Gun Control & RKBA
Related: About this forumGun Rights Increase Suicides
The Arizona RepublicPain radiated through the phone when Kristi Stadler called the crisis hotline in the wee hours one May morning.
"I would like to kill myself," she told Luis, the voice at the other end of the line. "I know that life is an option for me, but I know it's been an option for the past 12 years, and it hasn't gotten any better, and when it does, it always gets bad again."
Terry Stadler tears up as he talks about his daughter's 12-year battle with mental illness. She fought it with everything she had, he says. With repeated hospitalizations, with medication and an electrical implant designed to help with her deep depression. With crisis counseling and years of work with psychiatrists. She fought hard, her father says, right up until that day in May 2009 when the Phoenix Police Department handed her a loaded gun. Fifteen hours later, Kristi Lee Stadler was dead.
Knowing that she had a history of mental illness.
Knowing that she had threatened suicide two months earlier.
Instead, police did the requisite "Brady check," verifying that Kristi had never been ordered by a judge into treatment, and proceeded to track her down to let her know she could come get her gun.
Kristi picked up her gun and bullets on May 7, 2009.
She died just after 4 a.m. on May 8.
This sad story is a good illustration of how guns assist suicides. The biased pro-gun folks will say anything to defend and protect their beloved guns, but the obvious fact is gun availability makes suicide attempts more likely to succeed.
One of the things they're worried about is that people with minor psychological problems will also be restricted if we try to do something about this. In successfully striving to prevent that, they are responsible for cases like this.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
Cross posted at Mikeb302000
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dkf
(37,305 posts)Seems a better way to go to me.
Lionessa
(3,894 posts)Folks commit suicide with guns, they only attempt suicide with most other options. Some of those attempts may be successful, but a gun suicide is pretty darn certain.
holdencaufield
(2,927 posts)... take for example ... the attempted suicide of Capt Herbert Sobel of the 101st Airborne Div. In 1968 he put a gun to his temple and pulled the trigger -- the bullet passed through his skull and severed his optic nerves -- leaving him alive, but very much blind.
He died nearly 20 years later of malnutrition in a VA home.
Lionessa
(3,894 posts)I have no doubt you could find a few that don't but most do, particularly when compared to other options that take longer and have a higher probability of being interrupted. Guns take only an instance, and if no one arrives immediately, the bleeding out resolves any missed aim.
Anyway here's the CDC stats.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm
Clearly there are more successful suicides than pills/drugs (though this would change if humane suicide were offered in our country) by roughly 300%.
Number of deaths: 18,735
Deaths per 100,000 population: 6.1
Suffocation suicides
Number of deaths: 9,000
Deaths per 100,000 population: 2.9
Poisoning suicides
Number of deaths: 6,398
Deaths per 100,000 population: 2.1
I was in Chelsea Naval Hospital some 4 decades ago and there was an Air Force airman on the same ward that put the muzzle of a .22 pistol into his mouth, pulled the trigger, and MISSED.
The bullet struck a back tooth, was deflected down, and ended up lodged near his spinal column.
He was still fully functional.
Other than being doubly depressed, that is.
BTW- There have been several studies that show that suicide rates are means independent.
That is, people that want to kill themselves will do it one way or another.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)holdencaufield
(2,927 posts)... before guns came along.
intaglio
(8,170 posts)One is that you are deliberately misinterpreting this to further some agenda you find attractive ... the other is that you lack reading comprehension skills.
The article points out the well attested statistics that in "gun rights" states there is an increase in successful suicides (and in total suicide attempts both successful an unsuccessful). The reason for this is well understood, guns make suicide seem easy and pretty painless; they also can be used on impulse.
Look at the alternatives:
Knives can be used on impulse but there is a lot of pain, mess and a lot of error;
Drugs are hit or miss or successful failure, the last being you hang on for weeks whilst your body fails from the effects (Paracetamol is horrendous in this respect);
Hanging takes planning and some time to effect successfully, add in the well known flying head effect from a long drop and it is messy too;
Car crashes are probably more common method than is known from the statistics because it is, probably, the ultimate impulse method (other than guns) and pretty survivable given modern car safety measures;
CO poisoning, possible but takes a fair amount of planning and equipment;
Jumping from cliffs/bridges needs a suitable cliff or bridge, a plan to be able to get there and an attractive venue - see the "popularity" of the Golden Gate bridge, The Menai Gorge bridge and Beachy Head.
holdencaufield
(2,927 posts)... is like blaming obesity on french fries
The fries might make it more palatable ... but the obesity was probably going to happen regardless
iiibbb
(1,448 posts)Obesity has many causes.
Guns are obviously a more effective choice for a suicide attempt.
Do I think banning guns would do as useless for changing suicide rates as banning fries or jumbo sodas would be for changing obesity? Pretty much.
intaglio
(8,170 posts)Please learn English. No one is saying that guns are the sole cause of suicide anymore than anyone is saying that supersize drinks and french fries are the sole cause of obesity just that their easy availability is one cause of obesity.
There is no "blame" just the fact that guns make suicide seem like an easy option. You may not like the fact but, despite the best efforts of the gun lobby, the evidence is there - Suicide is more often attempted and more often successful in "gun rights" states because guns are available.
To put it another way if guns were more rigidly controlled there would be fewer suicides and attempted suicides.
I await you next (deliberate) misinterpretation with resignation.
Lionessa
(3,894 posts)gun suicide than to take that option away forcing something less certain and ending up both hospitalized and demonized (attempted suicide is illegal and a felony, iirc) for an attempted suicide.
jimmy the one
(2,708 posts).. I don't follow the analogy, you can't eat a french fry on the spur of the moment & make yourself die. French fry eating would be incrementally insidious over a long period, like smoking cigs, whereas the gun is instantaneous death. I frequently heard from smokers 'One cigarette won't kill you', but never heard that from a gunowner about a gun.
