Regarding your “Ha” suicide stat, you could have stuck with your CDC link where you could have included the fact that guns are involved in 50% of suicides. That figure was not given in your huffpost link, yet you chose not to pick the one that gave the gun stat, which is obviously pertinent. Correct, not a far-right source, but certainly a glaring omission:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm
Both the guns and why people kill themselves and each other are “real issues”. Another why is why people more often use guns to kill themselves and each other.
About 35% of mass murderers commit suicide, which I don’t know includes suicide by cop.
Suicide is on the rise, though, apparently not currently more than average. Violent crime, however, is has gradually risen slightly higher since 2011, but still the lowest since 1971:
United States Crime Rates 1960 - 2016
As of 2015, firearms were used in 71.5 percent of the nation’s murders, 40.8 percent of robberies, and 24.2 percent of aggravated assaults. So, to say that “More important than gun control is understanding why violence and suicide is on the rise.”, as if to leave the issue of gun control and gun violence behind, ignores the facts:
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/latest-crime-statistics-released
States with higher gun ownership tend to have more gun involved deaths, though a correlation and not a proven cause and effect:
Top 10 States With The Most Firearms Per Capita
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...0-States-By-Gun-Sense-And-Gun-Violence-Deaths
There is no need for me to post a link to the fact of the US having the highest rate of murder and gun ownership among developed countries as it’s an accepted fact. Gun control, though, works in those countries that experienced an increase in gun involved crime, death and injury that chose such controls:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...an-learn/ar-BBF0H3L?li=AA4Zpp&ocid=spartanntp
These are measures we can take that work. Perhaps we can succeed in implementing just a couple of them. Then, there are the many other countries with low gun violence rates that already have more gun control in place than we do.