Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action.
On January 12 2013 11:54 SCkad wrote: also americans have you considered that if you think your government is going to betray you/turn on you that you might want to try and change the system? you know instead of waiting for some point after they have started this uprising which might succeed but certainly cost lives and THEN change the system?
Who are you to say that we are not? Just because I drive responsibly doesn't mean I don't wear a seat-belt just in case.
On January 12 2013 11:14 Ettick wrote: I had like a 500+ word post but it got deleted somehow lol Oh well...
I don't care what the second amendment says, in fact I honestly don't care what any laws say, I believe the law should operate around what is right.
Given that, it is fair for people to be able to effectively protect themselves from whatever dangers there are that can present themselves to them such as burglars, muggers, etc. Pepper spray, tasers, hand to hand combat, and other non-lethal forms of protection can be unreliable and, especially in the case of hand to hand combat, hard to use.
You have no right to kill people even if they introduce into your house. What you say is not fair at all.
On January 12 2013 11:14 Ettick wrote: I had like a 500+ word post but it got deleted somehow lol Oh well...
I don't care what the second amendment says, in fact I honestly don't care what any laws say, I believe the law should operate around what is right.
Given that, it is fair for people to be able to effectively protect themselves from whatever dangers there are that can present themselves to them such as burglars, muggers, etc. Pepper spray, tasers, hand to hand combat, and other non-lethal forms of protection can be unreliable and, especially in the case of hand to hand combat, hard to use.
You have no right to kill people even if they introduce into your house. What you say is not fair at all.
I do have a right to kill someone if they break into my home. as I said before, someone who is desperate enough to break into a home is desperate enough to conduct violence. it isn't fair? would it be fair if they killed my child and then I kill him then? how am I supposed to know if he has a firearm or a knife? why should I be not allowed to not take this chance?
plain and simple, if you break into my home and I do not know you, you are going to be shot if my kids or wife are in the same household.
if I'm alone, and in a WAY better position physically such as an open area or area I can see the intruder, and I know there are no other intruders behind me, I will pump my shotgun and scream at him not to move an inch, and if he does, he's going to be shot. if not, I'll call the police and keep him on the ground until they arrive.
On January 12 2013 11:14 Ettick wrote: I had like a 500+ word post but it got deleted somehow lol Oh well...
I don't care what the second amendment says, in fact I honestly don't care what any laws say, I believe the law should operate around what is right.
Given that, it is fair for people to be able to effectively protect themselves from whatever dangers there are that can present themselves to them such as burglars, muggers, etc. Pepper spray, tasers, hand to hand combat, and other non-lethal forms of protection can be unreliable and, especially in the case of hand to hand combat, hard to use.
You have no right to kill people even if they introduce into your house. What you say is not fair at all.
On January 12 2013 08:27 Kimaker wrote: Interesting numbers I found:
Firearm related suicides account for roughly 60% of all suicides and also count under firearms related deaths, thus artificially inflating the seeming danger of firearms to the public. If you remove firearm related suicides, the firearms related death rate in the United States falls from 31,347 to 12,612. That's 4.204 deaths per 100000 people. Fairly negligible.
I'm not convinced guns cause enough deaths to warrant their wholesale removal, or even limitation based on the current gun ownership.
Why does the fact that firearms are used in the majority of suicides detract from the regulation argument? It seems quite reasonable to think that a reduction in careless firearm sales would lead to fewer suicides, which is a good thing. It is significantly harder to kill yoursf without a gun.
Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. They have almost no guns. Ergo, guns do not cause suicides.
Even if they did, big whoop. If someone wants to die, I'm not going to stop them. That's their choice.
On January 12 2013 11:54 SCkad wrote: also americans have you considered that if you think your government is going to betray you/turn on you that you might want to try and change the system? you know instead of waiting for some point after they have started this uprising which might succeed but certainly cost lives and THEN change the system?
Who are you to say that we are not? Just because I drive responsibly doesn't mean I don't wear a seat-belt just in case.
Exactly. Violence is an absolute last resort. I totally support peaceful negotiations, but we have to be able to do something should they prove impossible.
On January 12 2013 11:14 Ettick wrote: I had like a 500+ word post but it got deleted somehow lol Oh well...
I don't care what the second amendment says, in fact I honestly don't care what any laws say, I believe the law should operate around what is right.
Given that, it is fair for people to be able to effectively protect themselves from whatever dangers there are that can present themselves to them such as burglars, muggers, etc. Pepper spray, tasers, hand to hand combat, and other non-lethal forms of protection can be unreliable and, especially in the case of hand to hand combat, hard to use.
