[throwaway90999]

Most of the perceived absurdity comes from disingenuous framing of the issues. Here are some examples:

Over half of all quoted gun deaths are suicides. [edit: removed mention of suicide survivability as I don't have a reference handy. But remember: The most likely person to shoot you is yourself.]

Let's remove suicide from the discussion and talk about violence. The primary driver for violence is socioeconomic. The US has a huge wealth and education disparity problem, exacerbated by a drug war which focuses primarily on the lower economic classes. Most political rhetoric surrounding gun violence focuses on denying lower-class individuals access to firearms and is inexorably linked to institutionalized racism [ cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_night_special#Economic... ]

What these stats don't show is the EXTREME socioeconomic skew involved in violent crime. If we look at gun deaths by wealth quadrile we find that the upper 40% have very, very few gun deaths -- on par with the nicer areas in Europe. Our inflated gun death statistics come almost entirely from the lower 40%. That is, gun deaths are emblematic of America's class divide.

The right to self defense is a convenient target for politicians to score easy wins. Constructively addressing the USA's violence problem is a very different issue and frankly is almost entirely unrelated to firearm legislation.

[baha_man]

"Guns are, somewhat counter-intuitively, one of the more survivable suicide methods."

Source? This study gives a 'case fatality rate' of 85% for firearms, 69% for suffocation, and 2% for poisoning:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-f...

[bryanlarsen]

"If guns are banned, poisons (pills) or asphyxiation will take their place and most likely cause more deaths from suicides rather than less."

I disagree. Most suicides are impulse decisions. Making suicides difficult dramatically reduces suicide rates. cf suicide barriers on bridges.

[GabrielF00]

Down voted as this is not factual. Suicide by firearm is much less survivable than taking pills, and even when it is survivable it can be incredibly disfiguring and/or debilitating.

There's also the fact that suicide by firearm can be done impulsively, without much preparation, in contrast to asphyxiation or falls. When there's more requirement for preparation there are more opportunities for someone to change their mind or for some intervention to take place.

The use of guns might be the reason why more women attempt suicide than men, but more men actually die of suicide. It may be that women are more likely to prefer a method that doesn't result in disfigurement (pills) and, because that method is less likely to be successful, women are less likely to die of suicide.

If guns were banned, it is at least plausible that deaths by suicide would go down because the alternatives might be less accessible to those making an impulsive decision and more survivable.

[vor_]

> Let's remove suicide from the discussion and talk about violence.

Why? This is the second time I've seen that suggestion in these comments, and I don't understand why suicides should not be counted as gun deaths.

[danielweber]

Because no one is discussing "gun deaths" in a vacuum.

"Gun death" weren't selected at random to compare to "car deaths" by some antiseptic algorithm. It's done, pretty obviously, to drive a narrative, i.e., "guns should be more regulated."

When discussing that narrative, there is a big gap between "you shouldn't have a gun because you might hurt your neighbor" and "you shouldn't have a gun because your neighbor might use a gun to hurt himself."

[vor_]

Easy access to an effective suicide method is one more impact of the pervasiveness of guns in a modern society. It's an important factor in determining gun deaths.

In determining the deadliness of drugs to a society, should suicides be ruled out? Accidental overdoses? Drug-related shootings? Where do you draw the line in filtering the statistics so that they're more comfortable for a given political position?

[sosuke]

Access to guns is very restrictive in Japan, extremely restrictive in fact, yet they have a higher suicide rate than the United States. http://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

[collyw]

I'll bet they have less gun deaths though.

[lkbm]

When I accidentally shoot someone and they die, they would be alive if I hadn't had the gun.

When I intentionally shoot someone and they die, they would likely be alive if I hadn't had the gun.

When I intentionally shoot myself and I die, I would likely have found another effective suicide method and died anyway without the gun.

Killing someone with a pill is not something you do in a fit of rage. Killing someone with your car could be, but only if you're driving and they're in the road (ideally not in a car of their own).

Killing yourself is quite easy to do using non-gun methods, without any additional planning or prep time.

In short, take my gun away, and I can still commit suicide, but it's much harder for me to kill others or accidentally kill myself.

[ianferrel]

>When I intentionally shoot myself and I die, I would likely have found another effective suicide method and died anyway without the gun.

This isn't true. You certainly could find another method, but you wouldn't likely do it. Most suicides are not well-planned, they are spur-of-the-moment decisions, and removing easy methods actually reduces the number of suicides substantially.

This is not intuitive, but it is supported by facts.

[danielweber]

> but it is supported by facts.

It might be based on what some sociologist said, but if you compare suicide rates by country, these is nothing suggesting access to guns is a strong driver of suicide rate.

