But if she didn’t have a gun, she wouldn’t have killed herself that night.
johnny aquitard
@LanceThruster: I would think that means a 7.62 bullet would penetrate even more.
But at some point it’s moot. How many sheets of drywall or pine boards is too much? Your child could be sleeping in the next room, only 2 layers of drywall and a dozen feet of air away.
At that link to Box ‘o Truth, the AR-15 bullets went through a dozen 3/4 inch pine boards. I’ve done home construction. I know that’s more than what a bullet will likely encounter going one end of a house to the other. And it will likely go into a neighbor’s house especially if it misses any studs. Which, since studs are 16 inches apart in a wall, a bullet is more likely than not to do.
Kay
@aimai:
I saw last week that they had a concealed carry guy go off and shoot the lawyer and the litigant on the other side after a mediation in a law office. I feel as if this was absolutely inevitable. “Alternative dispute resolution”. Mediation. A process that was designed to reduce protracted conflict. Someone needs to tell the gun nut that ADR doesn’t mean executing your legal opponent.
This is why we don’t allow people to bring weapons into court. Because we have some common sense. Just gone. Crazy wins. Guns everywhere and anywhere.
LanceThruster
@johnny aquitard:
So would you make a case for outlawing certain particular type rounds? They outlaw teflon bullets (so-called “cop killers”). I don’t think you can buy indendiary rounds (who the hell knows these days?).
I had fun legally shooting fully auto weapons in a Vegas gun store and range (Thompson, Schmeiser, and “Grease gun”). It was an amazing feeling as it connected me to a period of our history and technolgy of death that felt very real. I am glad such weapons are kept out of the hands of those who should not have them (as best they can), and will continue to find ways to do that. What I will not accede to is the demonization of the interest itself. Look at any interest/pursuit you justify, and most of them do not have an amendment protecting them in this way. Tell me what you feel the definition of the second amendment is. And this is from the same general public that has had other rights swept aside (with or without senitment) without a whimper.
trollhattan
@LanceThruster:
You do remember why Diane Feinstein has a career in national politics, don’t you?
Raven
@LanceThruster: Don’t forget the M14 ace.
trollhattan
@LanceThruster:
Fuck yes. Let’s start with civilian-owned .50 cal.
Under my Reich: gone. Yeah, that’s how I roll.
Ben Franklin
@trollhattan:
Fishermen in Alaska compete with Griz’ for the salmon. A 50-cal wheel-gun is the weapon for self-defense. Otherwise, the fish wins.
eemom
@Field Guide:
Fuck you, you “sad” concern troll.
LaPierre isn’t somebody with whom I disagree. He’s an amoral sociopath enabler of murderers soaked in the blood of children.
Redhand
A number of years ago the teen granddaughter of my ex’s relatives living in Florida, who were talking care of the teen because her mother couldn’t (drug issues) suffered a tragedy I attribute solely to the presence of a loaded firearm in the house. The grandfather was super strict and told the granddaughter she couldn’t go “to the mall with friends” that evening. The granddaughter went to the back of the house, took a loaded pistol into the bathroom, and shot herself in the head. The grandmother heard the shot and rushed into the bathroom just in time to take the girl in her arms and hear “help me” before the granddaughter died.
Some months after that, the drug-addicted mother took her own life. She had problems to begin with, obviously, but the daughter’s death precipitated a steep downward spiral from which she never recovered.
Since this incident I have always considered it madness for one to keep a firearm in the house.
johnny aquitard
@Field Guide: These guys are shooting varmint bullets into geletin. All they proved that when it hits gelatin it will go 9 inches deep.
By the way, the FBI standard is 12 inches of penetration in gelatin for reliably stopping bad guys. So you’ve got a link that shows it can kill people in other parts of a house, yet not reliably stop an attacker.
Set up a dummy wall section and shoot at it. I’ve done that with a .22 lr and it easily goes through an inch of drywall with power to spare. Most owners of AR-15’s I’ve seen use military surplus ammo because its cheap. That’s full metal jacket, and the results are what the Box o’ Truth showed.
It also demonstrates that even handgun bullets penetrate enough to be deadly to occupants in another room.
LanceThruster
@johnny aquitard: That was my point (7.62 round) and Box O’Truth is a great site. So much of my collection is historical curios (like Vasily Zietzev’s Mosin-Nagant), but these were the combat rifles of their day. If someone does something horrible with any of those, do they go on the chopping block next? Serious question.
Ben Franklin
@LanceThruster:
You have a Mosin?
Mine is vintage 1942. Muzzle flash is scary.
Steeplejack
WTF?! No posts since this morning? I thought there would be a pre-Super Bowl thread, maybe even a pre-pre-Super Bowl thread.
I’m off to bro’ man’s house for the evening. There will be chili from CIA chef man and other goodies. Don’t care who wins the game, just hope it’s not a snoozefest.
trollhattan
@Ben Franklin:
Shoota’, please.
LanceThruster
@Ben Franklin:
That it does. I’ve got the shorter version too. They’re both practically artisan.
johnny aquitard
@LanceThruster: The point is how risky it is to fire a gun in a house. It is stupid to ignore the risks to other people, to one’s family whom you are supposedly trynig to protect, or to people in another house or apartment.
This is a responsibility that is ignored. I’ve got a right to not have my kid shot in the head as he sleeps because you insist on your right to use a gun in your house to protect your family, and that this somehow trumps my rights and my kid’s life? WTF? What about other people and their kids? What makes you think this is all about you?
Most people who have guns lying around for ‘protection’ don’t even consider this, it’s not even on their radar scope, or ignore it. That’s irresponsible.
Ben Franklin
@LanceThruster:
If you have the carbine, it was a sniper rifle, I think. The rifling should be better than my rifle. It’s pretty worn. But I never target more than 150 yards so it doesn’t affect accuracy.
