I keep a baseball bat by the bed and a shotgun in the corner. That's my plan on resolving a burglary. Somewhere in there it would be nice to call the police. But they are a good 15-20 minutes away and would only be coming to see if I made it out alive or not.
You should get rid of the gun or put it in a safe when you are not using it for sport. It's too dangerous to have it just in the corner. It's more likely that you or a family member will use it against yourself or someone else you love.
Yes it's mostly deaths related to suicide. With a few domestic homicides or children playing with weapons. But suicide thoughts can happen to everyone, yourself in the future perhaps, or someone you care about and where you didn't see or ignored the signs.
I think we should let the individual decide based on their own situation. Taking away the choice to own a gun for self defense, or suggesting in a blanket statement that people should sell their gun or make it inaccessible (useless for self defense), is not something I support. Maybe your perspective is different, and that's fine.
That French page is not very useful - total numbers of firearm deaths is not as important as looking at suicide rates. Suicide rates between the US and France are 13.7 and 12.1 respectively (WHO 2016 data). That doesn't seem like a very big difference, especially if you consider the large difference in guns per 100 people (US 120, France 19, suggesting weak correlation). You also see developed countries in that data which have low gun ownership and higher suicide rates (Sweden, Japan, etc). This seems to point to factors other than gun ownership driving suicide rates.
The New York article is looking at short term reduction studies. We see that suicides drop temporarily after a prevalent method of suicide has been removed. If we follow the rate over time, it will increase as people learn of new ways to kill themselves. In the US, we have recently seen an increase in teens gassing themselves with household chemicals. It just takes time for societal knowledge to perform that shift, so you end up playing a shell game.
The best way to reduce suicides is to focusing on getting at-risk individuals treatment. The starting point is to destigmatize the subject and educate people on the options. Addressing the root problems are more effective than addressing the symptoms, which just ends up going down a never-ending rabbit hole of banning the next method to replace the last. There are a number of mental health workers who agree.
I understand your point. My perspective on having easily accessible firearms for self defense is different indeed, and is also related to the law where I live : weapons must be stored in an approved safe that is bolted to the house.
I think the main issue with firearms and suicide is the easyness and effectiveness. For sure someone very sick and determined may find other methods. I don't know if it's easy to compare suicide rates and weapons usage among various countries. Perhaps with fewer guns USA would get a lower suicide rate among males. Perhaps not.
So yes it's your choice. From my perspective, having a easily accessible gun is not worth the risk for me and my family considering the data and the likelyhood of needing a gun for self defense.
And given the relatively low occurence of situations that would require a gun if you don't use it for sport, your choice seems rational and reasonable. I think you're also right about the sick people comment. The two people I know who committed suicide were elderly and started experiencing alzheimer's. Their decisions seemed quite final. I suppose if I were in a similar situation, I would probably find it a rational decision, but I'm not sure if it would be reasonable.
I've heard the argument before (temporary idea and effective means), which probably is true of the non-terminally ill. I haven't seen any data supporting it so far. I've also haven't seen any definitive evidence against it, only suggestive stuff.
There are some states with restrictive gun laws that show a slight decrease, but others seem to be unaffected (continue to increase). Just as there were less restrictive states that show the same mixed behavior. (CDC data referenced by both sides)
One thing that I saw in the CDC data was that suicide rates have risen over the past 30 or so years for all states. Non-firearm suicides are 27% more common since the 80s, but it didn't look at why firearms are decreasing as a percentage. RAND says the number of homes with at least one firearm has stayed fairly consistent over that time (40% -/+ 5%). So it seems that there isn't a substantial reduction in suicides based solely on gun control laws, but it seems it's also impossible to say if the number would have been higher without those restrictions. The fact the ownership has stayed the same, but firearms are a lower percentage of suicide cases could just be demographic or preference issue, but we don't know.
One interesting thing I observed which I didn't see studies about (because both sides are focused on just confirming their positions on pro/anti gun policies) is the correlation between mental healthcare service ratings and suicide. This is just rough, but I found these two maps appearing to be more correlated than the gun ownership and suicide maps/studies. Just something I found interesting and would need an actual study to look into it.
> Because coding of the mortality data changed to the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) beginning in 1999, analyses by year and race/ethnicity were conducted for 1999--2007 to examine rate changes during that period.
> I've heard the argument before (temporary idea and effective means), which probably is true of the non-terminally ill. I haven't seen any data supporting it so far.
There's a few natural experiments that are relevant: limiting pack sizes for paracetamol in the UK; change from coal gas to natural gas in the UK in the 1960s; change to cars with catalytic convertors.
I see them mention a change in that study and that they did some binomial regression for ethnicity in those years. But it seems that's for secondary attributes like ethnicity, not for the main cause of death (suicide). Or am I missing something?
I'm aware of those examples. Those examples were before the internet, meaning people commit suicide they way they know how. Socially, you couldn't just ask someone how to commit suicide with an alternative method, but now you can look it up on online so you don't have to ask anyone.
The coal gas example does show a reasonable reduction (18-13). But after the conversion process was completed, you see it's still creeps back up to 15 just within a couple years.
The paracetamol example might actually go against your argument. We see that the suicide rate overall is very steady after the package size change, which suggests that people found other methods.
