“The vast majority—90 percent—of people who attempt suicide and survive do not go on to die by suicide. Suicide attempts with a gun, however, rarely afford a second chance. In addition to being highly lethal, firearms leave little opportunity for rescue or to halt mid-attempt. Limiting access to firearms increases the amount of time between a crisis and an individual’s suicide attempt, giving the impulse an opportunity to pass.” – The Truth About Suicide and Guns [via bradycampaign.org]
You know what would work better? Eliminating the stigmata associated with people that feel pushed that far to seek help, and make that help readily available and affordable to everyone. Then you have the potential to reduce suicide across the board.
Thanks for posting this. After losing one friend to suicide unexpectedly (none of us knew anything was wrong), I’m now more direct with other friends who have seemed “off.” I refuse to participate in the stigma, even when it’s an uncomfortable topic.
In a country as stressed-out as America, mental health care needs to be a priority.
Above all, without the fear of losing your Constitutional, civil and natural rights, without due process. A doctor’s opinion does not constitute due process.
You know what would do better? If they worked themselves to death. Because you know it would never happen [not even on the Bataan Death March]. Being f-d up is one thing, advocating for the f-d up by going after the means with which they choose to fix their f-d up-ness by trying to f-up everyone else is F’d.
Courtney Love said it best (when fans gathered outside the home of Kurt Cobain after he off’d himself) she got the crowd to chant with her “A-hole, A-hole, A-hole, A-hole, A-hold, , , “
Hillary had Kurt whacked. 3x the lethal dose of heroin was found in his system. Heroin injected directly into the bloodstream takes effect immediately. There is no way he would have been able to manipulate any weapon after he had been injected. There were no fingerprints on the shotgun and the suicide note was forged. The crime scene was obviously staged, and the police botched the investigation. Courtney previously offered another musician $50k to kill Kurt. He thought it was a joke. He passed a lie detector test. He died by being run over by a train one week after being interviewed.
This is the point we PotG ought to be emphasizing. The emphasis on stripping 2A rights from the mentally ill is patently counter-productive: “I’m from the Government an I’m here to put you on a Government list. But don’t worry, only Government employees will see your name on this list. They won’t give your name to anyone they don’t think should really know about your mental illness.”
How many people who think something might be wrong with them – maybe they ought to ask a doctor about their symptoms – will be further discouraged from seeking help? At some point in his life, probably everyone notices a symptom which he ought to mention to his doctor. In the vast majority of such cases, the symptom is NOT indicative of a mental illness; but, it goes in your chart. The Government wants that data – and it will get what it wants, inevitably.
There are only a few diagnoses that correlate to a marked increase in propensity to violence or suicide. We have a Constitutional responsibility to demand that Congress narrow the mental-illness disabling criteria to these few specific diagnoses.
Sounds crazy to me.
Give up your guns or we’ll have to come get them.
@Kapeltam – The problem with your suggestion is that it addresses the root problem and that will not allow the liberals to ban their hated inanimate objects and to control people who own guns who they hate so much.
Or an even better idea, lets force doctors to report their patients mental state and remove guns from those who may or may not be a danger to themselves and the community. This way, those that need help will seek it out less for fear of losing their right to protect themselves and their families with the best tools possible. I know that after reading about the NY SAFE acts misdeeds, i sure will never go to a shrink for any reason what so ever. And i dont live in NY.
Ya, then you’ll have to build a whole gov’t department to police the craziness of the doctors.
BS
And that is precisely why I stopped going to the VA, when they started asking about my owning or having access to guns.
Ever since it was introduced in ’07, I’ve been following the push to make mental health records available to the feds via the NICS Improvement Act, otherwise known as the Veterans Disarmament Act (which Bush signed into law).
These mongoloid manginas never want to answer one simple question. WHY do countries like Japan and Sweden lead the world in suicides while allowing no legal handgun ownership?
True, though talking about individual countries doesn’t tell you much. Did a quick and dirty. Used UN small arms survey (2007) and WHO suicide rate data (2012). So, caveat for difference in years, but not too far apart. Also, I wasn’t too careful about matching countries that had different names on the two lists (those got cut). With all that, there were data on suicides per 100K and privately owned firearms per 100k for 160 countries. Correlation: r = 0.06, p = 0.45 (not statistically significant). It’s a nothing burger, no relationship between firearms ownership rate and suicide rate. I’m sure this analysis has been done before, but there it is.
There is another useful line of inquiry. Take the US. Get the demographics of suicides. What kinds of guns do they use? What are their ages and professions?
