Does this article seem fake to you? - 'Confessions of a Gun Range Worker'

[Carl N. Brown]

One of the right-to-suicide advocacy groups listed Methods of Suicide by:
Rank / Lethality / Method
1. 99.0% Shotgun to head
2. 97.0% Cyanide
3. 97.0% Gunshot of head
4. 96.4% Shotgun to chest
5. 96.4% Explosives
6. 96.2% Hit by train
7. 93.4% Jump from height
8. 89.5% Gunshot of chest
9. 89.5% Hanging
10. 78.5% Auto crash

It could be in California its easier for a suicidal individual to rent a gun to use at a range than to buy one; also possible the people with the "street smarts" to be able to make a black market connection are less likely to be self-destructive. Suicide preventation by blocking a means though does not affect motivation and alternate suicide methods often endanger persons other than the suicide; the combos of household chemicals used for poisoning in Japan endanger family, neighbors, EMTs, ER personnel. I think an antisuicide policy focussed on guns misses the target.

"Eventually the range started paying a service to come pick up the bodies and scrub everything."
Checking out "suicide cleanup services" (which allso handle aftermath of homicide and accident), cleanup after a suicide is more likely to be a home, business, hotel/motel, than a gun range, and they are not allowed to move or remove bodies (the police, EMS, coroner, medical examiner, etc. handle dying or dead bodies), so some parts of that story are off.

 

[John G C 1]

I read the article. Seems reasonable to me for the most part. Obviously the guy has had bad experiences and reached negative conclusions, and that is reflected in his language.

I have run into a few mentally questionable guys at the range where I shoot. They are NOT the majority by any means, but talking to them for ten minutes sure makes my eyebrows go up and on occasion I have just smiled and said "makes sense" and gotten the hell out of there. If an average person had been there, he would have left with a very unsettling experience of the gun world.


A few nuts make it easy for anyone to demonize a group and both sides of the conservative fence readily do this with their "all gunners are violent nuts" and "all gun control advocates are traitors" rhetoric. Bully and bumper sticker rhetoric seems to work with people who can not think.

 

[Jim Watson]

A sad fact of the business.
The older (of two) indoor ranges in this end of the state has had three suicides and a high profile murderess among its customers.

 

[coloradokevin]

I think the article shows some bias, not so much because he talks of suicides at these ranges, but because he talks about it like it's something of an everyday occurrence. Don't get me wrong, 3 suicides at your workplace over a couple of years can still impact employees, but it isn't like the range manager is calling body disposal on a daily basis: "Yeah, Bob, it's XYZ Range... we got two more bodies for ya, we'll stack 'em out back".

As for the extremist paranoia that the author alleges, I have to say that's kind of true, but always has been. This isn't the dangerous brand of extremism that most readers will probably believe the author discussing, but more of a general distrust of the federal government on gun issues, and a general feeing that the guns we like will eventually be taken away. But, like any gathering of random strangers, you get to hear some strange gossip at gun stores and ranges. I was just thinking of one guy I ran across at a local store who repeatedly reminded me to: 'buy all the primers you can right now, because that new law that Obama wrote only allows them to sell primers that will go bad in 6 months... the government is going to make sure all of your ammo goes bad so you can't fight back!' Sure thing, sport.

 

[jmorris]

Somebody who really wants to commit suicide doesn't need a gun to do so.

No but it is seen as a quick and painless way to do it, so it's at #1, followed by suffocation (hanging etc) and poison (drugs and such).

 

[Ed Ames]

I'm pretty sure I have used the orange county range described with the non-bulletproof windows.

One thing you need to remember in reading this is that shooting sports are not seen as socially acceptable behavior in southern California. As such, the people who openly go shooting are those who are less likely to be influenced by social norms. Unfortunately, people who "don't care what everyone thinks" tend to express a lot of ideas that are normally repressed for fear of social consequences. Racism, conspiracy theories, etc. By making recreational shooting socially unacceptable the majority has driven normal shooters underground, leaving a selected pool of people who don't respond to social pressure in the normal way. When I lived in that area I drove hours to go out to the Mojave desert to go shooting away from everyone else in part because I didn't want to be identified as a gun owner in my local community.

Does that mean that shooting is a hotbed of racism? No. But it does mean that openly pro-gun people in that sort of environment are likely to be openly pro-other-socially-repressed-ideas as well.

