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FunCouple5280 -> RE: Guns and Suicide (4/11/2013 1:58:29 PM)
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National suicide rates
Really the suicide rate in the US and UK are statistically identical and both are only 20% higher than in Australia. So despite drastic differences in gun laws people feel the need to snuff it in about the same numbers.
Here in the US many more people attempt suicide unsuccessfully than are successful as well like in the UK. a cry for help is as common here as it is there.
A debate on suicide should be devoid of the methods used. The psychosis really is the issue. While the method may express the emotions they are feeling, they often do not as well. I have known 2 people in my life who attempted suicide and one who was successful. The attempts were both massive doses of over the counter meds, pretty much low risk stuff. And they called and said they were doing it, so very much a cry for help/attention. The successful one was a massive dose of prescription opiates, mixed with a ton of booze (pretty much a sure thing). He told no one and was found 3 days later. He made up his mind, wrote a note, and got to it. All cases were people capable of violence with access to firearms.
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
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ORIGINAL: FunCouple5280
Sorry focus, but whether or not guns are available doesn't impact the rate of suicide. Numerous studies both in the US and abroad on the impact of gun laws and suicide show no significant change in the rate of suicide. If guns are available, it is the method of choice because of its speed and reliability in getting the job done. But, if they aren't available, it just doesn't change one's mind, just the method of action.
I'd be surprised if that were entirely the case. In England there are ten attempted suicides for every one suicide that's 'successful'. For reasons that shouldn't need to be stated people after often (though not always, note) not in a cool and reasoning state of mind when they attempt suicide. They don't always choose the method that is fastest, most reliable and most likely to 'get the job done'.
Emotions can overwhelm reason. People attempting suicide can be angry, so pick a method that expresses that anger. The suicide is 'violence against oneself' in all senses of the phrase. A gun might therefore fit the bill whereas pills may not. More generally emotions can be conflicted and, at the moment of killing oneself, it just happens that the desire for death has achieved a temporary primacy over all desire to stay alive.
Whatever: here in England, at least, the idea of an attempted - but 'botched' - suicide actually being a 'cry for help' is pretty commonplace.
Any time that the gun debate comes up, in any context, I'm always taken aback by just how unquestioned the view so often is that means have no bearing on ends whatsoever - that the desire to do something always precedes working out how one is going to do it.
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