My understanding, for NJ, is that suicides predominantly live in rural areas and use long guns. If these folks are farmers, hunters, small-town dwellers they probably have owned long guns for sport for many years. Whatever it is the government might do (licensing, mental-health checks) these people will have bought their guns long before melancholy strikes them. Or, they will have access to guns among their family members or friends. There is nothing government could do at point-of-sale to make much of a dent in these suicides’ access to guns.
What occupations are represented? Anyone involved in healthcare will have a good insight into how to OD themselves. Perhaps they choose guns; that’s fine. Take away their guns, to what degree would government disable them of the means of suicide? Anyone who is a soldier or cop will have access to guns; how would government disable them of their access to guns? How many have taken high-school chemistry and have internet access? Would these folks have the opportunity to discover the formula for mixing ammonia and chlorine bleach?
Just what is the sub-set of suicides for which we could estimate: “But for the ability to pick-up a gun and use it for suicide, this person would not have found another way”? Likely, we will find a few select cases. But what is the cost-effective solution to these cases?
Very likely, the only cost-effective solution is a public mental-hygiene program that would help parents, relatives, co-workers, friends identify troubled individuals. Prep them to inquire after how a seemingly-troubled individual is feeling and get them some help. Then, make sure the services are made available.
Fortunately, if the patient has depression then that’s pretty curable. SSRIs are really effective. It doesn’t cost that much to diagnose a patient with depression, put him on an SSRI, monitor him for a year or two. The additional taxes he will pay by being a productive healthy worker will more than compensate for this modest cost. This particular disease isn’t so costly as treating cancer.
Best – and most unheeded – advice to potential suicides: It’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
If you can’t see your way to better times soon, you’ve elected to not try hard enough.
But then, I tend not to play the second-guessing game with those who killed themselves; after all, I don’t know anything about the true weight of their burdens.
Here in Canada you can lose your firearms license (among other things I’m sure) for reasons of mental health. So why would I ever risk going to a psychologist? I’ll never see one in my life based on that alone. So yeah, the stigma creates problems.
Stigma, not Stigmata. Totally different.. 🙂
Doh! That’s because people who use a gun to commit suicide are not actually crying for help. Those who really want to end it, do. Whether by gun, or a high dive, or pills.
The attempts where people are ‘saved’ is because the person didn’t want to die.
Yup. The method of suicide that is chosen is an indication of the person’s intentions. It’s unfortunate and downright mendacious for anti gunners to try and link more gun control to lower suicide rates.
Exactly. As mentioned on here many times before the Japanese have one of the highest suicide rates in the world and virtually no access to guns. They are quite efficient at off’ing themselves when they want to.
Korea has more than 1.5 times the rate of Japan’s already high suicide rate and they like-wise have no access to guns.
Even their utopia (UK), has a suicide rate that is comparable to the US. (UK 11.9 per 100k, US 12.1) These people don’t want to help those attempting suicide, it’s just another instrument for their end game.
BEAT ME TO IT.
Yeah, we’re not talking about a teenager swallowing a bunch of aspirin, or cutting their wrist not nearly deeply enough after a breakup. A suicide by pistol or shotgun is REALLY intentional. The one with a 45 in the mouth really wants to die, and does not do it for attention.
Grew up in Canada, where guns are obtainable, but there are enough hurdles that only gun enthusiasts have guns.
Unfortunately, too many guys I knew in their late teens and early twenties had access to bridges and tall buildings. And that’s just as irrevocable as using a gun. I think it’s awful how many young men think that death is the only way out, but we’re still not going to ban bridges and buildings over 2 stories tall.
Yeah, know what you mean. There was a high bridge over a gorge where I grew up, pretty close to five towns. If you couldn’t stand the sight of a dead body, you didn’t go hiking in that gorge. They put up fences on both sides of the bridge, but that didn’t seem to stop people.
In Japan, another favored method is jumping in front of a train. Also pretty certain.
The train route has supposedly gotten so bad in Japan that some lines will fine the families for the clean-up.
Agreed. (I almost wrote “Ragweed”. :))
Perhaps that 90% isn’t failing, but crying for help or attention. If someone really wants to do something, half measures aren’t how they go about it. And what about jumping of bridges? How would one halt mid-fall? “Oh, wait Mr. Gravity! I was just kidding.”
SPLAT
“The Truth About Suicide and Guns”
I see what they did there. Funny, Brady.
The support of family, friends, and co-workers are the only deterrents to suicide. I LOVE the anti’s harping on firearm suicides statistics as a reason for more legislation – knowing that a dedicated person left to their own devices WILL end their life by any means possible.
I was going to read the link…. But 28 pages of B.S. Before my second cup of coffee is a bit much.
Speaking as someone with a suicide in the family and two others in the family who drag it out with endless attempts I have no issue whatsoever with people offing themselves by any means and frankly would like to see more one and done suicides and fewer half-assed attempts.
