Senior men have higher rates of suicide than average, and firearms were involved in more than three-quarters of those deaths in 2021, according to a CDC report
Senior men have higher rates of suicide than average, and firearms were involved in more than three-quarters of those deaths in 2021, according to a CDC report
Not just me, but everybody involved in suicide prevention. It doesn’t matter how unintuitive you find it, means reduction works.
Suicide is an impulse and when people have access to guns, they can act on that impulse in minutes, if not seconds. It’s painless and requires zero preparation time.
What other method even comes close?
You might have the tools to slit your wrists, but it hurts, it’s easy to get wrong, takes much longer than you’d think and sucks the entire time.
It’s also extemely difficult to seriously injure yourself on purpose. Most people have heard of “hesitation marks” but nobody has heard of “hesitation gunshots”, because they’re not a thing.
Okay, so what about hanging? For most people, step 1 is going to be Googling “how to tie a noose”, which will immediately present them with local suicide prevention resources.
So fuck it, lets head outside.
Maybe jump off something high? How long would it take you to get to a bridge or building that would definitely be fatal? Would you need to drive? Would you need directions? Could you leave without anybody asking where you were going? Once you got there, could you climb on the edge without being seen by passers by, all of whom will immediately try and help you or call someone who can.
And of course once you were looking out over the edge, could you do it? It’s terrifying and a very primal survival instinct will tell you to stop. Even once you jump, you’re still not arriving at oblivion faster than someone with a gun would.
Maybe you could overdose on something? The 90s made it look so cool. But of course, few people have fatal amounts of drugs just laying around and for most people, it’s far quicker and easier to go to a gun store.
So whats left? Shit that practically nobody does, despite the pro-gun community insist every suicide method is the same. People don’t gouge their eyes to get to their brain or feed themselves into a tablesaw.
No, it doesn’t sound like that at all, you just want to signal to others that you’re not right wing but still love guns.
But sure, we can stick with that analogy. Do women who aren’t pregnant still have abortions? Do they just find another medical proceedure to have instead?
If you’re pro gun, there’s no use pretending “saving womens lives” is a thing you care about. 70 women are shot and killed by their partners each month, over 4 million report being threatened with a gun.
Abusers with access to guns are 5x more likely to kill their partners and guess what the gun lobby does? Openly opposes domestic abusers losing their guns.
Two counter points:
First is gunpowder is a weapon that does level playing field between two people who have different amounts of strength. What I mean is a 6foot 250 lb muscle builder is just as deadly as a 90 year old grand ma.
You have to acknowledge that point even if I agreed to your points.
Unlike all other weapons strength doesn’t matter for a gun. Basic biology that women are physically weaker than men. Yes some suggested that a woman shooting a guy in self-defense should be legal and mostly is.
The second is is you are wildly wrong about having access to drugs. I’m surprised you are suggesting that the average American household doesn’t have a lethal dose in their medicine cabinet.
Sure, in some bizarre labratory conditions that don’t reflect reality, the body builder and the grandma have equal capacity to murder anyone they want.
But that’s almost never how it plays out. Do you know who actually wins in that matchup? Whoever is the shittest person.
Is the grandma deeply racist and the body builder black? Then all my money is on the grandma. Is the body builder far-right and opening fire on a family having a day out with grandma? Then all my money is on the Nazi.
But of course, we don’t have to talk about convoluted hypothetical scenarios. The pro-gun community had dictated the gun laws for 25 years, promising shit like “a level playing field” the entire time, despite it been a deeply fucked way of describing people fighting for their lives.
So why are none of these promises coming true? Why are women and minorities less safe in America compared to other wealthy countries? Why are the crime rates in America basically the same despite tolerating children being executed en masse every few months?
If these gun laws keep us safe from tyranny, why are there fascists preparing for an election, enthusiastically cheered on by the the pro-gun community?
When they inevitably lose and arrange their next attack on the Capitol, puffing their chests out with pro-gun pride and executing anyone who stands in their way, are you going tell us just how level the playing field was?
Most of then also have a lethal amount of bleach too but believe it or not, most suicidal people would rather not torture themselves to death.
Just because something is theoretically fatal doesn’t mean it’s a suicide risk.