You have no right to kill people even if they introduce into your house. What you say is not fair at all.
Contrary to what you think is right, US law disagrees.
I'm a liberal and even I believe you have every right to do w/e you want to protect yourself if an intruder breaks into your home.
On January 12 2013 13:23 Tmix wrote: if I'm alone, and in a WAY better position physically such as an open area or area I can see the intruder, and I know there are no other intruders behind me, I will pump my shotgun and scream at him not to move an inch, and if he does, he's going to be shot. if not, I'll call the police and keep him on the ground until they arrive.
I think a lot of people feel this way and it confuses me. What are the odds I will get such a jump on an intruder, and be so sure of my surroundings and the lack of an accomplice, that I can safely detain an unknown intruder at gunpoint, all while making a phone call and then stalling for 5 or 10 minutes? Maybe if I had special military training this would become viable, if the conditions were completely in my favor (likelihood?)
I'm not going to argue that someone shouldn't be allowed to use a gun to defend themselves from a dangerous intruder in their own home, but I don't think most people are capable of actually making proper decisions when defending their house. With a 'castle law' approach where trespassing means you can get lethally shot you avoid putting the homeowner in a legal situation where they aren't sure how to handle an intruder that isn't actively attacking them, but I don't like the idea of innocent family members getting shot by mistake either.
Still, it bothers me how many people rush to the defense of intruders who were shot by horrified homeowners. In order for me to 'side' with the intruder there needs to be some compelling evidence that the homeowner knew there was no threat and chose to torture/kill the intruder for reasons other than defense.
On January 12 2013 08:27 Kimaker wrote: Interesting numbers I found:
Firearm related suicides account for roughly 60% of all suicides and also count under firearms related deaths, thus artificially inflating the seeming danger of firearms to the public. If you remove firearm related suicides, the firearms related death rate in the United States falls from 31,347 to 12,612. That's 4.204 deaths per 100000 people. Fairly negligible.
I'm not convinced guns cause enough deaths to warrant their wholesale removal, or even limitation based on the current gun ownership.
Why does the fact that firearms are used in the majority of suicides detract from the regulation argument? It seems quite reasonable to think that a reduction in careless firearm sales would lead to fewer suicides, which is a good thing. It is significantly harder to kill yoursf without a gun.
Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. They have almost no guns. Ergo, guns do not cause suicides.
Even if they did, big whoop. If someone wants to die, I'm not going to stop them. That's their choice.
Your logic and compassion are similarly bankrupt. The very nature of psychological disorder muddles the very notion of rational decision making within an individual, meaning that many who extemporaneously suffer from suicidal ideation may very well not truly want to die. Keeping that in mind, firearms avoid a great number of the average person's life or death defense mechanisms through the sudden and highly effective delivery of the killing blow, and it is precisely that expediency that a suicidal individual ought to avoid. Additionally, if arguments for why the lack of guns in Europe and the according reduction in homicide rates are related are to be discounted on the basis of the idiosyncrasy of the situation within the United States (which I agree with to some extent), then why are we to make a terrible error in extrapolation merely to prove some snarky point in reference to a country with a very real problem with widespread suicide?
On January 12 2013 13:23 Tmix wrote: if I'm alone, and in a WAY better position physically such as an open area or area I can see the intruder, and I know there are no other intruders behind me, I will pump my shotgun and scream at him not to move an inch, and if he does, he's going to be shot. if not, I'll call the police and keep him on the ground until they arrive.
I think a lot of people feel this way and it confuses me. What are the odds I will get such a jump on an intruder, and be so sure of my surroundings and the lack of an accomplice, that I can safely detain an unknown intruder at gunpoint, all while making a phone call and then stalling for 5 or 10 minutes? Maybe if I had special military training this would become viable, if the conditions were completely in my favor (likelihood?)
I agree, the situation is incredibly unlikely to happen, unless the area is completely in your favor, such as a dead end hallway where you know what everything behind you is etc, but most homes don't have an ideal area. it's a really hard decision to make because you don't know if he does in fact have an accomplice, and if you have family nearby, you don't want to take a chance. in a lot of cases, just pumping a shotgun or cocking a gun is enough to make them run, but it's still not worth the risk. they could take it as aggression or fear for their own life and start shooting.
this is why we have the right to shoot them on sight in our home, which is why I normally would unless the current setting is absolutely PERFECT
On January 12 2013 08:27 Kimaker wrote: Interesting numbers I found:
Firearm related suicides account for roughly 60% of all suicides and also count under firearms related deaths, thus artificially inflating the seeming danger of firearms to the public. If you remove firearm related suicides, the firearms related death rate in the United States falls from 31,347 to 12,612. That's 4.204 deaths per 100000 people. Fairly negligible.
