I bet there is so much more we could do to reduce suicides, which are a massively big problem. I wish we paid as much attention to suicide as we do to very rare mass shootings, which kill a tiny fraction of the people.
It's also important to remember that any blocker between a potential suicide victim and the weapon of choice reduces rates greatly. A gun locked in a safe where the potential suicide knows the code - reduces rates.
the data from CDC agrees with you, and agrees that a firearm is most common method.
but also indicates age correlate with freq of suicde by firearm.
guess who the least frequent group is, kids.
now that might fly in the face of stats, but suicide is an "intentional" thing. [that rides on the idea that you are competent to form intent when suicidal]
so yes if you keep your guns secure, and gun proof your kids to mitigate accidents that should improve things, for kids.
however take at least as much care for your grandparents, they are apparently at extreme risk, of forming intent and, acting especially grandpa.
it might work for spur of the moment almost reflex decisions, but its a different story when the choice is made over a few years, reinforced by physical reasons.
What if allowing suicide is taking care of one's grandparents? After all, if I was diagnosed with a awful condition like Alzheimer's, ALS, etc.. I am absolutely going out that way once I start having more bad days than good days.
Naturally, medically assisted suicide is illegal in most states. But its wink wink nudge nudge "pain management".
Personally, I wish we collectively recognized that this ‘pain management’ is a disservice to all dealing with those situations, much like handing out medical marihuana cards to recreational users was for actual patients, or women addressing family planning issues in some less than acceptable settings. Alas…
We should be trying to help/prevent the former, for the latter I think we should only be trying to be sure they're not the former. But the data always lumps them and I get very suspicious when data lumps two very different cases.
I guess at least this removes that bit of rhetorical inconsistency... at, guaranteed, a notable cost in lives.
RAND found that minimum age requirements and child-access prevention laws reduced suicides and unintentional injuries/deaths and violent crime:
* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/child-acce...
* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/minimum-ag...
they're both really really bad things. they both deserve as much attention as we can afford (which is more than they get).
not to just jump down your throat -- i agree with you about more needing to be done to prevent suicides though. i think it's a good thing that hotlines are available but it's clear that putting the onus on people who are considering suicide to reach out for help is not enough. we gotta get better at reaching out and checking on our friends, loved ones, coworkers etc and help them carry the load more than we're culturally accustomed to.
* if so, my policy is that all guns be vaporized overnight. also, my policy would include the end of lobbying entirely, including but not limited to the small arms industry and the NRA along with police guilds and other organizations supporting the small arms race in this country
The tricky part with the US is the already vast supply of firearms circulating. Can't do much about that.
But, I would think, stopping or reducing the sale of guns right now would still have an effect. We already somewhat regularly try to reduce the sale of guns via policy, mostly to people we think are potentially dangerous.
But, I don't know exactly how much that has helped, or will help. What I do know is there is definitely variance in gun violence. Both across nations, but also across states in the US. So, something is behind it.
During the period legitimate gun ownership (people with guns) has sharply declined in larger urban areas, remained about the same in "working with guns" population demographics, and total numbers of guns in Australia have increased.
No large scale mass shootings since, no "mass shootings" (four or more dead / injured (?? - I can't recall the low bar threshold)) at all for nearly 30 years, three or four such events total overall rather than the practically one a day numbers in the USofA.
No policy or constitution is perfect, of course, Australia is currently in a period of revising some of that policy.
The largest one before Port Arthur was Milperra, armed motorcycle gangs, which Australia is speedrunning into resurrecting through their boneheaded cigarette taxes that haved turned half of cigarette vendors into nodes of the black market.
Much fewer than USA, but the Port Arthur changes don't seem to have had much effect.
[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Aust...
Yes, we had decades without mass shootings and suppressed casual crime gun usage to near zero.
> which Australia is speedrunning into resurrecting through their boneheaded cigarette taxes that haved turned half of cigarette vendors into nodes of the black market.
Yeah, the taxes were smart and worked, continuosly increasing them to chase diminishing returns was not smart and once a threshold was crossed it spawned an entire new criminal network that had old school motorcycle gangs shaking their heads for crossing various prior "lines" ( family retribution, etc ).
> but the Port Arthur changes don't seem to have had much effect.
Aside from substantially less gun crime, deaths, injuries per capita than the US.
In the US, any gun legislation that could possibly be effective at eliminating gun violence would also by definition be unconstitutional, since there is no way to prevent gun violence to any significant degree without infringing on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
And a Constitutional amendment to repeal or change the 2A is existentially impossible as it would require the cooperation of Southern states and would threaten the billion dollar gun lobby.
This is tangential to whether gun policy can work or not.
> In the US, any gun legislation that could possibly be effective at eliminating gun violence would also by definition be unconstitutional,
And yet many US states already have gun legislation ... and arguably more regulations and fiddly shit than Australia does.
What the US lacks is the ability to have clean, simple, uniform gun laws across all states AND uniform _enforcement_ of such laws.
Yes. that is what would be unconstitutional. States can have their own gun laws but the Federal government is restrained by the Second Amendment. Mostly it has to abuse the Commerce Clause to justify its ability to regulate guns as interstate commerce.
Luckily, it's an Ammedment that is subject to interpretation, change, and/or removal.
Recall that US history has examples of Ammendments being both added and removed, that recently the Federalists saw fruit of a 30 year long campaign to stack the judicial pipeline, and the US landed on the moon.
The country is capable of difficult things, it's a matter of finding the will and making the grind.
Mass shootings vary significantly state to state, in part —I think—due to different gun and mental health laws [1].
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/mass-shooting-rat...
I am absolutely certain that is the case, however, society operates with such demands from individuals that a majority of necessary changes would be adamantly fought against by those which stand to benefit from the suffering.
Having been through the whole mental health treatment gamut in the USA, I am convinced the only goal of the system is to patch people up just enough that they can be churned back into the capitalist machine. What makes things even sicker, is that one's health insurance is often tied to their employment, so in order to receive basically any treatment, one is typically required to be employed and working.
Choosing to end thyself IS the penultimate "my body, my choice".
We have immediate "no money, lost job, destitute" (insert temporary issue). And we have chronic, everpresent, or terminal problem.
We could fix the first one, but socially we choose not to. Either way, we should have the right of bodily autonomy.
I guess the american answer is, for a suicide help call, show up with pigs with guns, and shoot them for disorderly conduct?
But what I'm seeing is 60% of the people here in the USA are not functionally sustainable economically wise. And that is completely a fixable problem. But given how corrupted our government is, its likely not going to be fixed in the reasonable future (say, 20y).
Live in poverty, no medical, no vacation, scraping by every day on what amounts of hope? I can understand why people want out. HN people are in a massive bubble. Most of us are fine. Average folks? Nope. Rural? Nope. Inner city? Nope. Homeless? Obviously not. Underage LGBTQ people with hateful/christian families? One of the highest suicide rates.
Sure, I would absolutely rather help people through what seems to be insurmountable problems. Most of them aren't. But seriously, this country doesnt give a fuck. I'm pretty sure this country only cares about suicide at all is because it reduces lifetime tax revenue (for, primarily blowing up brown and middle eastern people).
Thankfully, 1FA is still in the USA, mostly. So sites like https://sanctionedsuicide.site, even if theyre indexed to hell and back by Google and Bing.
Id rather help people get past why they think suicide is the answer. But I also understand why someone is just tired and done.
If that’s the penultimate, what’s the ultimate?