They say suicide is selfish. I say attempting suicide is selfish. It’s like a cancer on your friends and family that slowly eats at them for however long it takes you to either do it or get over your issues.
Just leave a note saying whatever, walk out into the woods and put one in your head so the rest of us can move on with our lives instead of wallowing pointlessly in misery and despair along with you.
This. Your comments may sound cold to some, but I worked as a reserve deputy for 7 years and I never responded to a suicide call where there was an actual suicide. Plenty of half assed attempts that were just calls for attention. We even got to where we would try to figure out the attempted method before we got there and had to take the person to the hospital. I also had a great uncle who shot and killed a man and got life. He stayed in prison for over twenty years and my grandmother (his sister) suffered every moment of it having to put up with his crap. If they had just fried his ass, the family could have moved on and everyone would have been better off. My point in that is sometimes death, while hard, is the best solution for everyone ELSE.
agree 100% i would add.. if after 3rd violent offence, we off you within two weeks or drop you a prison and forgrt you exist. deep in a desert surounded by 10miles landmines drones n gun turrets. we drop in supllies and allow the convict’s to work together or die.
no man is innocent and rehabilitatable if hes conviced that many times.
screw life sentence that costs million and cripples families. hang em or make them go away and never be seen again so we can move on with our lives.
if we had a reall punishment, crime would plumet.
The British tried that a while ago; it’s called Australia.
I have had classmates when I was in school 40 plus years ago commit suicide. I have known a couple of adults that killed themselves and a few others that repeatedly threatened to “end it all” as they endlessly wallow in a puddle of self pity and depression. And I have known a few people whose children aged 14-25 that killed themselves. My take on all of this may shock folks because of my lack of sympathy for the dead, but my 2 cent opinion is if a person is that filled with despair and that depressed, then they are broken beyond repair. In the “old days” those folks got eaten by lions, tigers, and bears, or froze to death as they wandered aimlessly about in the wilderness, and again in my 2 cent opinion, that was probably more humane than what we do now with drug therapy, psychological treatment, and locking them up in hospitals or jails for years of treatment.
The impulse rarely passes though. It remains, especially if there was no attempt this time. It may ebb a little, the roar back like a tidal wave. When you reach the point of suicide, significant harm is going to happen. Life altering harm. If you live, you are likely to be physically damaged. Failed asphyxiation attempt often leave brain damage due to lack of sufficient oxygen to the brain.
But let’s be honest. This isn’t about suicide prevention. First, they only focus on one method of suicide. Hang yourself, intentional OD, jump off a height, we don’t care says the Brady Campaign. Second, they ignore intentionally, the real plight of suicidal individuals. Most suicide is the result of mental issues. Most can be dealt with and a healthy life is possible, although it may not be easy and it may take time to get there. This is why Brady ignores it. They are only about their agenda which is banning guns.
Could always bring back seppuku.
Do you really want to clean up afterwards?
I think the whole point of seppuku was to make the statement, I am killing myself for some other reason than fear or cowardness. It was pretty much the exact opposite of quick and painless.
When will the incessant desire to alter an outcome flee from do gooders? It is NO business of others to interfere with the liberties of another.
My neighbors father on the second round of cancer had enough, wrote a note, placed in his back pocket, call the authorities and stepped into the back yard and ended his suffering. If my time comes, I wish the same courage.
To impose a value with nothing at stake is the giddy delusion of conversation, not the act of deliberation.
My dad had a very good friend, elderly gentleman, his wife has passed on, was going blind, no children, most of his family has already passed on, did not want to be a burden to others or the State. He left the revolver he used to my dad, don’t know what happened to the handgun. It was his life, his choice.
A grown man choosing to off himself is a little different than a 12 year old that is being bullied and thinking the only way out of it is death. I think that’s the point here. A 12 year old doesn’t have the mental capacity to think clearly when compared to an adult and if a hand gun is easily accessible, they may chose in a difficult moment that will pass, to use it, not fully understanding the ramifications of their poor choice at the moment. I guess they could jump off a bridge, but eliminating the choice closest to home (the firearm) may save them from themselves. I have 3 kids, the oldest being 4, but someday I’ll have to decide when they are mature enough to give them the safe code to allow them to protect themselves from an intruder if I am not home and weigh that vs. their mental well being. Hopefully it’s an easy task.
I do agree that those that are set on ending their life, will figure out a way with or without firearms around so we can’t stop all of them, of course.
And by no means am I advocating for additional gun control. My point is that, when it comes to child suicide, parent’s need to be aware and involved to help foresee a potential problem in their child and help guide them through it.
How many 12-year-olds die due to suicide?
