On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 11:06:34 -0500, "David R. Birch"
wrote:

On 7/21/2015 10:52 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 07:46:06 -0500, "David R. Birch"
wrote:

On 7/20/2015 3:32 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jul 2015 14:56:33 -0500, "David R. Birch"
wrote:

On 7/20/2015 10:43 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jul 2015 10:24:16 -0500, "David R. Birch"
wrote:

On 7/20/2015 8:52 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jul 2015 18:47:16 +0700, John B. Slocomb
wrote:

Disregarding that something like half the deaths attributed to guns
seem to be people committing suicide.

Who's disregarding it?

Although I suspect that if they
can't get a gun they will take to jumping from high buildings and
bridges, or even suicide by automobile. Just drive down the highway
and straight into the bridge abutment.

Ya' never know. But maybe you'd like to try researching that one
before "suspecting."

Best to ask those who committed suicide by gun if they would have killed
themselves by another means if a gun had not been available.

Another way is to see how many times they failed at other methods. For
example, my former college roommate, who became schizophrenic at age
22. He tried running his car into a ditch on I-96. That didn't work.
So he stole a semi and tried driving it into a bridge on I-80 in
Pennsylvania. No luck.

So, one day in 1979, living in Daytona Beach, he bought a .38 Spl. S&W
revolver, put it to his head, and finally had success. One wonders how
it would have gone if we had a background-check system in place then.

Dan was basically kicked out of the mental-health system, with no one
to keep track of his meds. He quit taking them. Whether he would have
been rescued if he had another failure is problematic. Not only do we
have a mental health system that leaks like a sieve, but nobody seems
to care, either.

You're dismissing the question out of ignorance, David.

Not really, two good friends of mine, both bi-polar, killed themselves
when at the bottom of their mood swings, one by sitting in a car in a
closed garage with the engine running, the other w/ a .38 Spl S&W. I had
refused to sell her a gun some time before.

So I know something of this. In both cases, this was the first attempt
that I know of. Neither had had any history that would have precluded
buying a gun. The use of a gun was irrelevant to the result.

So why did you ask the nonsense question about querying them after
they're dead? That was the idiot remark.

I guess it was more subtle than I thought, you usually pick up on things
better.

"Subtle"? Not.

Subtle enough that you see only the superficial question.

I don't read invisible ink.



About 50% of US suicides are by gun in the US, with about 24% by hanging.

So how many would we have if there weren't any guns?

Same overall number, different methods.

You pulled that right out of your nose. You have no way of knowing
that.

It's not that hard to kill yourself. Distribute the 50% by gun over the
other methods. All you have to do is think about it. If you're willing to.

And what do you think you get when you "think about it"? More
nonsense.




Japan has a suicide rate about 2-1/2 as high as the US, with hanging at
about 50%. Somehow they manage to do it w/o guns.

And the Philiippines have a rate that's 1/4 of ours. What conclusion
do you draw from this?

That people who want to kill themselves will succeed.

No, actually, they usually fail. (2008, US: 1.1 million suicide
attempts; 33,000 succeeded.) The ratio in the US is one success for 33
attempts, according to WHO. Based on surveys and psych research, as
many as 2/3 of those were "not very intent" on committing suicide. So
the ratio for *serious* attempts to success, in the US, is about 10:1.

So? For those who choose to do so and keep trying, ratio is 1:1.

No. You need to read some of the stats instead of making it all up,
David.

"It is often estimated that about 10-15% of attempters eventually die
by suicide."

Source - Suominen et al. (2004). Completed Suicide After a Suicide
Attempt: A 37-Year Follow-Up Study. Am J Psychiatry, 161, 563-564.

The authors also note that suicide success rates decline after the
first attempt.


Method is
irrelevant. Including suicide numbers in gun deaths is distortion.

You have absolutely no way of knowing that. You're pulling it out of
your nose again.

Nope, just thinking about it, which you have apparently chosen not to do
when it doesn't support your reality.

Method is most certainly relevant. Take a look at the success rates
with different methods. Firearms are roughly 10 times more likely to
produce "success" than other methods.

What you call "thinking" is making up the world to suit your
prejudices. As for "reality," it's out there, David. Just look it up.
Suicide has been studied in a lot of depth.

--
Ed Huntress



David