I'm not convinced guns cause enough deaths to warrant their wholesale removal, or even limitation based on the current gun ownership.
Why does the fact that firearms are used in the majority of suicides detract from the regulation argument? It seems quite reasonable to think that a reduction in careless firearm sales would lead to fewer suicides, which is a good thing. It is signifancy harder to kill yoursf without a gun.
Whether or not suicide can be ethical or not is opening up an entirely different argument.
Regardless of whether or not you think suicide is wrong though, you probably can at least concede that it isn't as wrong as homicide.
Most people (including myself before considering it after reading that post) probably assume that when those statistics are presented as such, they are specifically representative of homicide and not inclusive of suicide deaths as well. At the very best, it's still deceptive and misleading.
On January 12 2013 08:27 Kimaker wrote: Interesting numbers I found:
Firearm related suicides account for roughly 60% of all suicides and also count under firearms related deaths, thus artificially inflating the seeming danger of firearms to the public. If you remove firearm related suicides, the firearms related death rate in the United States falls from 31,347 to 12,612. That's 4.204 deaths per 100000 people. Fairly negligible.
I'm not convinced guns cause enough deaths to warrant their wholesale removal, or even limitation based on the current gun ownership.
Why does the fact that firearms are used in the majority of suicides detract from the regulation argument? It seems quite reasonable to think that a reduction in careless firearm sales would lead to fewer suicides, which is a good thing. It is signifancy harder to kill yoursf without a gun.
Whether or not suicide can be ethical or not is opening up an entirely different argument.
Regardless of whether or not you think suicide is wrong though, you probably can at least concede that it isn't as wrong as homicide.
Most people (including myself before considering it after reading that post) probably assume that when those statistics are presented as such, they are specifically representative of homicide and not inclusive of suicide deaths as well. At the very best, it's still deceptive and misleading.
Thank you, that was my point exactly.
Hasn't the general consensus of this thread been the dismissal of valuing a critique of the presentation of evidence over the evidence itself? If guns are a major part of suicide in the United States, well that is something we ought to address. And although I've posted this link twice in this thread, here it is again. Many states are generally doing an awful job with keeping the national gun dealer database updated with current mental health records. Does the fact that guns play a role in the majority of suicides look any different now?
On January 12 2013 08:27 Kimaker wrote: Interesting numbers I found:
Firearm related suicides account for roughly 60% of all suicides and also count under firearms related deaths, thus artificially inflating the seeming danger of firearms to the public. If you remove firearm related suicides, the firearms related death rate in the United States falls from 31,347 to 12,612. That's 4.204 deaths per 100000 people. Fairly negligible.
I'm not convinced guns cause enough deaths to warrant their wholesale removal, or even limitation based on the current gun ownership.
Why does the fact that firearms are used in the majority of suicides detract from the regulation argument? It seems quite reasonable to think that a reduction in careless firearm sales would lead to fewer suicides, which is a good thing. It is significantly harder to kill yoursf without a gun.
Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. They have almost no guns. Ergo, guns do not cause suicides.
Even if they did, big whoop. If someone wants to die, I'm not going to stop them. That's their choice.
Your logic and compassion are similarly bankrupt. The very nature of psychological disorder muddles the very notion of rational decision making within an individual, meaning that many who extemporaneously suffer from suicidal ideation may very well not truly want to die.Keeping that in mind, firearms avoid a great number of the average person's life or death defense mechanisms through the sudden and highly effective delivery of the killing blow, and it is precisely that expediency that a suicidal individual ought to avoid. Additionally, if arguments for why the lack of guns in Europe and the according reduction in homicide rates are related are to be discounted on the basis of the idiosyncrasy of the situation within the United States (which I agree with to some extent), then why are we to make a terrible error in extrapolation merely to prove some snarky point in reference to a country with a very real problem with widespread suicide?
Irrelevant to the discussion at hand: Guns/Gun control. I appreciate the illustrative nature of what you're trying to do, but it detracts from the purpose of all this in the first place, your implication that my assertion, that the stats are unfairly used to inflate the number of gun related deaths in the public's mind, is wrong since if these people did not have access to firearms they would be incapable of so readily committing suicide. While this may have a degree of truth to it, I would be tempted to say that based on Millitron's point and common sense and first hand knowledge about what leads a person to suicide, they're probably outliers who would be stopped by a lack of a gun.