Based on CDC mortality data, the 5-14 age group (13.0) is one of the safest in terms of mortality rate. And in that age range, suicide rate (1.0) is about a quarter of the rate of accidental death (3.7). It is also an order of magnitude lower than the suicide rate for any other cohort.
So, to answer my first question: the total number of 5-14 year-olds who died due to suicide (2013) was 395. Of those 395, 138 used a firearm.
In other words: 12-year-olds dying by suicide due to firearms is a complete non-issue, from a statistical and policy perspective.
Source:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf
I didn’t say there should be more rules or laws or additional policy enacted, in fact I said there shouldn’t be. 12 years was an arbitrary number I randomly picked. My point was referring to children that live at home with parents who own firearms. If you were the parents or family member of one of those 2,300 or so teens that uses a firearm to commit suicide each year, it matters.
All I was saying is that parents need to give careful thought as to when their kids are ready to have access to the gun safe for home defense (obviously), and to watch for signs of serious trouble in their lives if they have been given the combination (not as obvious).
@FlamencoD — In 2013, 2,041 teen ages from ages 13 to 19 committed suicide by any means in total. Of those, 857 used a gun. Much less than half, and certainly far less than the clearly bogus “2,300” number probably proffered by gun control advocates. This, out of a total population of 29,524,367 people in that age range for a per-capita rate of 2.9. That is less than half of the national average of 6.7.
From 1999 – 2013, per-capita rates for suicide by gunshot fell significantly until 2007, before rising again thereafter. 912 intentionally suffocated themselves in 2013, for a rate of 3.09. Interestingly, from 1999 – 2013, per-capita rates for suicide by suffocation rose until 2004, fluctuated some until 2007, before rising after that.
http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_us.html
It seems that method substitution is a thing, and gun control won’t affect suicide rates. Not in children. Not in any demographic. Again. Still. More.
What is wrong with you people? Nowhere did I say there should be gun control to help prevent suicide. My point was that as parents we need to watch for the signs of depression in our kids and intervene before it gets to that point. Part of that responsibility may require changing the code on the safe if they know the code and are showing signs of major depression. That also means being actively engaged in their lives to help prevent or help them cope with the depression.
And the 2,300 was an estimate I derived (incorrectly) that came from the CDC link that he posted on page 22, except that I accidentally factored in some of the people that committed suicide by firearm between 20 and 24 years of age. Regardless, based on the number you posted, 42% of all suicides by teens was by firearm. That’s still a fairly alarming number for kids that aren’t allowed to own a firearm (nearly the same % as people aged 25-34). One thing I noticed on page 22 of Table 10 is that the percent of suicides by firearm goes up with age. 76% of people aged 75-84 years use firearms to commit suicide, vs. 45.6% of those aged 25-34. Interesting.
I concur with your sentiments. The older a person is the more likely he is to have purchased a gun or otherwise have access to a gun. Moreover, the older a person is the more likely he is to figure out an alternative to a gun as a method of suicide.
Conversely, the younger the person, the more problematic it’s apt to be for him to get access to a gun, when there aren’t guns in his own household. And, the less likely he is (in his depressed condition) to impulsively work-out an alternative method. Teens tend to be more impulsive, so if they see a gun they might just pick it up and pull the trigger.
Quantifying these intuitions is difficult; and, it’s unwise to leap to the conclusion that some proposal is going to be cost effective. Personally, I locked-up my guns until my kids were adults; but, I think this was a mistaken idea inasmuch as it left my family exposed to a home invasion I wouldn’t have been able to stop.
I think you are correct in being alert for the mood of our fellows; especially kids. We really ought to set-asside, for a moment, the gun issue and think more about the cost to society of a material fraction of people trying to function with mood disorders or other mental illness. We need to identify these folks and get them treatment so that they are: not suffering; and, functioning to the extent of their potential. The improvement in social welfare (i.e., the pursuit of happiness) and the improvement in productivity (including taxes) ought to more-than-offset the cost of improved mental hygiene.
We don’t bother. Our society values it’s investment in – e.g., pop culture – far higher than mental hygiene. We inoculate our kids against diseases, teach them to wash their hands and brush their teeth. We couldn’t care less about detecting or treating those who exhibit symptoms of mental illness. Those who commit suicide are – at least – out of their misery. Those that don’t suffer for much of their lives.
Much of the mental disorders are now fairly readily treatable and diagnosable. A lot of progress has been made in psychopharmacology. But because of the taboo surrounding mental illness, popular understanding is limited and much of that is distorted. Some members of our own community (PotG) point the finger at SSRI drugs claiming these treatments are THE cause of shootings. This is foolish, IMO. I have serious doubts about the correlation they claim. Nevertheless, we ought to pursue them until we can disprove or understand the correlation better. Meanwhile, shall we deny this class of drugs to millions of sufferers? Why? Because we need a scapegoat to re-direct animosity about guns? If that’s what drives the anti-SSRI sentiment then these motivations are as ignoble as those of the Anti-gun peopole’s.
