Gtscotty
Member
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2007
- Messages
- 3,635
Everyone on this thread seems pretty cavalier about suicide - just a choice people make. Those who have had their spouses or kids kill themselves rather than getting help for depression would not see it that way. Nor does the medical profession.
I posted the Wyoming stat because it seemed to contrast so much with the way people talk about the freedom, safety and happiness gun people like to associate with states like that. And rather than submit yet another bad social theory in a thread full of them, I dropped that tidbit so people will think a little bit more about their assumptions.
I have no idea if guns make people more likely to end their lives or not. I think it is a shame when people in their prime die, and that includes when they do it to themselves. But I do think that doctors would like to have good stats to understand what is going on, and while that may have political ramifications in how the data is used, data is data.
So basically dancing around the suggestion that higher rates of firearm ownership in States like Wyoming is a problem that drives increased suicide risk? Logic right in line with the article you posted earlier that stated:
"Many lives would likely be saved if people disposed of their firearms, kept them locked away, or stored them outside the home."
My problem with this kind of research is, what possible solutions can they suggest that don't infringe on people's rights? When it comes right down to it if someone has access to firearms and they want to kill themselves, they can... Period. Other than therapy and other treatment options that don't require knowledge of what percentage of people have guns, the only solutions they can offer are disarmament, storage laws, and similar obvious infringements.
As for doctors being required to ask whether you own guns. Its one thing to make nebulous comments about having data available for research being a good thing, but what would be an actual mechanism whereby the doctors prior knowledge of your firearm ownership would serve your well-being? Say you're diagnosed with severe depression and the doctor wants to advise your family to remove firearms from the house, why does he have to have prior knowledge of your possessions to give such advice?
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