Houston chronicle "handgun ban will stop suicides" opinion piece

This apparently well-intentioned ignoramous totally disregards the Japanese experience in suicides. Get rid of handguns and determined people find other ways to do themselves in.

Outlawing guns to prevent suicide is like outlawing rain to get rid of floods.

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Either you believe in the Second Amendment or you don't.
Stick it to 'em! RKBA!
 
When I was in the Army I knew of one young Private who killed himself right after his girlfriend dumped him. He tied his sweatshirt to the limb of a tree in front of her house, and hanged himself.
This goes to show, where there is a will, there is a way.
 
Having lived in Japan nearly six years, I can attest to the incredibly high suicide rate without access to guns. In the US, an often overlooked probable means of suicide is the "single-car fatality." It has been opined that at least as many as half of these "accidents" have nothing accidental about them. Obviously with the ready availibility of mass/public transit, no private citizen needs an auto either, right?

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"...and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one."
Luke 22:36
 
Uh huh. The claim is: "Firearms are responsible for suicides".

Certainly there are a finite number of suicides where a firearm is the TOOL used. So are automobiles, tall buildings, railroad tracks, drugs, knives, and waterways.

One thing that is known, is that possesion of a firearm greatly reduces another form of suicide. That would be the form whereby you have a criminal element with knowledge his(her) victims aren't armed.

Clinical depression is a disease. I suppose the antis believe that the "cure" for the disease is to ban firearms.

There's another disease that has been proven to be eliminated by the possesion of firearms, that's Crimini Assholitis.
This is a very dangerous disease, it manifest mostly itself in large population areas, where it thrives.

It's commonly believed the reason for this is due to another disease, known as Politicus Crapus. It's been shown that the two are found together.

Best Regards,
Don

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Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.

[This message has been edited by Donny (edited January 16, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Donny (edited January 16, 2000).]
 
Her 'logic' on this is pitiful. I sent an email to her, but she appears quite hopeless. A great example of a gun bigot - no regard at all for truth and logic.
 
mk86fcc said: <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Having lived in Japan nearly six years, I can attest to the incredibly high suicide rate without access to guns.[/quote]
If we use that logic of the anti's, this means that lack of access to firearms causes high suicide rates.

mk86fcc said: <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>In the US, an often overlooked probable means of suicide is the "single-car fatality."[/quote]
I have often wondered about that myself. I can easily see somebody drinking half a bottle of whiskey then deliberately driving 100mph along a windy road with lots of trees. One gets to clock out as an accident victim without the stigma of suicide (not to mention avoiding legal hassles for heirs.)

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Shoot straight regards, Richard at The Shottist's Center http://forums.delphi.com/m/main.asp?sigdir=45acp45lc
 
I also sent her an e-mail and told her about the Japanese experience with suicide and the fact that they have topped 32,000+ for the first time since figures have been kept. I am sure she will take the "Don't try to confuse me with facts; my mind is made up" tack.

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Gun Control: The proposition that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own panty hose, is more acceptable than allowing that same woman to defend herself with a firearm.
 
I tried my best at this hour of the morning and before a second cup of coffee!

Read your article about suicides. Please try to document your statistics when you write an op ed (for it was merely your opinion without documentation) and have it published. All anti gun opinions seem rife with statistics but no reference for checking them. Yours follow the same pattern. They nowhere match the US Department of Justice's figures.
If you do not like guns of any variety, don't get one. But don't evangelize your beliefs and tell me I can't have one.
A feisty dog? Please! Any simpleminded home invader can shoot the dog upon entering the premises. Then what?
In your one-sided piece, you evaded mentioning that these suicide-prone people are so distanced from their parents/guardians/mentors that they have no support in the first place, a lot of time on their hands, and no guidance. They have no moral compass and then they have no sense of awareness that they are not the only ones in their own little world. They have no goals, no belief system, no ability to fend off life blows that an ordinary, well-balanced person can. Instead of dwelling on the tools they might use to end such an empty life, why don't you research parental abandonment of responsibilities to their offspring and its role in suicides? I think I know the answer: because that would be too logical and not as inflammatory as jumping on the gun ban wagon.
If you ban guns then, as a compromise to me, ban your word processor and refrain from printing such drivel. Ever again. Then go to work banning criminals, because it is they who misuse inert tools. But most of all, I urge you to read (with an OPEN mind if you can) "A Nation of Cowards" by Jeffrey Snyder. Chew on that for a while, then go get the book "The Best Defense" and try to ponder the view from another angle.
N. M. Siebern
 