” eliminating the choice closest to home (the firearm) may save them from themselves.”
Plenty of other choices close to home. Belts and ropes for hanging, pills, engine exhaust, high balconies… the list is long.
I’ve had two acquaintances commit suicide. Both were gun owners. Both chose other means, successfully.
I think it’s important for our side to recognize that unlike homicide, there is a difference based on the tool used when it comes to suicide. Whereas for homicides, taking away one tool can’t be shown to have any appreciable effect, in suicides if a gun is used, the completion rates are much higher. That is a fact that we should be able to address. Perhaps something along the lines of, “Yes completion rates are higher when a gun is used, however the key issues are suicidal ideation, access to mental health care, and the stigma and other barriers put in place that prevent people from taking advantage of said care. Removing guns is treating a symptom rather than the disease, and the side effects of this treatment would be the infringement of everybody else’s civil liberties. I shouldn’t lose my right to self-defense or have it hampered in any way simply because my neighbor doesn’t feel like life is worth living. Yes, suicide is a problem, but infringing on people’s civil rights is not the way to solve it.”
THIS!
Thank you. I am glad some people here are willing to tackle this issue without simply brushing it off as an other irrelevant attempt to ban guns. The left has strong evidence on this issue. Suicides by firearms are a very significant portion of the “gun” deaths so often reported in the media. As you noted, there are much better ways to address this issue than simply banning guns. Aside from actually addressing mental health concerns which is obviously the most logical way, another is proper storage so that suicidal individuals (assuming they are not the ones who own the weapon) do not have the ability to access a firearm during a time of emotional crisis which nearly always come to pass. I am mostly thinking of youth here.
I know people who have been on the other end of the phone line when someone pulled the trigger on themselves. The vast majority of these people could have been saved and likely would have had a long and happy life after their current crisis abated. People can slip into a feeling of hopelessness from simply losing a job or perhaps a house, but these are often temporary issues. Once the lights go out, they can’t be turned back on though. Unfortunately for our community, guns have a role in this discussion because they are a logical tool for suicide. Should they be banned? Of course not. We certainly aren’t going to start banning cars, ropes, knives, over the counter and prescription medicines, etc. either.
One must question though if guns were unavailable for suicide or not used for suicide would completion rates for others methods be higher? Would removing one tool have an appreciable effect on reducing suicide? Other above have stated statistics that it would not make a difference.
I understand this is not the point you are trying to make, you simply are saying that we can’t just ignore the issue because “muh guns!”, but we also can’t ignore the potential consequences good and bad. I don’t think it would make an appreciable difference if a firearm was available or not, a committed person is a committed person.
Time for my anecdote. My brothers best friend hung himself about 2 years ago. He didn’t have ready access to firearms (he didn’t own any and his immediate family didn’t as far as I know) but he probably could have got one if he really wanted to; that didn’t deter him from other means.
Method substitution is most definitely a thing, and no amount of dancing around this salient fact or mental gymnastics by gun control advocates to volt over it is going to change this. I already answered this question to someone else above, and here is my reply..
In 2013, 2,041 teen ages from ages 13 to 19 committed suicide by any means in total. Of those, 857 used a gun. This, out of a total population of 29,524,367 people in that age range for a per-capita rate of 2.9. That is less than half of the national average of 6.7.
From 1999 – 2013, per-capita rates for suicide by gunshot fell significantly until 2007, before rising again thereafter. 912 intentionally suffocated themselves in 2013, for a rate of 3.09. Interestingly, from 1999 – 2013, per-capita rates for suicide by suffocation rose until 2004, fluctuated some until 2007, before rising after that.
http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_us.html
It seems that method substitution is a thing, and gun control won’t affect suicide rates. Not in children. Not in any demographic. Again. Still. More.
I find it very difficult to give the high moral ground on suicide to a bunch of people who fully support the genocide of unborn children so they can sell their body parts. These folks don’t give a damn about any life other than their own. Self indulgent hypocrites with absolutely no moral compass.
Slow clap….
Except that is not happening so…
Denial is the first phase of the grieving process…
They’re not hypocrites and they do have a moral compass, it just points in the opposite direction. Their greatest goal in life is to make people dependent on the government. Abortion along with the welfare state has destroyed the nuclear family, especially in certain minority groups leaving large numbers of people dependent on the government for food and housing. Eliminating guns leaves people dependent on the government for their security. Obamacare leaves people dependent on the government for their health care. Everything they do is in the interest of advancing this agenda, and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process. They’re not hypocrites, they’re evil.
