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Comment by kartan | Hacker News Reader

"more curbs on the means of self-destruction"

This means guns. And that is why right now this post is full of mean spirited comments. It is a shame that cannot be a sincere discussion about guns even when it relates to suicide and the lives it could save.

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I was looking at numbers published by my state recently, and while suicide is the major cause of gun death (by a factor of about 5, IIRC) it was heavily skewed toward older (>50) rural males. What if those people are killing themselves for reasons like bankruptcy, divorce, inability to pay for medical care, etc, rather than temporary teen angst like everyone seems to assume?

Even if you're pro gun control, it doesn't mean gun control reduces suicides. You'd have to look at the numbers -- are suicide rates lower in places with less access to guns? Or do people just commit suicide differently? I strongly suspect the latter.

Removing means doesn't fix the underlying problems, and it smacks of agenda pushing to suggest otherwise (even if it's a good agenda).

People do look at these sorts of numbers all the time, and most of the evidence points to lower overall suicide rates in places that have stricter gun control. Of course, it is hard to fully control for all the correlations, but the available evidence does point towards fewer guns == fewer suicides.

The general explanation is that many suicides are somewhat spur of the moment, and access to an easy way to kill yourself when you have those moments of weakness increases the chance that a person will follow through. People have this sense that suicides are well thought out decisions that people make when they conclude that their life isn't worth living anymore, but that isn't the case most of the time.

https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/supplement...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-firearms-suicides/...

Thanks for the links. The RAND paper is really good; the Reuters article less so. While your summary seems true, I think a better summary might be "despite many studies, none have found evidence for a full substitution effect". That is, in studies that show a drop in firearm suicides, there is almost always a drop in overall suicide rates as well. The degree to which changing from an existing lax gun control regime to a stricter one results in a lower firearm suicide rate is harder to establish, but in at least some cases for some populations it's probably a positive effect.

My understanding is that it's generally accepted among people researching these things that means restriction (like gun control) does reduce overall suicide rates, it doesn't just make people pick a different method of suicide.

From a quick google search https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22726520

> Although some individuals might seek other methods, many do not; when they do, the means chosen are less lethal and are associated with fewer deaths than when more dangerous ones are available.

There is a relationship between gun control and suicides: http://brady-score.github.io/

Doesn't mean it's causal, maybe there are confounding factors, but the relationship itself does exists.

With that said, if people are committing suicides I think it's better to look at why they are committing suicides, and then fix that.

I don't think pro-gun vs anti-gun groups are even having the same discussion.

Anti-gun is safety/medical arguments: Guns are a clear hazard to personal safety, and removing them from circulation will reduce the number of gunshot wounds and associated deaths, etc. This position is based on the ongoing massive human carnage committed with guns which has been going on for hundreds of years and is creating fresh corpses daily.

Pro-gun is political/self defense arguments: hundreds of years of European history where the rulers could carry weapons and the ruled could not, disarmament as a prelude to oppression/massacre in 20thC, distant or incompetent law enforcement meaning safety can only be provided by the individual.

I'm not sure if there is a way to bridge the gap between different value systems. For me personally I'm not going to buy firearms illegally, but I will never be happy about being a 2nd class citizen in my own country.

For many people, keeping their guns is straight-up worthwhile in exchange for higher suicide-by-gun numbers. This viewpoint should not be discarded through shaming.

About half of suicides are caused by guns[0]. Most of the other half is due to poisoning (e.g. overdosing) and suffocation. When firearms are not available, people apparently resort to other means.

[0] https://www.sprc.org/means-suicide

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