Can you say BARF? She is fortunate that I cant send e-mail through my browser. I have never understood the logic of wanting to keep people who are stupid/weak enough to kill themselves in the gene pool. Are we that intent on deselecting ourselves??? Back when I was living in the old country, one of my cousins tried to kill herself. The whole family and community replied by suggesing better ways for her to do it so we would not have to deal with her medical bills and embarasment of having an idiot living among us. That pretty much yanked her head out of her you know what. Realizing that her little ploy for pitty and attention did not work, she never "tried" again.

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If stupidity hurt, most government officials would be in agony.
 
The suicide angle appears to be the latest hot button to be pushed by the anti-gun crowd. The Denver Post editor used this same subterfuge in a Jan 6th editorial. I sent them the following letter, which of course wasn't printed:

" As a Denver Post subscriber for most of the last decade, Its been obvious that the Post Editor has become a vocal proponent of gun control. However, the Editor does a disservice to the people of Colorado by allowing their emotions to cloud their judgement in their January 6th editoral.

While 18,000 suicides are committed with firearms each year, proposing stronger gun control as a solution to that problem boggles the mind. After all, Japan has a higher suicide rate than the US, yet private ownership of firearms is almost unheard of. To eliminate gun related suicides in the US would require that all 240 million firearms in circulation be rounded up and disposed of and you still wouldn't have a noticeable effect on the overall suicide rate.

The futility of this is obvious if you just think about it. Its clear that when a person puts a firearm to their head and pulls the trigger, they are not crying out for help. They've made a very final decision and the gun just happens to be the tool they use to realize it. I can imagine no form of gun control that will change that.

Calling for gun control to prevent suicides is the typically emotional reaction of someone who understands neither firearms nor suicides."



[This message has been edited by pbash (edited January 17, 2000).]
 
The editorial does not consider the interesting fact that people committed suicide in large numbers for thousands of years before firearms were invented.
 
Maybe we should make suicides illegal???...

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"Those that give up essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining.
 
Anthony, they already are, and in rare cases attempt survivors (that's PC for "to dumb to get it right") have been prosecuted.
Usually the prosecution is just an avenue to get the person committed so they can get some help.
I haven't ever heard of a suicide attempt survivor getting a hard sentence in regular prison for attempted murder.

Sure, I have constant access to guns and ammunition, and if I wanted to I could get up from the computer and be dead in five seconds.
I suppose that non-availability of guns might prevent an impulse suicide (let's say I go over to Ameritrade and found out I lost it all in Pokemon stock, and then five minutes later I got my money back in some freak way). If I wanted to kill myself in that interim but didn't have a gun I would have to settle for a belt, phone cord, knife, etc.

But, most people that attempt/commit suicide have chronic problems, and could easily kill themselves without access to guns.
The suicide spin is just ridiculous and it's too bad that the legislators are probably too dumb to see through it.

The only way to absolutely prevent suicide is to lock someone in a padded room.
Actually, even that doesn't always work. I have heard (from reliable medical/psychiatric sources) of people running at top speed into a wall with the top of their head pointed toward the padded wall.
One instance ended in death, and the other resulted in a C3 fracture and permanent quadraplegia.

Okay, so you would have to chain someone to the floor, spread eagle in restraints, in a padded room to absolutely prevent suicide.
Heck, there probably are people that could even do it then. Who knows.

You cannot have absolute safety and liberty.
Likewise, absolute liberty (anarchism, no laws, no enforcement...) will definitely compromise safety.
What we have to do is establish parameters of liberty (hey, isn't that what the founding fathers did?) and live with the fact that some people will die unnecessarily.
Just chalk it up to Darwin in action.

What a world we live in.
$.02, -Kframe
 
Ms. Mitchard must have been hammered by us pro-gun types. I got a "HTTP Error 503 occurred while attempting to retrieve the URL: 'http://mailbag.com/'" error message when I tried to write her.

I got hold of the editors at the somewhat ironic address of: hci@chron.com

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Nevada alt C.A.N.
The New World Order has a Third Reich odor.
 