What’s really telling is that the folks that want to ban guns because of suicide also probably support assisted suicide laws. Off’in yourself is just fine with them, just so long as you go through proper government channels first……
Is that Lindsay Lohan in the photo?
Yup.
Perhaps…
http://www.homorazzi.com/article/lindsay-lohan-gun-suicide-photo-shoot-terry-richardson-website/
At least she’s using a 1911
Dude that’s a Browning High Power… or a facsimile thereof.
With that aim she might possibly be one of the those that survive a self inflicted handgun shot to the head. A bit worse for the wear though.
Ever see photos of people who shot themselves and lived, albeit without a face? HEY YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE DEPRESSED BEFORE…
I’m always thankful that a few years ago when I got my first pistol I had a healthy respect/fear of an ND, enough that I forced myself to place my trigger finger in that little notch above the guard religiously no matter how stupid I or anyone else thought it looked. After the first few months or so I was very comfy with handling it and felt brave enough to think I probably didn’t need to worry about it anymore…I found that it was habit and it would take an effort to stop myself from having trigger discipline. Of course I think that past version of me that almost unlearned what I forced myself to learn is a total moron now and just seeing pictures like the above make me cringe inside…even if I was iffy on trigger discipline etiquette at that time, muzzle discipline was non-negotiable. Seeing someone displaying neither right in my face, even if its just a gun-shaped object…hell even just thinking about it…gets my adrenaline going a bit.
You could say the same thing about the Golden Gate Bridge. More than 1400 people have committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s a pretty fair assumption that if you’re shooting yourself in the head with a gun or jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge that you’re not just making a desperate plea for attention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicides_at_the_Golden_Gate_Bridge
They do say that about the codec gate bridge. They wasn’t tutu fence it off so no one can jump off of it, forgetting that there are several other places to jump from to commit suicide.
I have to admit here that I myself was depressed enough to have suicidal ideation.
However, being a gun owner and not wanting to contribute to anti-gun statistics, I sought help (because honestly, I felt like shit, obviously).
However, the problems I faced seeking help were:
1. Very few psych clinics take insurance (couldn’t afford it)
2. Those that do have waiting lines out for six months or more (certainly needed help “faster” than that)
3. State services I could not reach (no car) and I also had no formal diagnosis (which therefore kept me out of social worker help I assume)
The only thing left was emergency rooms for when you’re already having a breakdown/crisis when you can’t take it anymore (and, in VA, they TDO’d me, or temporary detainment order). I didn’t WANT to hurt myself at all; it just became more “attractive” a proposition due to my life circumstances (which was why I kept seeking help…to no avail).
I was in legitimate fear for my gun rights (which make me HAPPY; they’re a very Zen hobby to me), and as well my own civil ones (the TDO was legally-binding, and essentially had me arrested by hospital security to be brought to the psych ward UNTIL someone could get me out quite literally because I had guns, even though I was stable and honestly getting more depressed in the horrifying, prison-like ward rather than out of it).
Thankfully, I am in a better place in my life now, but MY POINT is, is that guns and suicide are a symptom, rather than the disease. Suicide and depression to the point of wanting to kill yourself suck ass.
Guns were the release mechanism, rather than a cause.
I’m lower middle class, but I couldn’t afford the sort of help I needed when I needed it most, and got PUNISHED for it (via the surprise TDO which robbed me of my voluntary freedoms).
Mental health care access, at least in Virginia, is terrible unless you already had a long-standing diagnosis (which would probably preclude your second amendment rights).
Your points about unavailable care for those who are suicidal, but not actively seeking it, hit home for me.
Had a cousin hang himself at work. Found out later that he tried to get help, went to a suicide help center telling them he was stuck in a rut of chronic ideation. They told him he wasn’t suicidal enough to get care and sent him on his way.
Taking guns out of the equation doesn’t make the problem easier to solve.
Get rid of guns because in a society where mediocrity is the norm even the last thing someone does should be a failure…
If access and availability for use in suicide are your excuse for banning guns, then what about cars? At this very second there are hundreds of thousands of Americans operating a vehicle, all of them able to exceed anything like a safe speed, and every one of us knows what happens to the operator when that speed comes to a sudden grinding, ripping, smashing halt. What is that you said, we can’t just ban cars because someone might kill themselves by smashing into an oak tree on a whim? Well that is no different than the argument for banning guns because someone might use them to kill themselves, in fact it is fundamentally no different from banning rope or knives or pills. Are you going to put a net under every bridge or a fence around the Grand Canyon to protect the jumpers? How about putting a fence around all the oceans and lakes, after all someone who is drunk and depressed might decide to swim out well beyond their ability to swim back and it is well documented by the National Institute of Health that drinking raises the likelihood of drowning by a factor of 10. That brings us right back to the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, you do remember that one don’t you?