Personally I somewhat dreaded going into gun stores in SoCal because I knew there was a heightened chance of running into openly expressed ideas that are socially unacceptable...bigotry of all sorts, delusional thinking (as in people who honestly believed "the government" had secret labs where they developed grenades that could freeze you to an ice block as seen in some computer game or maybe a Batman movie), references to murdering people and claiming self defense, etc.. Those things were overrepresented in gun shops simply because the normal majority didn't want to be seen going into a gun store (which isn't to say they didn't own a gun). By contrast the DFW area gun stores are far more normal in terms of the customer base.

So...yeah it looks accurate in its way.

 

[RX-79G]

This forum is getting that way. Just two days ago someone claimed that blacks supported gun control because they want self genocide.

What do you even say to stuff like that?

 

[yokel]

Paranoid? What would you call it when people have six months worth of food? What would you call it when people have 30-plus guns? What would you call it when they are stockpiling ammunition? The gun industry is making a killing, and it's doing its best to fan the flames. You see stuff in internet gun forums like, "Hey, FEMA is purchasing a million and a half rounds of ammunition." It's supposedly because the government is preparing to come around and knock on your door and round you up into camps.

It all plays into people's paranoid fantasies, and guns are always the solution. They give people a sense of control in a world that is out of control. You go into the NRA convention and look around at the sea of faces— I'm sorry, it's a bunch of paranoid white guys who see their country slipping away from them. They think people like Trump, or the gun industry, are the "real" Americans. The gun industry could give a rat's ass. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

To its adversaries the NRA can do little or nothing that is right.

We all know there are many leftist cretins such as Josh Harkinson of Mother Jones who mendaciously and maliciously or maybe ignorantly portray the NRA as extremist, an enemy of all that is decent and moderate, and a puppet of the gun industry.

 

[Milt1]

I've never thought much about this subject until I saw this blog regarding suicide at gun ranges. I live in the Triad region of North Carolina and I know of two suicides at gun ranges in this area but spread so far apart in time that it just didn't register that this may be happening at ranges all over the country. It does appear (at least to me) that the one who commits suicide at a range reasons that it's a fast way to go and that their body will be found rather quickly.

 

[old lady new shooter]

I have run into a few mentally questionable guys at the range where I shoot. They are NOT the majority by any means, but talking to them for ten minutes sure makes my eyebrows go up and on occasion I have just smiled and said "makes sense" and gotten the hell out of there. If an average person had been there, he would have left with a very unsettling experience of the gun world.

At my range the counter guys amazingly manage to sort of intimidate people they think might be problematic while remaining 100% smilingly polite.

 

[RX-79G]

To its adversaries the NRA can do little or nothing that is right.

We all know there are many leftist cretins such as Josh Harkinson of Mother Jones who mendaciously and maliciously or maybe ignorantly portray the NRA as extremist, an enemy of all that is decent and moderate, and a puppet of the gun industry.

That doesn't appear to be a condemnation of the NRA, but a comment on who goes to NRA conventions.

 

[yokel]

That doesn't appear to be a condemnation of the NRA, but a comment on who goes to NRA conventions.

Don't you understand that the author is caricaturing and misrepresenting NRA members and by extension the organization itself.

It's hardly shocking that overtly leftist commentary outlets such as Mother Jones or The Huffington Post would publish such tripe that support their own ideological biases.

 

[morcey2]

I don't frequent established ranges where you can rent guns much other than when helping with classes, but most of the ones that I've been to won't rent to you if you come alone and don't bring your own gun. The exceptions are people who are already known to the range personnel.

There were at least 3 suicides at local ranges back in 2010 and that's the last I've heard. Most of the ranges then adopted rules like I mentioned above or wouldn't rent to people who couldn't prove that they already had access to a gun.

Matt

 

[RX-79G]

Don't you understand that the author is caricaturing and misrepresenting NRA members and by extension the organization itself.

It's hardly shocking that overtly leftist commentary outlets such as Mother Jones or The Huffington Post would publish such tripe that support their own ideological biases.

I understand that the author is characterizing the people that show up at an NRA convention, which is similar to characterizing the more zealous people that make the effort to show up at any convention - NRA, DNC or Star Trek.

Some people will certainly read it as an attack on the NRA itself, or NRA membership in general, but that isn't what's written - and I don't even think that's what being implied.

