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NPR: Sharp Increase In Gun Suicides Signals Growing Public Health Crisis

Rucker61 said:
About half of all suicides are by non-firearm methods. Why do you propose to leave these potential victims half protected?
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1) No one complains that removing ropes from a house is a violation of the Constitution.

2) You're offering a false dilemma. Taking action on firearm suicides does not, in any way shape or form, prevent us from engaging in other methods to reduce suicides.

3) I'm pretty sure the percentage of firearm suicides is higher than 50%. It's probably 60% or more now.
 
Visbek said:
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/26/6320...suicides-signals-growing-public-health-crisis

Much of what this article discusses is not news... to some of us, at least.

• There were 218,000 gun suicides in the US between 2006 an 2016.

• 60-80% of gun deaths are suicides.

• Many suicides are the result of impulses, not premeditation. Guns do not cause people to have suicidal impulses; however, someone who has an impulse and access to a firearm is much more likely to make the attempt, and more likely to succeed, than with other methods. If the impulse is thwarted, the individual is less likely to find another method; plus, people who survive less lethal suicide attempts rarely repeat the attempt.

• Voluntary moves by industry groups, such as trying to raise awareness of the link, may not be enough.

Suicide is obviously a complex phenomenon, including how it's influenced by culture (regional, national etc). However, it seems pretty clear that access to guns has a big impact on suicide in the US, which is a growing problem. Seems like it's time to do something that specifically addresses this issue.
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Access to pills and ropes should require federal permits as well.

What a ****ing joke!
 
Visbek said:
And again, I pointed out that firearms are much more effective than other methods. Firearms are effective over 80% of the time, whereas taking poisons only works 1.5% of the time.
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I see this cherry picking all of the time. It's always poison. People like you never mention hanging/suffocation suicides which have a success rate over 60%, use common household items and account for almost 12k deaths annually.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-fatality/
 
Visbek said:
1) No one complains that removing ropes from a house is a violation of the Constitution.

2) You're offering a false dilemma. Taking action on firearm suicides does not, in any way shape or form, prevent us from engaging in other methods to reduce suicides.
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It's all you're suggesting.
 
Visbek said:
And again, I pointed out that firearms are much more effective than other methods. Firearms are effective over 80% of the time, whereas taking poisons only works 1.5% of the time.

I.e. taking steps to temporarily remove access to firearms is not like pushing down on a waterbed. It won't thwart every single potential suicide, but it is likely to reduce the total number of suicides.
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There are already laws that can remove firearms from the mentally unstable.

Do your homework before you post this nonsense.
 
Visbek said:
Unfortunately, there is no magic potion that fixes mental illnesses overnight.

In fact, there are often situations where treating the underlying mental illness increases the chances of the patient attempting suicide. For example, patients taking SSRIs can increase their risk of committing suicide. The mechanisms are not entirely clear (or may vary), but the increased risk is real and known. Thus, it may be more important to temporarily restrict access to firearms for someone who is being treated for those types of conditions.
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And if the courts are involved and it is temporary then I have no issue with it. This Nation, IMHO, has swept the issue of mental illness under the rug for far too long, we need to deal with it as best we can, for those suffering from forms if it and for society as a whole, stop making it something to be ashamed of and treat them, the world would be a better place. Oh and before anyone chime's in with their excuses, I know it is going to be tough to do and mistakes will happen but anything is better than what we do now which is way too little and we all pay the price for that.
 
Visbek said:
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/26/6320...suicides-signals-growing-public-health-crisis

Much of what this article discusses is not news... to some of us, at least.

• There were 218,000 gun suicides in the US between 2006 an 2016.

• 60-80% of gun deaths are suicides.

• Many suicides are the result of impulses, not premeditation. Guns do not cause people to have suicidal impulses; however, someone who has an impulse and access to a firearm is much more likely to make the attempt, and more likely to succeed, than with other methods. If the impulse is thwarted, the individual is less likely to find another method; plus, people who survive less lethal suicide attempts rarely repeat the attempt.

• Voluntary moves by industry groups, such as trying to raise awareness of the link, may not be enough.

Suicide is obviously a complex phenomenon, including how it's influenced by culture (regional, national etc). However, it seems pretty clear that access to guns has a big impact on suicide in the US, which is a growing problem. Seems like it's time to do something that specifically addresses this issue.
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The problem is that there is a reverse correlation happening here where the number of suicides are going up while the number of people that own guns is going down.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/despit...-of-households-owning-guns-is-on-the-decline/

The number of American households with guns has dropped 19 percentage points from 50 percent in 1977 to 31 percent in 2014 according to the General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center, which has surveyed about 2,000 Americans on the same set of questions since the early 1970's.
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With less people owning guns, that should result in a decline of suicides, if there is a direct correlation. Now...how about we talk about the number of people on SSRI medications?
 
RetiredUSN said:
There are already laws that can remove firearms from the mentally unstable.

Do your homework before you post this nonsense.
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I did. As I wrote above: From what I can tell, only 5 states currently have those types of "red flag" laws, 18 more are considering them this year. That's a good start, but far from comprehensive.

It also leaves open the question of whether voluntary efforts on the part of the industry are sufficient, or if different tactics are preferable.
 
