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People who own guns are at a much higher risk of suicide. Guns might make you feel safe, but in reality the most likely person to die from your gun is yourself.
This is like survivorship bias, but in reverse. Obviously almost everyone who killed themselves with a gun had access to a gun, but this doesn't mean that they wouldn't have committed suicide by some other means if they didn't have access to a gun.
This is something that is impossible to determine scientifically. If everyone in this study group killed themselves with a gun, how many of them would have not killed themselves if they didn't have a gun? They can't un-kill themselves and let us take away their guns so we can determine the effect.
What this study shows is that a gun is likely the first choice of gun owners who are trying to kill themselves. It cannot determine how much less likely they would have been to kill themselves had they not owned a gun, if at all. Intuitively I do believe that it would be less, because other means are likely more difficult, slower, or less effective. Whether this would result in slightly fewer suicides or much fewer I do not know, but this study doesn't prove either.
Let us preface this with the statement that I believe people sound generally have access to guns if they want them.
Access to guns absolutely increases your risk for suicide. The fundamental reason is that having a gun and ammo available to you makes suicide accessible and quick. The urge to kill yourself is spontaneous and short lived, small barriers can and do save lives.
I want to repeat something fundamental to this study. The reduced suicide rate caused by limiting access to guns was not compensated for by an increase when guns were reintroduced. Restricting gun access saved lives. Full stop.
Again, I like guns. I think you should have a gun if you want one, barring any obvious reasons you shouldn't have one. But, I'm not gonna ignore reality; guns increase your risk of suicide. Life is full of risk, I think this one is acceptable.
What this study shows is that a gun is likely the first choice of gun owners who are trying to kill themselves. It cannot determine how much less likely they would have been to kill themselves had they not owned a gun, if at all.
I wonder how many people choose other methods of suicide (Hanging/Drug OD) when they had a gun available.
When I was a medic for 15 years, I was paged out to 4 suicides, two self hanging, one OD, and one wrist slashing, (all male). Nor can I remember any reports of suicide by gun either. There were also good number of attempted OD's though. And this was in a rural community where almost every home had at least one gun and often more.
I don't think anyone could prove one way or another why guns didn't seem to be a choice for suicidal people in that community. I certainly don't know. But people who are not of sound mind often do strange things for inscrutable reasons.
They're kind of notorious for people surviving the attempt, with stories of shattered jaws and a life of brain damage afterwards.
There, at the very least some truth to that. I did run across one failed attempt with a gun that fit that bill.
Having guns makes us less safe, and ideally we would have similar restrictions to other nations. Unfortunately, it'd take decades to actually get rid of all our guns, even if the second amendment was repealed tomorrow. As a result, us queers need to adapt to the dangerous reality and arm ourselves openly as a threat to the right wingers that worship the 2nd amendment.
So fascists, you want no restrictions? You want more guns then people? Then you have to face transmasc antifa super soldiers with higher T than you and transfem snipers with better aims than you. Don't like it? Sorry, your conservative Supreme Court made it near impossible to place restrictions on guns, and there's so many in circulation that even strict restrictions can't hold anyone back. Oops 🤷♀️
The power of armed queers is intimidation; to make the phobes think twice about fucking with us. As the Dutch resistance hero Willem Arondeus defiantly said before his execution, "Tell people that homosexuals are not cowards."
And my axe!
Do you realize how stupid that sounds? I mean, yes, it makes sense that would be the most common form of suicide, quick and painless, but that like saying all gun owners are suicidal. Me owning a gun doesn't increase my likelihood to die, it's just that using a gun is easier than other options when someone does commit suicide, and it makes sense the number of people doing this is so high when you consider anywhere from 10-30% of America's are diagnosed with depression, and close to half of Americans own a gun.
There is an element of ease of access to suicide methods that influence attempt likelihood and success but it's very hard to determine whether someone would choose a different method or stop. Or if they would just show up as a death of despair down the line.
Except neither study is talking about the most the most common form of suicide. They're both reporting higher rates of suicide among gun owners.
Me owning a gun doesn’t increase my likelihood to die
That's literally what both studies are saying. From the first one:
Men who owned handguns were eight times more likely than men who didn’t to die of self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Women who owned handguns were more than 35 times more likely than women who didn't to kill themselves with a gun.
From the second one:
in Wyoming, where 63 percent of households reported owning guns—rates of suicide were higher. The inverse was also true: where gun ownership was less common, suicide rates were also lower.
Also from the second source,
Studies show that most attempters act on impulse, in moments of panic or despair. Once the acute feelings ease, 90 percent do not go on to die by suicide.
Then I wonder how many people have access to rope and why hanging doesn't dominate the statistic.
If you dont know how to hang yourself(it's actually kinda hard), your death will be extremely painful and it will take a long time. Shooting yourself is one of the most effective, immediate and painless ways of killing yourself.
A gun doesn't magically kill. It simply makes a hole in the place that is shot. The person might die from having a hole in the body.
It's messy, it hurts and it takes a while to die from.
There's a reason why death sentences aren't done using guns.
Bullets dont create holes. Once inside, they spin and/or deform, causing a lot more damage than a bullet sized hole. Apparently, when your brain is fucked this much, it is over. Of course it doesnt always work perfectly but more often than not, it does. It is by far the most effective way of killing yourself.
The reason death sentences arent done using guns because aiming and shooting at people is hard and has psychological repercussions for the shooters. Even when executions were done by bullet, you had a lot of shooters so that noone had to bare the killing responsibility.
People who want to kill themselves and don't have access to a gun sometimes just give up and decide to live instead. Suicidal thoughts are not always persistent, they are fleeting. Having easy access to a gun is just another way to turn a temporary feeling into a permanent choice. It doesn't make you more likely to commit suicide, but it does make it more likely that a suicidal ideation turns into a suicidal action.