As for the lower homicide rates in Europe, I'd chalk that up to a number of things, foremost amongst them culture. So yeah, them thar idiosyncrasies.
And as for your post which I missed:
No. It's an easy way to kill yourself. Stop trying to conflate suicide and gun-ownership. If mental health is the problem, then mental health is the problem, what comes after or what is used in what comes after.
On January 12 2013 13:41 Millitron wrote: Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. They have almost no guns. Ergo, guns do not cause suicides.
... firearms avoid a great number of the average person's life or death defense mechanisms through the sudden and highly effective delivery of the killing blow, and it is precisely that expediency that a suicidal individual ought to avoid.
i don't think this point should be taken into consideration when answering the threads title. i am not saying you do, i couldn't deduce that.
All of the talk about banning this and that is pretty academic and distracting to the main issue which is regulation. We all get emotional around topics of death and constitutional rights but the real question in my mind is how much can the government demand of gun carriers WITHOUT an outright ban?
Can the government require yearly classes and proficiency tests? Can the government require that you purchase and maintain a special insurance for gun accidents? Can the government perform random home audits on gun owners to ensure they are being stored safely? How much can we charge gun owners for such a system before it is a violation of their rights?
I tend to be in the "if running away is an option then shooting isn't" camp, but I don't think such rules will ever exist so we might as well require that they receive the training officers have to maintain judgement and proficiency in life or death situations.
On January 12 2013 08:27 Kimaker wrote: Interesting numbers I found:
Firearm related suicides account for roughly 60% of all suicides and also count under firearms related deaths, thus artificially inflating the seeming danger of firearms to the public. If you remove firearm related suicides, the firearms related death rate in the United States falls from 31,347 to 12,612. That's 4.204 deaths per 100000 people. Fairly negligible.
I'm not convinced guns cause enough deaths to warrant their wholesale removal, or even limitation based on the current gun ownership.
Why does the fact that firearms are used in the majority of suicides detract from the regulation argument? It seems quite reasonable to think that a reduction in careless firearm sales would lead to fewer suicides, which is a good thing. It is significantly harder to kill yoursf without a gun.
Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. They have almost no guns. Ergo, guns do not cause suicides.
Even if they did, big whoop. If someone wants to die, I'm not going to stop them. That's their choice.
Your logic and compassion are similarly bankrupt. The very nature of psychological disorder muddles the very notion of rational decision making within an individual, meaning that many who extemporaneously suffer from suicidal ideation may very well not truly want to die. Keeping that in mind, firearms avoid a great number of the average person's life or death defense mechanisms through the sudden and highly effective delivery of the killing blow, and it is precisely that expediency that a suicidal individual ought to avoid. Additionally, if arguments for why the lack of guns in Europe and the according reduction in homicide rates are related are to be discounted on the basis of the idiosyncrasy of the situation within the United States (which I agree with to some extent), then why are we to make a terrible error in extrapolation merely to prove some snarky point in reference to a country with a very real problem with widespread suicide?
That doesn't really settle it though. If Japan has no guns, yet they still have many suicides, clearly guns are not the only factor.
Suicide can be a rational decision, ask Socrates if you don't believe me. There are plenty of ways to commit suicide that are just as immediate as a gun. You can jump in front of a train, or off a tall building. I would wager that the number of individuals who would have been discouraged had they not had a gun is small enough to be negligible, and I use Japan's suicide rates as evidence. If people truly want to kill themselves, they WILL find a way.
On January 12 2013 14:38 Velocirapture wrote: All of the talk about banning this and that is pretty academic and distracting to the main issue which is regulation. We all get emotional around topics of death and constitutional rights but the real question in my mind is how much can the government demand of gun carriers WITHOUT an outright ban?
Can the government require yearly classes and proficiency tests? Can the government require that you purchase and maintain a special insurance for gun accidents? Can the government perform random home audits on gun owners to ensure they are being stored safely? How much can we charge gun owners for such a system before it is a violation of their rights?