Fishking said:
With less people owning guns, that should result in a decline of suicides, if there is a direct correlation. Now...how about we talk about the number of people on SSRI medications?
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We can talk about both.

For one thing, taking SSRIs likely reduce the rate of suicide in patients by 40%. Overall, prescribing more SSRIs has likely resulted in fewer suicides, not more, even with more people taking SSRIs than in the 80s or 90s. The problem is that a small and unpredictable subset of SSRI patients will have an increased rate of suicide, thus we can't just whip a little Prozac on someone with PTSD and assume that will take care of everything. (I.e. making greater efforts to improve mental health does not break the link between guns and suicide.)

As to the overall decline in guns, while we might expect that "fewer guns = fewer suicides," that isn't what happened. That may be a bit surprising, except that again, guns don't change the underlying causality. They don't make someone suicidal, rather they facilitate those attempts.

Further, we have very strong evidence that "gun ownership increases the rate of successful suicides." We see it in the methods people attempt, as well as failure/success rates; in the impulsivity (e.g. 24% of suicide attempts happen 5 minutes or less after the decision, and half within 20 minutes; few wait more than an hour); successes with ERPOs; in state-by-state comparisons of gun ownership rates and suicide rates, and so on.

The solution to the conundrum is most likely because the communities experiencing the most stress are also those which tend to have higher rates of gun ownership -- namely, white men in rural communities.
 
Visbek said:
• More aggressive informational campaigns

• Systems to temporarily remove access to firearms by people who are determined to be a potential danger to themselves

There's this crazy thing called "due process" that we can use, to ensure that people's rights are protected.
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If people want to off themselves, they'll find a way.
 
Visbek said:
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/26/6320...suicides-signals-growing-public-health-crisis

Much of what this article discusses is not news... to some of us, at least.

• There were 218,000 gun suicides in the US between 2006 an 2016.

• 60-80% of gun deaths are suicides.

• Many suicides are the result of impulses, not premeditation. Guns do not cause people to have suicidal impulses; however, someone who has an impulse and access to a firearm is much more likely to make the attempt, and more likely to succeed, than with other methods. If the impulse is thwarted, the individual is less likely to find another method; plus, people who survive less lethal suicide attempts rarely repeat the attempt.

• Voluntary moves by industry groups, such as trying to raise awareness of the link, may not be enough.

Suicide is obviously a complex phenomenon, including how it's influenced by culture (regional, national etc). However, it seems pretty clear that access to guns has a big impact on suicide in the US, which is a growing problem. Seems like it's time to do something that specifically addresses this issue.
Click to expand...

Don't we all have a human right to suicide when we feel our quality of life has declined to an unacceptable point?

So why all the concern?
 
Vox said:
Don't we all have a human right to suicide when we feel our quality of life has declined to an unacceptable point?

So why all the concern?
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Actually you don't except for in three states and then only under certain circumstances
 
vegas giants said:
Actually you don't except for in three states and then only under certain circumstances
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I'm not talking about that......I'm talking about a basic human right.
 
Vox said:
I'm not talking about that......I'm talking about a basic human right.
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Actually the answer is no except under certain circumstances.
 
Well, that's your opinion.
 
Visbek said:
Not if "dig deeper" means "ignore the evidence."

We're not talking about Japan, which has a culture that has valorized suicide for centuries. We're talking about America, where the link between guns and suicide is firmly established.



Read the article. This is not about "root causes."

Again, it's that owning a firearm does not cause a suicidal impulse. It's that if you have a suicidal impulse, and you have access to firearms, then you are more likely to act on that impulse, and you are more likely to succeed. Pretending that there is no link does not address the situation, and is only going to cause more harm.
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Yaaa....but in a country where owning a gun is a constitutional right, maybe the better connection to focus on is the link between suicide and mental illness. The point Japan proves, regardless of whether it is more culturally acceptable to commit suicide, is that if you have a will to end your life, you can do so in great numbers where guns are strictly controlled to the point where they're basically non existent in the general public.

I guess for me, the failure of the anti-gun movement is that it only ever tries to deal with the symptoms, not the cause. This may sound callous but it's said with sincere concern...who cares how they are killing themselves, why do you have so many Americans that want to commit suicide? Maybe if pro gun and anti gun people work that kind of thing out together, there won't be a need for "pro gun" and "anti gun" groups.
 
OlNate said:
Yaaa....but in a country where owning a gun is a constitutional right, maybe the better connection to focus on is the link between suicide and mental illness. The point Japan proves, regardless of whether it is more culturally acceptable to commit suicide, is that if you have a will to end your life, you can do so in great numbers where guns are strictly controlled to the point where they're basically non existent in the general public.

I guess for me, the failure of the anti-gun movement is that it only ever tries to deal with the symptoms, not the cause. This may sound callous but it's said with sincere concern...who cares how they are killing themselves, why do you have so many Americans that want to commit suicide? Maybe if pro gun and anti gun people work that kind of thing out together, there won't be a need for "pro gun" and "anti gun" groups.
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There is no place in the world where your plan works. This is my problem with people who fight gun control
 
It is a given fact, cops end their life as a gun suicide than being killed by a gun from a criminal. Cop gun suicides does not get much press coverage; if killed in the line of duty with a gun from a criminal -- the local press goes ape ****.
 
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