I do think what's being implied is that the people most vocally concerned and aggrieved about losing gun rights are not a diverse group and have extremist opinions. But the author is sharing his characterization, and it isn't at all implied that he has actually been to an NRA convention.


It is a "slice of life" opinion piece, not a statistical based news exposé. The underlying politics of printing the article are certainly "anti-gun", but the article isn't full of lies or gross exaggerations.

 

[hdwhit]

Does this article seem fake to you?

Fake? No.

Exaggerated, perhaps.

Suicides happen at gun ranges, so the fact this person claims to have witnessed more than one is plausible. He also claims that the glass at one range was not bullet-proof. I don't know how he would tell, but assuming that's correct, we're all familiar with builders and owners cutting corners on something they think nobody will notice. He claims the range used bleach and cat litter to absorb blood. That's still an approach in wide use, so nothing obviously fake there. And he claims that at some point, the range started paying a clean-up crew and that also sounds plausible.

 

[yokel]

I understand that the author is characterizing the people that show up at an NRA convention, which is similar to characterizing the more zealous people that make the effort to show up at any convention - NRA, DNC or Star Trek.

Some people will certainly read it as an attack on the NRA itself, or NRA membership in general, but that isn't what's written - and I don't even think that's what being implied.

I do think what's being implied is that the people most vocally concerned and aggrieved about losing gun rights are not a diverse group and have extremist opinions. But the author is sharing his characterization, and it isn't at all implied that he has actually been to an NRA convention.


It is a "slice of life" opinion piece, not a statistical based news exposé. The underlying politics of printing the article are certainly "anti-gun", but the article isn't full of lies or gross exaggerations.

The author's characterization is what is known as guilt by association as an ad hominem fallacy. It attacks a person because of the similarity between the views of someone making an argument and other proponents of the argument. One claims that someone or something must be disreputable because of the people or organizations that are related to it or otherwise support it.

The article does contain lies and defamations such as the leftist tropes that the NRA is in thrall to the gun industry, and that people with large gun collections and/or ammo stockpiles are a "bunch of paranoid white guys who see their country slipping away from them."

 

[RX-79G]

What is the author disparaging, exactly?

I'm leaving the industry to make better money. Dude, I will still be into guns. I like working on 'em. My friends and I still shoot. But the other motivation, just as strong perhaps, is that I don't want to have to be around a bunch of crazy people.

The main thing he's disparaging is the clientele at gun ranges, as well as the gun range industry's pay and health impact on employees.

He also opines that politicians and manufacturer's do not share the beliefs of extremist gun people, but are happy to take their money and votes.



Please quote where he says anything about the NRA being in the "thrall" of anything. He doesn't directly talk about the NRA at all.

You seem to be making the kind of attack you just denounced.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

This bears repeating ...

Orange County Register researched coroner/medical examiner records for 2000-2012 in Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange Counties; 64 suicides at 20 gun ranges. Some had six, or one per two years. A few had one in twelve years. I suspect there were gun ranges in that area with zero suicides in those twelve years but they don't count in statistics (like counties with right-to-carry and no homicides in other reportage). The average would be 1 every 4 years of gun ranges that did have suicides. 64 suicides at 20 gun ranges out of the 17,800 suicides in those 3 counties in 12 years.

So this MoJo story with no context gives the impression it is common at gun ranges and a huge black mark against the gun industry.

Doesn't directly talk about the NRA at all.
How about the whole end quote?

It all plays into people's paranoid fantasies, and guns are always the solution. They give people a sense of control in a world that is out of control. You go into the NRA convention and look around at the sea of faces-- I'm sorry, it's a bunch of paranoid white guys who see their country slipping away from them. They think people like Trump, or the gun industry, are the "real" Americans. The gun industry could give a rat's ass. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

I'm leaving the industry to make better money. Dude, I will still be into guns. I like working on 'em. My friends and I still shoot. But the other motivation, just as strong perhaps, is that I don't want to have to be around a bunch of crazy people.

 

[yokel]

Please quote where he says anything about the NRA being in the "thrall" of anything. He doesn't directly talk about the NRA at all.

You seem to be making the kind of attack you just denounced.