If you assume the US turns into Canada, then of every 50 people who kill themselves via gun, about 42 would find another method.

(Unless you want to argue that, because of the superiority of the US's health system over Canada, that the US should have a way lower rate than Canada. I'm not making that argument, but let's just say it wouldn't be popular among those who want to ban guns.)

[DanBC]

> It might be based on what some sociologist said,

Internationally respected psychiatrists at a respected high quality academic institution.

You dismiss the research but demonstrate your ignorance of who conducts the research. You haven't yet provided any specific refutation to any bit of research.

http://cebmh.warne.ox.ac.uk/csr/

Note that the director is a consultant psychiatrist working within the NHS as well as an academic. ("Consultant" is the rough equivalent to a US attending physician.)

[danielweber]

You dismiss the research

Nope. I'm assuming it's fine.

I get that you want to make the fight over those studies. That's fine, but I won't.

Instead, I'm assuming that all those studies are fine, but I'm still trying to figure out things that actually exist in the world around me:

1. why does the UK, with all its "permanent drops" in suicide, still have a rate within 10% of the US, which has so many guns?

2. why is the suicide rate for young people in the UK higher than it was 50 years ago? http://cebmh.warne.ox.ac.uk/csr/msui6811.html NB: this especially points to the fact that cultures adapt in the long term to availability of suicide methods; young people who've never seen a coal gas stove don't even try.[1]

3. if half of homes have access to a guns, and assuming gun owners are as sane as non-gun owners[2], and if access to a gun is a major major factor, how come only slightly more than half of suicides are done via gun? (NB There is some factor, and I haven't denied that.)

4. instead of being in the same cluster as most modern countries, is the US really "supposed" to have a rate of suicide that places it about a factor of two lower than that bump? Why is the US so exceptionally awesome this way?

There's something in the macro-picture that isn't adding up to what all the micro-studies are asserting. All those micro-studies can be completely right and still not add up to the right picture.

[1] this suggests that you could reduce suicide rates by promulgating a widespread story that a great way to kill yourself is to do something that is plausible enough to cause self-harm but actually doesn't; then when people try it and it doesn't work, maybe they give up

[2] you could argue that gun people are crazy, because guns, but it would work against your position

[FeeTinesAMady]

The US has a superior health system to Canada's now?

[danielweber]

I'm carefully not arguing that.

I'm saying that the people who say that the US's suicide rate should be half what it is now are those least likely to believe that the US's mental health care system is superior.

[fizgig]

Seems outside the relevant scope of discussion regarding gun policy. Just my opinion, though, as a former card-carrying NRA member with a liberal political leaning.

I am curious, though: Are carbon monoxide suicides-by-car counted in the car deaths for this gun-vs-car deaths comparison?

[sosuke]

They are not, that is "Intentional self-harm (suicide) by other and unspecified means and their sequelae"

[ta75757]

Because the fact that there is a very small chance that a person may kill themselves with a gun does not mean the government should deny that person the right to own a gun. And people with a history of mental illness are already excluded from owning guns.

[vor_]

This article is a comparison of deaths caused by vehicles and guns as well as a comparison of the amount of government regulation between the two, not an argument to ban the 2nd Amendment. One point in the article is the lack of oversight on gun sales to criminals.

[danielweber]

One point in the article is the lack of oversight on gun sales to criminals.

If we're talking about "gun sales to criminals," we are way way less likely to be caring about gun suicides.

[lkbm]

This argument seems at odds with the claim that suicide constitutes the majority of the deaths.

[danielweber]

EDIT

Even though most gun deaths are suicide [1], your odds of killing yourself via suicide are still low. There's slightly less than 1% chance of your life ending via suicide. Taking away guns to stop suicides is a pretty big NNT.

===

[1]

Accidental discharge: 591

Suicide by firearm: 19,990

Assault by firearm: 11,068

Unknown involving firearms: 248

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_03.pdf

[ta75757]

How so?

[vor_]

I believe the point is that if the chance of suicide is very small, and the mentally ill are forbidden from owning guns, it would seemingly be at odds with the claim that "over half of all quoted gun deaths" are suicides.

[ta75757]

I don't see the direct connection between the suicide risk of a single gun owner and the ratio of suicide to homicide in total gun deaths.

The claim regarding suicide vs homicide is easy to confirm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...). It is not possible to predict every suicide, the best we can do is make an approximation using obvious risk factors like hospitalization for mental illness. There are millions of gun owners in the US, so yes the chance of a suicide is small.

[FeeTinesAMady]

How is it at odds with that? That is a fact, not an opinion. It's true that over half of all quoted gun deaths are suicides, and it's true that the chance of suicide is very small. The great majority of gun owners don't commit suicide. There's no contradiction.