Alison
My kingdom for an Open Thread!
johnny aquitard
@trollhattan: In mine too.
But I’m tired of trying to leglislate commonsense to gun nut fuckers who have none. They will ‘but what about this round? But what about that gun?’ the shit out of it to make any compromise unworkable.
Ban most of this shit, and leave a very few legal. Dude can get by in his life without most thats out there.
Corner Stone
@johnny aquitard:
That’s my standard as well. Just sayin’.
GameDay Bucket Go Boom!
Corner Stone
@johnny aquitard:
This may be one of the stupidest things I’ve seen here.*
*With the standard caveat of everything posted by aimai. That shit doesn’t count as it’s so ass over teakettle.
scav
All those cries about the Constitution not being a suicide pact sure have quieted themselves.
Funny what context will do.
LanceThruster
@johnny aquitard:
When it comes to rights, it *is* all about me (and you and you and you). “Think of the children!” can cover just about anything. I was at a Firing Line taping with Arianna Huffington (before her conversion to ‘liberal’) say that if severely restricting the freedoms of the internet would protect even one child of abuse or exploitation, it would be worth it. Not targetted at the crime or the acts themselves exclusively, but the freedom of utilizing those same tools that someone else had misused.
Won’t somebody please think of the children?
Ben Franklin
@LanceThruster:
Won’t somebody please think of the children?
They do, but only when murdered 20 at a time.
LanceThruster
@Ben Franklin:
The longer 91/30 was the “Enemy At The Gates” rifle.
johnny aquitard
@Corner Stone: Fuck you.
You got nuttin’. As usual.
LanceThruster
@Ben Franklin:
It’s hard to protect from a sucker punch. And for the death tolls from conflicts of whatever intensity (wars) we engage in, the death toll of innocents far exceeds Newtown. The ones retaining the rights themselves to inflict mass death upon innocents will also be the ones to determine who else is worthy to exercise their own 2A rights.
I’m for the majority getting what they want if they’re within the stipulations of the Bill of Rights.
kay
@johnny aquitard:
I agree with you. They do too. There is no “responsible gun owner” argument without irresponsible gun owners. What are they arguing with “responsible gun owners”?
That they are responsible fir harm caused.
Can’t claim you’re meeting the duty if there IS no duty. I didn’t announce the responsible gun owner standard that Lanza’s mother didn’t meet, they did.
Can’t have it both ways. If there’s no duty to others, then they can’t claim to meet it.
LanceThruster
@Raven:
As much as I want an M1 Garand…one of those would be sweet. What a history. I look at the pros and cons of a small arm weapon along the lines of fighter aircaft design. Each choice has its own +/-‘s.
Ben Franklin
@LanceThruster:
Springfield started manufacture again around 7 years ago, but it is twice the price for a Ruger Mini-14 which is a scaled-down version of the M-14.
But I understand the desire for the Garand.
LanceThruster
I own one and never knew the origin of the designation. How funny. Thx.
Corner Stone
@johnny aquitard: Ahhh, the riposte of a true intellectual who has obviously thought very deeply on this issue.
Thank you for sharing.
LanceThruster
@trollhattan:
So it exceeds distance and throw weight needs. Smaller at some point makes the cutoff. Are .50 cal used in a lot of civilan killings?
LanceThruster
@scav:
Interesting origin of the suicide pact term.
Ben Franklin
@LanceThruster:
Jackson’s dissent in this case is most famous for its final paragraph:
This Court has gone far toward accepting the doctrine that civil liberty means the removal of all restraints from these crowds and that all local attempts to maintain order are impairments of the liberty of the citizen. The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.
Nice retort…
trollhattan
@LanceThruster:
Everything you need to know is encapsulated in this photo.
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/12/18/when-im-called-off-i-got-a-sawed-off/
Ben Franklin
@trollhattan:
I harbor no affection for Glennuendo, but TBogg needs to go on a word-salad free diet.
Lots of Carbs and Meatiliscious protein should curb the urge to pontificate.
LanceThruster
@Ruckus:
I feel for you.
LanceThruster
A couple of my comments died in childbirth but I’m spent so no mind. I hope nothing I voiced warranted a front pager ban.
Ruckus
@LanceThruster:
Was trying to agree with you that sometimes it’s the anticipation as much as the event that is an issue. In the case of depression it can slow/stop the progression to a better place. In the case of migraines it is the unknown up coming pain level that scares you. But the part that makes it bearable is that you know it can and will get better.
LanceThruster
@Ruckus: And my reply was agreeing with your comparison of the circumstances.
salud!
Gretchen
I know a young woman who, with her husband and children, was living with her in-laws. Her husband was depressed and, she thought, suicidal. She asked that the in-laws lock up the guns. They refused. She took her kids and left. She eventually had to get a protection order because the husband, still with access to guns, threatened her.
I knew another young woman who was depressed, disappeared for a day, and then suddenly seemed better. Her husband thought she had turned the corner. One day he took their child out, and when they returned home, found that she had shot herself. He thought she was better, and hadn’t locked up the guns. He realized in retrospect that she’d decided that day what she was going to do, and waitied for an opportunity. She’s one that might still be alive if she hadn’t had guns handy. Say if she’d swallowed a bottle of pills, and her husband got home in time to call 911. I still remember how he told me that he went into the bedroom and saw her legs on the floor, and started to pull her out, “and then…..I saw”. I can only imagine what he saw. Yes, I live in gun country.
libarbarian
I generally don’t think “protecting people from themselves” should be a core argument when debating gov’t policy.
Michele C
@Kay: The “paycheck” loan places right outside military bases has always turned my stomach. It’s so obvious that they go after young recruits, who honestly have tiny paychecks.