The simple fact is, the only way to keep people safe from harming themselves is to put them in prison to keep them away from the freedom to harm themselves. Or maybe you could just pass a law that makes it illegal to be depressed. Yep there is the answer! That way when someone is depressed you could just put them in jail to keep them from killing themselves, that ought do it! After that we just need a way to monitor everyone to make sure no one is depressed. Since we have the Internet we could just make everyone wear a camera pointed at themselves, and we already have smile monitoring software so if someone goes more than say two hours without smiling we can send a clown with balloons around to cheer them up!
The fact that a small number of people commit suicide with a gun, and it is deathly effective, does not offset the right of millions more to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes. This is a moronic argument without merit.
Yes, there is an issue with people wanting to commit suicide and our Society is failing miserably to address it along with other serious mental health issues. Using this issue to create specious anti-gun propaganda proves the author to be callously despicable.
Nice diversion attempt. That 90% of suicide-attempt survivors do not end up dying by suicide is largely irrelevant. What percentage of suicide attempts by firearm are successful, compared to suicide attempts by non-firearm means? Without those data, you can’t even make a sound argument that limiting “access” to firearms would have any appreciable impact on the rate of successful suicide attempts.
Even so: there is no way to limit the “access” to firearms by potentially suicidal individuals without massive violations of multiple constitutionally protected, natural and civil rights – both of those individuals, and of society as a whole.
That stuck out to me a lot too. I would wager that many who “attempt” but do not succeed did not intend to go through with it. Often people take over the counter medications as a “cry for help” then after getting the attention or treatment they want are completely over it. Statistics also generally reveal that males are more likely to use “effective” suicide methods than females.
If I remember the statistics right Suicide by firearm as a surprisingly high failure rate of like 40%
So if we eliminate guns people won’t be able to kill themselves, huh? Hmm. That’s news to me, given that near Shitcago somebody jumps in front of a Metra train every couple of months. That kind of splaaaat is pretty darn effective, and messes with thousands of people commuting.
Let’s ban mass transit and tall buildings!
My brother committed suicide, by taking pills. Firearms are just a more efficient method. In his case, I wish we could have found a way to ease his anguish before he ended it all.
The unspoken truth is not all suicide is “bad”. Heartbreaking, yes but not always a bad choice. The individual who is terminal and in excruciating pain, for instance.
I think that at most, suicide by firearm is rude – somebody has to discover the body, clean up the mess, etc.
The whole suicide side of the gun discussion shouldn’t even exist, because suicide is no one else’s business. Just another example of policymakers trying to stick their noses where they don’t belong.
Affecting suicide rates isn’t something the government should be involved in in any way.
So they don’t care that you are suicidal, they only care that you don’t have a gun.
Suicidal is OK. Gun is bad.
Or did I oversimplify it too much?
No you got it. The Brady campaign doesn’t care about suicides. They only care about gun control – because that is what they do professionally. Ok to kill yourself – just not with a gun.
Slow clap.
That’s because they didn’t want to commit suicide. They wanted attention – and they got it. They aren’t stupid. They are aware a bullet to the brain would kill them.
These are the people who actually wanted to kill themselves.
Yea, that’s BS, Just ask Robin Williams. There are a lot of painless and less messy methods than a gun. The Brady bunch are acting like guns are the only effective method for furthering their agenda.
Yup, guess that’s why the suicide rate in countries with strict gun control like Russia and Japan is so low. Oh wait, it’s not is it? In fact America the gun capital of the world has a suicide rate roughly the same as most industrialized countries. The tyrants sit up night making up stories but they are just stories. They make up a fantasy world where gun control would work and then try to take my rights away in the real world. In the real world, suicidal people choose their method carefully and the people who are serious about it plan ahead and choose a method that they are sure will kill them while the people who are “crying out for help” choose a method and situation, chance of discovery etc. that will be less likely to result in their death. Guns are lethal and everyone knows it
Those who are serious about suicide choose a gun because it is available. In the UK, which has the same suicide rate, the serious go for the rope. Most suicides are the proverbial cry for help. They aren’t trying to succeed.