J. Mitchard has written other anti-gun columns, and will refuse to listen to you. (she claims to have barraged by GUN NUTS after previous articles, and even had her life threatened, which she takes as a very good reason to continue her misguided course.)
I believe her first husband died (fuzzy on detqails, but I think it was a suicide not sure), and she will not become the next Miss Demeanors...
She is not going to listen to any refutation of her delusion. Maybe we need to get the editors to drop her column from our local papers. She is a paid columnist, if we create no market for her columns, her opinion won't be heard. (notice I suggest in no way that she be censored, however, FREE speech doesn't mean someone has to pay you for what you wrote, only that we cannot tell you what to write)
In the wild hope that another calm e-mail will help, I am composing and will send one,
But she never printed my last one, nor contacted me about it.
Sorry guys, lets find a forum we can get our calm, rational, and most importantly CORRECT side out to the masses.

Thanks,
Gfrey
 
Here's my response, which we'll see if I get a mail reply to.:

So I suppose a ban on forks will help stop people from getting fat.

Someone who wants to die will find a way; be it hanging, jumping, stabbing, starving ... or shooting.

By your logic, we should also ban kitchen knives, lengths of rope or chain over a foot in length, and buildings over one story tall because they "make it easier" for a person to commit suicide.

To borrow a surprisingly common sense quote from a normally stupid "All in the Family" character, "Would it make ya feel any better, little goil, if 'dey was pushed (jumped?) outta windows?"

Today, somewhere, a wife or mother will open a door on an attacker, one who will rape and kill her, one who could be stopped if she had a gun on her.

Guns are tools, carried by sane people in the hopes they will never have to use them. To deprive one person who needs one to keep from being killed is a greater shame than giving guns to dozens who would kill themselves anyway.


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Does "shall not be infringed" mean something different to YOU?
 
For 1994 the USA rate of suicide was 12.06 per 100,000 population (double the total homicide rate 2/3rds using guns). The Japanese (1993) rate of suicide was 16.72 per 100K or 38.6% higher than that of the USA. Japan's homicide rate was 0.62 per 100K ith 0.04 per 100K using guns. In the years that I have seen, no Japanese suicide used a gun despite their exceptionally high rate of suicide.

Criminologists have not been able to link lower suicide rates with gun control or waiting periods. Occassionally the study will pick up a shift in suicide method but no change in suicide rate.

Rick
 
Holy cripes, I got a response.

First, my letter:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
Ms. Mitchard,

I've read your article on handguns and suicide, and I'd like to ask you something:

Have you been there? Have you had friends who killed themselves?

I have. Of the ones who were successful, one hanged herself, two swallowed pills, and another cut his wrists. None of these were impulsive acts, as you claim most suicides are. These people were determined to end their lives, regardless of the method.

I find it interesting that you attribute the use of handguns in suicides to their concealability and "macho" image (macho to whom?). Do you really believe that my ability to carry a defensive sidearm without alarming others is a contributing factor? What does concealability have to do with lethality? If anything, a small pistol will likely be a less capable tool than the same gun with a longer barrel, because kinetic energy in a bullet falls with decrease in barrel length.

Long guns are *far* more likely to result in a successful suicide than a comparatively weak handgun, simply because long guns are far more powerful.

I would direct your attention to Japan, where, despite a complete ban on civilian gun ownership, their suicide rate has increased steadily every year.

The bottom line, Ms. Mitchard, is that your article is nothing but shrill emotionalism, seeking to blame objects for the actions of their users. A ban on handguns will not have an effect on the overall suicide rate; someone who really wants to end his life will find a way.

Sincerely,
Coinneach Fitzpatrick
Colorado Springs, CO
[/quote]

And the response:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
I'm so sorry for your losses. But indeed, no matter how planned, psychiatrists agree that suicide ITSELF is always an impulsive act.

Jacquelyn Mitchard
P.O. Box 259064
Madison, WI 53725-9064
mitch@mailbag.com
[/quote]

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"If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance."
-- Samuel Johnson
 
From the HCI website:

"The risk of suicide is five times greater in households with guns."

Now, since I have 6 guns in my house, does that mean that I am 30 times more likely to commit suicide? :confused: And what the hell do they mean "...five times greater..."? Five times greater than what?! They might as well change the statement to:

"The risk of suicide is five times greater in households with rope."

Again, no mention of where these stats come from.

If you can stomach it, visit the HCI website. It would be good for a few laughs if they were not so serious. :mad:
www.handguncontrol.org

[This message has been edited by jcoyoung (edited January 24, 2000).]
 
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