You seem to have overlooked this particular link embedded in the article:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/fully-loaded-ten-biggest-gun-manufacturers-america

You also would do well to familiarize yourself with respect to association fallacies of the hasty-generalization or red-herring type.

 

[dwjwin50]

People will commit suicide in any number of ways. We had regular suicides from the eighth floor of a building on our college campus. These were almost all non-students from off-campus looking for the tallest building around. When the "authorities" put "suicide screens" on the eighth floor, they jumped from the seventh floor.

Maybe "they" should have banned tall buildings? After all, the buildings were at fault...

 

[RX-79G]

You seem to have overlooked this particular link embedded in the article:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/fully-loaded-ten-biggest-gun-manufacturers-america

You also would do well to familiarize yourself with respect to association fallacies of the hasty-generalization or red-herring type.

You keep bringing up argument fallacy - ad hominem, red herring. I expect your next post to reference strawman.

But the article is not an argument, and the author is not the editor. The author is a gun owner who is understandably critical of things that he has a seen. I've had similar experiences.

The editor is Mother Jones, a liberal newspaper that would be the only place the author's article was likely to be published. The editor is the one that put the embedded link in the article, not the author.



Unflattering articles about gun ownership and the industry are no fun when your impulse is to defend anything gun related. But if Mother Jones runs this article or the CDC publishes a statistic, it doesn't mean that some sort of argument fallacy is happening.

I'm pretty tired of all the catty word games and outright lie smear campaigns that people on our side feel the need to resort to. The opinion article is exactly what it appears to be.

Smart defenders of the 2A would take a page from this article and keep some of their worst personal prejudices to themselves.

 

[yokel]

You keep bringing up argument fallacy - ad hominem, red herring. I expect your next post to reference strawman.

But the article is not an argument, and the author is not the editor. The author is a gun owner who is understandably critical of things that he has a seen. I've had similar experiences.

The editor is Mother Jones, a liberal newspaper that would be the only place the author's article was likely to be published. The editor is the one that put the embedded link in the article, not the author.



Unflattering articles about gun ownership and the industry are no fun when your impulse is to defend anything gun related. But if Mother Jones runs this article or the CDC publishes a statistic, it doesn't mean that some sort of argument fallacy is happening.

I'm pretty tired of all the catty word games and outright lie smear campaigns that people on our side feel the need to resort to. The opinion article is exactly what it appears to be.

Smart defenders of the 2A would take a page from this article and keep some of their worst personal prejudices to themselves.

I'm afraid I don't put much credence in hard left and hate-filled propaganda rags.

You need to wake up and realize that not all viewpoints are equal.

A big part of the reason that we should never accede is that the forces we are up against have proven time and time again that they are just flat wrong.

Let's not pretend people who are wrong so often are merely in honest disagreement with us, they may be entitled to their own opinions but when the facts consistently prove them wrong we need to look at those facts above their opinions.

What we learn from history is that folks do not learn its lessons! Despite what we have learned about the deleterious effects of draconian gun control in other countries, particularly during the previous bloody century, our foes continue to beat the drums calling for more gun control.

Whatever their professed or unacknowledged aims and designs, the upshot remains that domestic disarmament is not only dangerous to one's liberties but also counterproductive in achieving safety.

 

[Warp]

"Mother Jones"

Yup that seems fake. So fake and so stupid I find it hard to believe that anybody expects readers to believe it is real.

 

[sarge83]

And how many of these people did absolutely nothing wrong at the range? How many followed the rules, shot safely and went home just fine? A lot more than those who capped themselves off. And people do stupid things at a gun range. I have been swept many times in the local gun/pawn shop I go too and sometimes I say something sometimes I don't. As for the suicides people who commit suicide sometimes do so with thought to their families and the mess.

I have a friend who lived with her elderly mother, one morning she heard what she thought was a pop but couldn't figure out what it was and quickly forgot about it. About 30 mins. later she stepped out on her porch to pick up the morning paper and saw the neighbor across the street laying oddly on his porch and she hollered to ask if he was okay and got no response. She went back in and called over and asked the neighbors wife if he was okay, he was laying on the porch which was strange for him. His wife found him and screamed, he had shot himself in the head. The note he left said I went outside and did this because I did not want to leave a mess in the house for my wife.

 

[barnbwt]

Sounds like a Fudd who got canned for complaining that the store he worked for sells black rifles.

But that's just one little bear's opinion.