It’s a lot like saying the French Revolution happened not because of the absolutist royal family, but because the population had access to guillotines. If they didn’t have guillotines, they’d probably be using knives or something, and the same can be said about this: If they didn’t have a gun, they’d probably hang
And look at that, here you still are, pushing analogies to their breaking point, a second chance that thousands of people never got because they had access to a firearm.
I know it’s counterintuitive, but preventing access to easily lethal means of suicide decreases the number of deaths by suicide, and there’s a lot of data confirming this. Suicidal crises are spontaneous and temporary MOST of the time, and 90% of people who attempt suicide do not go on to die by suicide by some other means in the future after they are rescued.
I completely agree with you that firearms greatly increase the likelihood of a suicide attempt and the success of that attempt, and that is a problem. The data shows that clearly. That being the case, so many people being suicidal at all is a more fundamental issue. Of course I support making it less likely that suicidal people will make attempts and be successful, but it’s also important to consider why suicidality is such an increasingly severe issue.
Usually when a politician says “We are undergoing a mental health crisis” they mean “The mind is magic so if you think happy thoughts these problems will disappear,” but it is very obvious to me at least anecdotally that mental health is generally getting worse which requires broad medical intervention. Sure it doubles the work to do and lazy cowardly Republicans want to pretend that neither problem exists, but both issues are very pressing in my opinion and worth addressing.
Oh, no doubt that we need to fix the societal problems driving the increase in suicide rates. But even in better economic times, restricting access to more lethal means is good public policy.
I think the core of this is the hurtful aspects of gender roles men and boys face about how to handle and express emotions creates the situation of increased suicidality. Yeah firearms access is going to enable suicidal people to act upon their ideation, but taking it away just leaves you with a depressed/anxious guy, who doesn’t have the knowledge or resources to overcome his negative emotions. I’m not saying this in a “it’s a mental health issue not a gun issue” way, but society really normalizes the ignorance of mens’ emotions and for men to not build support for managing their emotions, be it intimate friendships, healthcare resources, healthy expression of emotions.
I think it’s good topic to bring up, because there’s a lot of things leading to men not doing too well, and I think it’d be dumb to ignore it, given the rise of acts of violence we’ve seen in the past decade from men who really feel disconnected or disillusioned with society. Finding out what we can do to help men cope with hardship in a more productive way, and ultimately address the root causes of the issues they face can improve things for men, as well as everyone in society.
Kinda hard to convince people suicide is caused by owning a firearm and not, you know, the reasons they committed suicide. Once again pointing societal issues as simply “not enough restrictions”, assuming that’ll fix anything. Waste of time.
It’s not the root cause, but I’m sure having easy access to a gun seems a lot quicker and cleaner than, for example, hanging yourself. I know a lot of people who probably wouldn’t be around right now if their folks kept guns in the house.
It’s not the root cause, but I’m sure having easy access to a gun seems a lot quicker and cleaner than, for example, hanging yourself.
we’re getting into the macabre a little bit here but, to be brief: yeah. if it was required people attempt to hang themselves (or overdose, or any other non-firearm method of suicide), pretty much all the data i’m aware of indicates the suicide rate would drop appreciably from where it is now in the US (45,000-50,000 deaths a year).
The path of least resistance from thought to action is very important. I wouldn’t actually know of an easy way if I wanted to kill myself right now. Having a gun in my drawer could easily make a bad day into a final day.
Or both ? It is not either or. There is no single thing that can drop suicide to zero, but plenty of well known measures that can reduce it. Seems weird to blatantly ignore one of the most effective ones.
People always say it’s about metal problems and not guns. And that might be true, but will you Americans ever try and fix that? Maybe by reducing healthcare prices or something.
So far it seems like the answer is: No, we won’t do anything about it.
At very least it makes sense to force parents to keep their guns locked away from their children and everyone else.
No-one under 18 should ever be allowed non supervised access to weapons and everyone over should have to take a mandatory safety and usage course and of course a comprehensive background check.
These are all things having little to do with suicide: Japan completely disarmed everyone outside of government in the 90’s, and they have better access to healthcare than Americans, but suicide rates only grew. Attention needs to be on root causes, like the explosive rise in loneliness and identifying how to repair some of the social changes brought on by a complete paradigm shift to how humans share information and interact with one another.
These are all things having little to do with suicide: Japan completely disarmed everyone outside of government in the 90’s, and they have better access to healthcare than Americans, but suicide rates only grew.
Japan’s suicide rate remains substantially lower than America’s suicide rate (particularly with respect to men) according to WHO data. this is particularly noteworthy because of Japanese cultural attitudes toward suicide (seen as morally neutral or honorable in certain circumstances, rather than consistently reprehensible as in America). it would imply the disarming you’re talking about is putting a significant damper on the rate.
Hot damn, BUT I question American face values specifically because it’s conflating a second epidemic: overdoses are often recorded as suicide when it’s not a clear accident like a medical interaction with prescriptions - it’s up to the coroner.