I tend to be in the "if running away is an option then shooting isn't" camp, but I don't think such rules will ever exist so we might as well require that they receive the training officers have to maintain judgement and proficiency in life or death situations.
you're thinking in the right direction, for the most part. it's a difficult subject, but flat out banning firearms (especially when 90% of the people have no idea how weapons work or which weapons are deadlier) is absurd.
it's ridiculous how people aren't even doing their research yet they think they have compelling arguments (I'm not specifically talking about anyone in this thread, I didn't read all of it), half of the anti-gun people don't realize the weapons aren't automatic, and they have no clue of the current laws, and they are straight out taking the wrong approach.
just because the weapon is black does not mean it's any deadlier than a "wooden" looking one. it's all about: 1. the caliber of the weapon 2. the amount of rounds the magazine holds 3. the rate of fire
for #1, any caliber is deadly enough. even though a 22 is much smaller, it's capable of horrific destruction because of richochet, and any higher caliber will do a lot of damage as well. for #2, a lot of handguns can hold just as many rounds as an armalite rifle with an extended drum, which aren't very expensive for #3, every weapon in mass shootings have been semi-automatic, so you can't do anything about that.
so what does that leave us? well, hiring guards at schools is too challenging and too expensive of a task, and banning them all together won't do sh**. (it's easier than you think to obtain illegal firearms).
we need to be stricter on mental health evaluations. I do think that there should be a safety course before you can own any firearm as well. people don't realize that you can walk into walmart and buy a 12 gauage for $170, and all you need to be is 18 and pass a short background check (this can be different in your state).
On January 12 2013 08:27 Kimaker wrote: Interesting numbers I found:
Firearm related suicides account for roughly 60% of all suicides and also count under firearms related deaths, thus artificially inflating the seeming danger of firearms to the public. If you remove firearm related suicides, the firearms related death rate in the United States falls from 31,347 to 12,612. That's 4.204 deaths per 100000 people. Fairly negligible.
I'm not convinced guns cause enough deaths to warrant their wholesale removal, or even limitation based on the current gun ownership.
Why does the fact that firearms are used in the majority of suicides detract from the regulation argument? It seems quite reasonable to think that a reduction in careless firearm sales would lead to fewer suicides, which is a good thing. It is significantly harder to kill yoursf without a gun.
Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. They have almost no guns. Ergo, guns do not cause suicides.
Even if they did, big whoop. If someone wants to die, I'm not going to stop them. That's their choice.
Your logic and compassion are similarly bankrupt. The very nature of psychological disorder muddles the very notion of rational decision making within an individual, meaning that many who extemporaneously suffer from suicidal ideation may very well not truly want to die.Keeping that in mind, firearms avoid a great number of the average person's life or death defense mechanisms through the sudden and highly effective delivery of the killing blow, and it is precisely that expediency that a suicidal individual ought to avoid. Additionally, if arguments for why the lack of guns in Europe and the according reduction in homicide rates are related are to be discounted on the basis of the idiosyncrasy of the situation within the United States (which I agree with to some extent), then why are we to make a terrible error in extrapolation merely to prove some snarky point in reference to a country with a very real problem with widespread suicide?
Irrelevant to the discussion at hand: Guns/Gun control. I appreciate the illustrative nature of what you're trying to do, but it detracts from the purpose of all this in the first place, your implication that my assertion, that the stats are unfairly used to inflate the number of gun related deaths in the public's mind, is wrong since if these people did not have access to firearms they would be incapable of so readily committing suicide. While this may have a degree of truth to it, I would be tempted to say that based on Millitron's point and common sense and first hand knowledge about what leads a person to suicide, they're probably outliers who would be stopped by a lack of a gun.
As for the lower homicide rates in Europe, I'd chalk that up to a number of things, foremost amongst them culture. So yeah, them thar idiosyncrasies.
And as for your post which I missed:
No. It's an easy way to kill yourself. Stop trying to conflate suicide and gun-ownership. If mental health is the problem, then mental health is the problem, what comes after or what is used in what comes after.
I am conflating nothing, for the evidence itself does that for me. Let's take a look.
States are doing a terrible job of updating mental health records in the national gun dealer database, a clear sign of a lax system of regulation that needs tightening up. According to this McGill Meta-Analysis amongst a host of other research materials with similar figures, 87% of victims of suicide were diagnosable with a mental disorder based on history from their friends and family after their death. Now of course we ought to consider the failings of the psychiatric infrastructure itself when discussing this, for better diagnostic techniques alongside better mental health awareness are certainly worthwhile goals. In any case, the fact that suicide and mental disorder are so closely linked, when viewed in concert with both the statistic that firearms are involved in 60% of suicides and that state governments are currently doing a poor job of keeping mental health records updated in the national gun dealer database, seems like obvious evidence that suicide and gun control are linked with enough significance to warrant attention. So, nunez, Millitron, and Kimaker, why should we ignore this?
