Another pet peeve: The effect of gun ownership on suicide rates goes totally ignored. Suicide accounts for 21k out of 33k annual gun deaths in the US[1]. If we're outraged by school shootings, we should be apoplectic about facilitating suicide.
Putting that aside, it’s not our role to forcibly limit the choices of healthy, responsible people just because some unhealthy, unresponsible people might make the wrong choices when given the freedom to do so.
It’s not a societal-level tragedy if someone chooses to eliminate themselves. While it’s abhorrent to even consider, the fact is, there’s very likely a net economic/social gain.
We don’t need to be protected from our own choices. We need to be protected from the authoritarian impulses of people who don’t think we’re equipped to make choices in the first place.
I see your point, but I strongly disagree. Providing a suicidal person with the right resources to help them avoid suicide will (imo) yield a net gain over the rest of that persons life, as opposed to the gain from selling a gun and a bullet and giving him a quick out.
One example that comes to might right away is Alan Turing. Whose contributions to modern society can hardly be overstated. And I know he didn't use a gun, I'm making a point about helping people out of depression, to oppose your opinion about it being beneficial to let them kill themselves.
> Live as they see fit
So in your opinion that includes killing oneself, even in cases that could be avoided if access to appropriate help could be provided? (Not enforced, provided as an alternative option to suicide)
Following that logic, should we lock everyone in a cell under 24/7 suicide watch because it would prevent some people from committing suicide?
Your fallacious argument aside though, you are correct, you can provide support resources without taking rights of others away, and in the US that is the case. Congrats. I will stay in a country where, if I am ever depressed, the support structures have a higher chance of saving me, because it will take more than moving my finger by 2mm to literally explode my head.
If you didn't want to be around guns, you can simply ... not own one. Many Americans don't, it's not like it's required.
But yes, I absolutely do appreciate there being a control structure that prevents psychopaths from going to walmarts artillery section and shooting up a school every other week.
Following the same fallacy you used previously, should we abolish all laws because everyone should be able to excercise their free will completely unrestricted?
Where in this sentence do you read anything about enforcing anything?
I think your statement is missing the impact that the actions of the "unhealthy" have in others. Otherwise, there would be no reason to stop anyone from driving drunk, buying a couple kgs of uranium, or procuring flasks of Ebola.