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Comment by jordan0day | Hacker News Reader

Do you have a source for that 30,000+ figure? The FBI statistics link in this thread mentions around 8600 firearm-related murders for 2011 (but not suicide or accidents). That's the only hard data I've seen in this thread so far though.

In these sorts of threads, anecdotes and hyperbole can quickly overrule data and thoughtfulness, so I'm just hoping that numbers like "30,000+" aren't being pulled out of thin air. I'm not saying that's what you did, I'd just like to see people actually source their claims in threads like this which tend to devolve quickly.

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Fatal firearms accidents are running at about 600 per year.

While the population and number of guns owned by them has increased ~50%, the absolute number of fatal accidents has dropped by 1/4th, from around 800 per year.

I suspect not all of this is due to medical advances, a lot are hunting accidents where getting to a trauma center in the "Golden Hour" (for what that's worth) isn't possible.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/american-gun-deaths...

As others have mentioned, a hefty percentage of those deaths are suicides. Would those suicides have happened if the option of a firearm wasn't available? Perhaps.

Japan has a very high suicide rate despite near non-existence of guns.

The issue at stake here is the counterfactual ‘If guns were (not) available, would the suicide rate be different’.

How does your (oddly specific) statistic address this question?

The suicidal find a way. Where guns are not available, in at least one major comparable example, the suicide rate is different by being higher (by a lot). Sure, guns make it easy...but there are many other easy ways.

I don't think Japan and the USA are very comparable. In fact, I think insofar modern countries are concerned you'd be hard pressed to find two countries that are more different than Japan and the USA!

No, no, not at all.

We're both "high trust" societies. Compare to the Chinese stereotype/archetype of not trusting someone outside the family to run part of the business, which helped to kill Wang in the US and abroad outside of the PRC tends to limit firms to simple types like trading companies.

I agree, we are in many ways very different, many of them fundamental, but many fundamental are similar enough.

> We're both "high trust" societies. Compare to the Chinese stereotype/archetype of not trusting someone outside the family to run part of the business, which helped to kill Wang in the US and abroad outside of the PRC tends to limit firms to simple types like trading companies.

Sure, but I explicitly excluded non-modern countries. (I have lived in China.)

> I agree, we are in many ways very different, many of them fundamental, but many fundamental are similar enough.

Okay, but you're not controlling for any variables. Like you say, there are many differences even if there are similarities too.

I have to say, with no evidence to back it up, that if you want to die enough to put a barrel in your mouth, if that gun is taken away, you can find another way.

can != will

Wow. Am I get downvoted for pointing out a fallacy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy

Dunno about the downvotes but is the best argument we have for reducing suicides, well if we make it more awkward then less folks will top themselves and instead will lead lives of miserable desperation?

We have to be better than harm reduction surely?

I don't have a moral problem with suicide. Like I mention elsewhere, in my country euthanasia is sometimes administered to people with certain types of depression. I think that's fine (if weirdly bureaucratic).

Thing is, often people who are depressed do get better. And I think a lot of people who end up killing themselves would have gotten better if only they hadn't. I think this is all the more the case for teenagers.

That's why I think it's worthwhile to take away opportunities to kill yourself. That means making gun possession illegal, installing safety nets, etcetera. (Within reason, of course.)

Even this comment and others are getting downvoted. What the hell… I think I'm going to call it a day here.

The incidence of suicide (and related-party homicide) in households with guns is significantly higher. Unless we believe that there's a correlation between gun ownership and suicidal tendencies, the answer seems to be, mostly no.

Having a highly-effective killing device in the home turns attempts into suicides - and a gun is an order of magnitude more effective than other common methods.

http://archive.sph.harvard.edu/press-releases/2007-releases/...

Americans would go bonkers if someone started selling a do-it-yourself euthanasia machine. But we're ok with lots of handgun sales, despite that being one of their most common uses - more common than self-defense.

http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/vprp/publications/firearmsuicid...

People in their first week of gun ownership kill themselves 57 times more frequently than the general public. That suggests to me that people who are determined to die are buying guns for the express purpose of suicide, and would probably select some other method if it was too difficult to obtain a gun.

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