My thoughts are like what John Stewart said on the daily show. Fear of an imaginary dystopic future, preventing them from addressing our actual dystopic present.
But doesn't he still address the actual "dystopic" present in the video with his alternative solutions? Unless you don't think his alternative solutions are solutions at all. If that's the case, why aren't they?
I like John Stewart but that seems to be a cute punch phrase more than an actual argument.
It's a completely valid point. We're a truer Republic now than we've ever been. Sure people rightfully still hate the system, but at least blacks and women get to vote now.
We've enslaved, wrongfully executed thousands.
We basically imprisoned every Asian in America during WW2, for the crime of being Asian. Definition of that: Dystopic. So, it begs to question, by the logic of you freedom-loving gun-enthusiasts, should every law-abiding Asian-American not have grabbed their gun and shot back at those of us persecuting them? Because, yes, that is what this argument of "gun freedom" boils down to. [sarcasm]How wonderful that would've been, to have these wrongfully persecuted Americans rightfully rebel against their government.[/sarcasm]
I mentioned in an earlier post, Sacco and Venzetti, but there are just so many examples of egregious government control over our people. Freedoms should not to be confused with privileges, that our government may not grant you, but other countries may. We're hardly the most free people that have ever existed.
We're also in many ways one of the worst police-states. We literally imprison a higher percentage of our population than most other countries in the world.
Since our War on Terror, we've imprisoned American citizens without due process. Annie grab your gun? Why aren't you and other Constitution lovers helping all these victims of American oppression? Simple cowardice?
So it seems the argument of "We need our guns to keep our government from having too much power over us", is actually code for "We need our guns in case the government prevents us from having guns".
To which the only real reply is, "**** you, you don't get to hold our Republic hostage".
I don't know why you're presuming you know my stance on gun control and the second amendment, and then mocking me for it, but you should avoid generalizations and personal attacks if you actually want to have an intellectual discussion, not to mention randomly straw-manning anyone who shows signs of disagreeing with you.
You didn't even answer what I was asking either because you didn't once address why his alternative solution of having more strict gun laws, background checks, etc, isn't a solution at all to preventing further killings with firearms. So, you have yet to demonstrate why this wouldn't be a solution to addressing our "dystopic" present of gun-related killings.
Your argument that having guns puts us in no stronger a position to ultimately resist dystopic tyranny is interesting though, and if true, it directly shuts down Shapiro's defense of the second amendment. Whether it's actually true or not, I'm not so sure as you.
Read that post again. I said nothing about your stance, or was addressing you personally, or at least didn't intend to. I was just jumping into discussion off of one thing you said. I was addressing the point Jon Stewart made, which you disagreed with. The hypothetical statement and reply, is purely hypothetical. Didn't mean offense.
On January 12 2013 08:27 Kimaker wrote: Interesting numbers I found:
Firearm related suicides account for roughly 60% of all suicides and also count under firearms related deaths, thus artificially inflating the seeming danger of firearms to the public. If you remove firearm related suicides, the firearms related death rate in the United States falls from 31,347 to 12,612. That's 4.204 deaths per 100000 people. Fairly negligible.
I'm not convinced guns cause enough deaths to warrant their wholesale removal, or even limitation based on the current gun ownership.
Why does the fact that firearms are used in the majority of suicides detract from the regulation argument? It seems quite reasonable to think that a reduction in careless firearm sales would lead to fewer suicides, which is a good thing. It is signifancy harder to kill yoursf without a gun.
Whether or not suicide can be ethical or not is opening up an entirely different argument.
Regardless of whether or not you think suicide is wrong though, you probably can at least concede that it isn't as wrong as homicide.
Most people (including myself before considering it after reading that post) probably assume that when those statistics are presented as such, they are specifically representative of homicide and not inclusive of suicide deaths as well. At the very best, it's still deceptive and misleading.
Thank you, that was my point exactly.
Hasn't the general consensus of this thread been the dismissal of valuing a critique of the presentation of evidence over the evidence itself? If guns are a major part of suicide in the United States, well that is something we ought to address. And although I've posted this link twice in this thread, here it is again. Many states are generally doing an awful job with keeping the national gun dealer database updated with current mental health records. Does the fact that guns play a role in the majority of suicides look any different now?
That's an entirely separate issue than intentionally reporting deceptive statistics.
EPT
