President says ‘epidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apart’ after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago
Those numbers are intentionally misleading, they are using people that killed themselves to prop up the numbers. It’s disgusting.
And those shouldn’t count? Do you have any idea how much easy access to guns increases suicides? Many, many suicidal people would still be alive without the easy access to guns in the US. It’s one of the easiest and painless ways to kill yourself.
Things like suicide are far more related to a lack mental healthcare and the stigma around getting help than weather or not people are allowed to own firearms. Not everyone has those kinds of problems. An assault weapons ban is certainly unrelated to those seeking self-harm and most crime.
One can do both.
A new assault weapon ban, while ultimately not a cure, would at least stem the tide until real effective change can be enacted.
We’ll never fix our problems all at once, in grand sweeping actions. It comes in steps, which takes time. We just need to not destroy ourselves in the mean time.
Of course, that also means actually enacting that slow change, and not just paying lip service as a distraction from issues that are happening now.
Look at suicide rates in England when they switched from coal gas to natural gas. “Sticking your head in the oven” was an incredibly accessible and effective way to kill yourself.
When coal gas was taken away, all suicides dropped.
Over time, as the carbon monoxide in gas decreased, suicides also decreased (Kreitman 1976). Suicides by carbon monoxide decreased dramatically, while suicides by other methods increased a small amount, resulting in a net decrease in overall suicides, particularly among females.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves-lives/
a gun makes it incredibly easy to end someone, including yourself. It takes the killing out of killing and I can promise you that makes a massive difference to the number of both killings and suicides.
England saw a decrease in suicide rates in the '60s & '70s last century when the levels of carbon monoxide in the natural gas supply were reduced. As a result of this change, people stopped being able to easily commit suicide by sticking their head in the unlit oven and turning it on.
It’s not like these people were institutionalized and physically prevented from harming themselves. Making means of suicide too really available seems to allow people to kill themselves who otherwise would not attempt it.
Reducing access to guns- besides the obvious decrease in homicides - will likely cause a noteworthy reduction in suicide, too.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? Meaningless semantics; both are at play when it comes to someone that is suicidal. But I can assure you, suicide rates would be positively (downward trend) impacted by any sort of gun ban. I am speaking as person who has been suicidal. If I had had access to guns at certain points in my past, I likely wouldn’t be here today.
Why do pro gun Republicans always use mental health as an alternative reason for excessive firearm suicide rates, and then are nowhere to be heard from when someone proposes universal mental health access.
Suicide is not what first comes to mind when someone talks about gun violence or shootings. Nobody said they don’t count - just that it’s misleading.
It isn’t misleading at all. A gun death is a gun death to anyone who doesn’t have a bias.
I think in the US a lot of murders probably get classified as suicides, accidents, and self defense to avoid launching an expensive, dangerous investigation, so I would also say that suicides are overreported.
What’s important isn’t up to you to decide. A gun death is a gun death. They ALL count.
If one of my family or friends shot themself or was shot due to the negligence of a “responsible gun owner”, I would consider that important.
They are definitely not misleading. They break it down in the same page by suicide, accidental killing, and etc. https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
So it’s 9,611 as non-suicide deaths. That’s 51 per day and 2 per hour.
Wow. So, following those numbers, if you buy a gun, it’s more likely you’ll kill yourself than you’ll kill others.
By far, especially when you consider that a user can only commit one suicide but multiple homicides. Also, suicide is often a tragedy of convenience. The easier it is to accomplish, the more likely a person in a bad place mentally will try. Firearm accessibility eliminates any logistical barriers that might slow a person long enough for them to reconsider.