Over working people will do that even if you adequate social policy
In america daddies drive us like it is 1855 SouthCarolina plantation...
Then everyone pukachu face when we have ton of negative externalities, of which suicide is just one.
Before people jump these kids don't work.... Their parents do and precarious economic situation with lack of emotional and parental support destroys child's feeling of self worth.
But no problem we got alpha daddy thought leader to teach them how to be men...
and they have better access to healthcare than Americans,
Totally inaccurate for mental healthcare. No insurance covers psychology or counseling. Psychiatry is covered to a degree but is a check and pills which, alone, is not helpful in most cases.
In the US you need to wait multiple months to see a specialist, about 9 where i live as a new patient, and/or pay massively out of pocket for a private specialist ( $300-1000 per session).
Your other option is to say you’re thinking of killing yourself, but this is a direct route to involuntary care which red-flags you and gets your guns confiscated with virtually no hope of having your rights restored, as well as a record that gets in the way of getting a new job, housing, etc.
So, if you’re the average depressed person, have zero friends and have non-zero guns, you’re kind of on an island.
We have long waits her, too, generally. It's also still quite expensive here. If you don't speak fluent japanese, also be prepared to spend a lot (my therapy was the same as my monthly rent, over 100k yen), but that's a non-issue for most people in Japan
I believe the going theory is firearms are more likely to succeed whereas other means aren’t. So you get fewer suicide attempts and more suicides :(
We need to be asking why are teen boys committing suicide at high rates? But also we need to be able to support and help them somehow instead of casting them off on their own once they hit puberty.
PS:
Vinik noted that the suicide rate, already at a 20-year high, is rising the most quickly among young people of color.
Article goes on to talk about the difficulty of accessing mental health care for black boys, and other factors.
Presently, the firearm suicide rate is highest with Native American and Alaska Native young men and Black men — but Asian and Pacific Islanders, Latinx, and Black young men constitute the fastest-growing firearm suicide rates of any racial and ethnic groups in the Unites States.
Also
Michael pointed to “traditional, cisgender masculinity” as a factor in the rising suicide rate among teenage boys and young men.
“If you are a person that’s either been raised to believe that seeking help for mental health ailments is a sign of weakness, you might also be a person at risk for suicide,” Michael said.
i’m going to remove your comment because i severely doubt you read this entire article in two minutes and this seems like a driveby that’s not engaging with the content at all, but with respect to “I don’t think guns are to blame for boys wanting to kill themselves” you are patently false. access to firearms is quite literally the most important variable, because it makes a person significantly more likely to kill themselves[^1]–a correlation between ownership and suicide is particularly established among men specifically. see for example Firearm Ownership and Suicide Rates Among US Men and Women, 1981–2013, which concludes:
Conclusions. We found a strong relationship between state-level firearm ownership and firearm suicide rates among both genders, and a relationship between firearm ownership and suicides by any means among male, but not female, individuals.
In the United States, where firearms are the method used in more than 50% of all suicides and where roughly 1 in 3 homes contains firearms, even small relative declines in the use of firearms in suicide acts could result in large reductions in the number of suicides, depending on what, if any, method would be substituted for firearms. Consider, for example, the fact that more than 90% of all suicidal acts with firearms are fatal, but suicidal acts with firearms constitute only 5% of all deliberate self-harm episodes. In contrast, fewer than 3% of all suicidal acts with drugs or cutting are fatal but, as a group, such acts constitute approximately 90% of all attempts (33, 34). If even 1 in 10 of the approximately 22,000 persons who attempted suicide with firearms in 2010 (the 19,932 who died and the approximately 2,000 who survived) substituted drugs or cutting, there would have been approximately 1,900 fewer suicide deaths.
[^1]: or harm another person close to them. specific citations are: “Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the October 7, 1993; “Suicide in the Home in Relation to Gun Ownership,” by Arthur L. Kellermann et al., in New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 327, No. 7; August 13, 1992; “Homicide and Suicide Risks Associated with Firearms in the Home: A National Case-Control Study,” by Douglas J. Wiebe, in Annals of Emergency Medicine, Vol 41, No. 6; June 2003
This ain’t about young men for you, this is about gun control and you are using this tragedy as vector of attack.
the biggest disservice you can do to men in the US and their high rate of suicide is to pretend that the rate has nothing to do with the prevalence of guns in this country and the normalization of irresponsible firearm ownership (especially by men). i would go so far as to say it is actively pro-male suicide to take such a position because of how well established the causal links here are.
Idiot parents not securing their weapons are the key culprit… Can minor even purchase a gun?
even in this narrow window, you are literally describing why it is a gun policy issue and not just a social issue. there is no obligation or requirement to securely store firearms, meaning it’s often quite trivial for young people, the impulsive, or people who otherwise would not have access to a firearm to illicitly acquire them and do harm to themselves or others with them. this could be made much harder with some fairly common-sense regulations, but even those are fought against in this country even though they’re pretty normal in other countries.