I am deeply offended by their comment. When my sister took her own life, we discovered that she planned it for some days. She wasn’t doing it for attention as so many people do. She attached one end of a flexible tube to an exhaust pipe and fed the other through the window of the truck. If we had outlawed flexible tubing, she would have have likely resorted to jumping off a building or cliff. If we outlawed tall buildings and cliffs, she would have drown herself in a river or lake. If we outlawed rivers and lakes, she would have cut her wrists. If we outlawed knives and share objects, she would have taken an entire bottle of Tylenol. If we had outlawed large bottles of Tylenol, she would have carved out a bar of soap to look like a gun and charged at police. If we outlawed soap, she would have thought of something else. I learned that if someone is serious about suicide, they will find a way. If someone faints suicide for attention, psychology industrial complex always declare it a successful intervention right before they send out an invoice.
Irony.
At the same time California is legalizing “assisted suicide”
So if you can convince a doctor you are depressed enough or sick enough, doctor death will drug you to death. That’s completely sane.
DIY death? Insane! Take their gunzzzz away!!!!
Not quite so.
The Kalifornia law is patterned after the Oregon law. First, the doctor will not off you. You got to do it yourself! Secondly, You got to be more than sick. You got to be dying, with less than 6 months to live.
I can only think of one reason a person would want to make their spouse live and maybe suffer horribly, up until he finely passed.
So the wife could keep getting the husbands social security income. Morbid thought!
I’ve known at least three cases of suicide when I was in the military, and none of them were committed by firearm. And almost all of them were done with little to no inclination beforehand.
firearms leave little opportunity for rescue or to halt mid-attempt
I lost a college classmate to suicide. He jumped off the roof of the dorm. I doubt that there was any opportunity to halt him in mid attempt.
I cannot put into words how much I despise those Brady humps.
If you REALLY want to kill yourself you will. My rights denied because someone kills themselves? NOPE. Anyone following the cop shot to death in Fox Lake,IL was subjected to speculation whether he was murdered or if it is actually a suicide. The report is he died from a “devastating” gunshot to his chest. His military son said his dad NEVER had a suicidal thought in his life. IF I ever had a thought to kill myself I would NOT share it-I would just deal with it.
Limit access to someone who you have no idea is considering suicide, great thinking. Total bull from Brady. I’ve had a number of people in my life end theirs. Afterwards the same was said, I didn’t know they were so upset. Suicide can’t be intelligently connected to firearms, two different worlds. Brady needs to drop this path.
I’m shocked. The Brady Campaign is still a thing? Who knew?
Nope, sorry , I know we don’t want to give in at all, but this is true. Quiters that have decided to check out early really are more successful. And you know what? Screw em.
/yes, a friend of mine ate the end of his own shotgun barrel when we were 19
The vast majority—90 percent—of people who attempt suicide and survive do not go on to die by suicide {because they were not serious about it in the first place and were actually cries for help, which they subsequently got}.
FIFY
I have thought about suicide, but, decided I did not want to make that many people happy.
The root issue is living in a socialist-dominated society that robs you of any reason to wake up tomorrow.
I live only on the hope of the day I finally escape the democrat prison built around me, and give all these evil motherf*ckers the finger.
if the anti-gunners spent half as much money supporting suicide prevention lines they would stop suicide completely. mrpresident2016.com
Only half of the nearly 45,000 successful suicides a year are with a gun. The other half are alternative methods, mostly prescription drugs with the remaining deaths accounted for by other means.
To the Brady Campaign,
As a 2A advocate I have always viewed your organization as a treacherous one however when you use suicide to pad your numbers it shows how villainous you really are.
My grandmother committed suicide by HANGING herself when I was 2.
My sister committed suicide by HANGING herself and left behind a daughter that will face challenges that I can’t wish on anyone
My brother in law committed suicide by HANGING himself and left behind a son who will face even hard challenges then then my niece
My mother in law committed suicide by HANGING herself leaving my kids scared and confused to why their grandmother passed so early.
Those are my stories and I have met many others like me who have lost loved ones and family members due suicide by a rope. I know a few who chose a bullet but suicide by hanging far outweighs gun deaths and when you use your faux concern of “suicide prevention” to push your agenda everyone should see the evil organization you are.
I don’t blame the rope companies or the electrical cord companies, I wish I could have done more and been better to offer more support. Now I take it day by day to help my kids, my nieces and nephews, everyone break this terrible cycle. We shoot, we are happy, we look toward the future at all the good things we can and will do but when a company like yours uses suicide awareness …90%? of those that survive an attempt? Why would you focus on the small margin of those that fail to kill themselves instead of the overwhelming number of those that successfully do end their lives?
I have not been affected by gun suicide but I have been affected by hanging suicide and the effectiveness of a short rope is staggering. Do not ban guns, do not ban ropes, please Brady Campaign just move to England so I can never hear from you again.
There was a woman with a disease. She set a date to kill herself and went to a state that had laws that allowed her off herself. There was a huge outpouring about how brave she was. Wonder, had she chosen a gun, I wonder what the reaction would have been?
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