If you just mean 'easy access' to both fries & guns, better, but still leaks. And it's not 'firearms' per se that is the reason for increased suicides, but the personal or familial ownership of firearms. That is, a gun in your house, accessible.
Some factoids:1 Suicide done by gun is ~85% successful, by other means ~20%.
2 The low caliber 22 is either most popular for gunsuicides, or amongst the highest used. One of the least potently lethal guns is used more than other calibers because the 22 is one of the most popular guns. It's really misleading tho, since guns 'other than 22s' are used in the vast majority of suicides, like 80%(?) (dunno fersure).
3 the next choice for suicides I believe is jumping from high places, but you can imagine the awful non fatal lasting injury from these attempts, & falling off is not as lethal as guns of course, overall.
4 In japan, which essentially bans guns to everyone, they have a suicide rate comparable to US, but don't start the progun rant just yet. In japan you can collect on life insurance if you suicide, so a desperate father who jumps out the tokyo skyscraper is not a degenerate but somewhat a savior to his family for providing for them for the future, akin to their code of bushido was it? where self inflicted death was honorable (hiri kiri).
Even a japanese mother whose husband is cheating on her or abusing her, can kill her young children & then suicide, and she is not held to be some evil monster, but somewhat justified in her revenge, by depriving her lousy husband of future joy. Weird, but is more the reason for japanese suicide. Neither of these reasons are 'honorable' in america.
iiibbb
(1,448 posts)do I think it changes the number of attempts. Nope.
Outside of a ban and confiscation... people will still have firearms with which to commit suicide.
Do I think this should affect the access of a non-suicidal person?
No.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,479 posts)...facebook or some other site "increased suicides" due to peer pressure relating to anything from drug involvement to pornographic postings to character assassinations, would you be in favor of a ban, censorship or stiff regulations limiting privacy?
iiibbb
(1,448 posts)We should ban the internet... I don't care what legitimate uses there may be. We must help these children.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,479 posts)...it lacks so much... for instance... an irony tag. 
DanTex
(20,709 posts)One of the most amusing aspects of the gun debate is watching gun nuts profess to be experts in a wide variety of areas that they have no clue about. I'll concede that most gun fanatics know the names of all the different parts of a gun, but they tend to be pretty ignorant outside of that small realm.
Which is why so many pro-gunners end up saying dumb things like "people who want to kill themselves will find a way to do it no matter what the means". This ,of course, goes against what experts on suicide have found in study after study -- for example, see the links from the Harvard School of Public Health below. Really, it says more about the pro-gunners than it does about suicide -- it shows that most pro-gun advocates really are not interested in the facts, they will simply say anything in order to support their political views.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/
"Means reduction" (reducing the odds that an attempter will use highly lethal means) is an important part of a comprehensive approach to suicide prevention. It is based on the following understandings (click on each to learn more):
Many suicide attempts occur impulsively during a crisis.
Intent isn't all that determines whether an attempter lives or dies; means also matter.
90% of attempters who survive do NOT go on to die by suicide later.
Access to firearms is a risk factor for suicide.
Firearms used in youth suicide usually belong to a parent.
Reducing access to lethal means saves lives.
Firearm access can be a politically-charged topic. This website, however, is designed to introduce a non-controversial, "lethal means counseling" approach to reducing a suicidal person's access to firearms and other lethal means.
iiibbb
(1,448 posts)With all of the tripe gun control advocates projecting their needs/decisions onto other peoples' situations.
Suicide is not part of my life. Close encounters with crime have been. If you feel like suicide is a problem for yourself or your inner circle. You may consider changing your lifestyle. Absent of that. Stay out of my life.
DanTex
(20,709 posts)Or did you just feel like banging on the keyboard at random?
The OP is about whether gun availability increases suicide. I get that you are part of the "cold dead hands" crowd, but you seem to have missed the point entirely.
iiibbb
(1,448 posts)But then you're comment was talking about how one side likes to pretend they are experts...
pot meet kettle
http://www.democraticunderground.com/117295365#post36
ileus
(15,396 posts)Makes about as much sense as the OP.
slackmaster
(60,567 posts)Nobody can stop a person who is bent on suicide from going through with it.
You can keep guns and dangerous drugs away from the person. You can beg the person to get treatment for a mental health issue. You can have the person thrown in a lock-down psychiatric hospital for a time. But eventually the person will get out, and if the mental health issue hasn't been treated successfully the person will commit suicide anyway.
BTW, sometimes people kill themselves for perfectly rational reasons, such as an incurable and painful physical health problem.
brindleboxer
(53 posts)but that alone doesn't suffice as an argument against gun ownership. Lots of rights we enjoy, including driving a car, buying and consuming alcohol, free speech, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, due process, etc,. come with corresponding costs. We'd probably be a lot safer from terrorism if law enforcement could monitor the communication of anyone they want without a warrant. Should we allow that?
Just because a right is one you have no interest in exercising doesn't mean it's valueless. The assumption from the gun grab crowd that gun prohibition is a zero-cost proposal is absurd. I don't see why my right to own weapons and defend myself should be infringed upon to protect the suicidal from themselves.
cmclane28
(11 posts)generalhh
(20 posts)Japan has the highest rate of suicide of 1st world countries.
Its their culture.
The don't have guns people just poison stab or throw themselves off a cliff.\\
Suicide is a mental heath issue and a culture issue. Its relationship to guns is the minimal at best it just so happens that they are available so that's what people kill themselves with.
My step fathers goon friend blew his head off with a shotgun in a car outside of his job (local community college). He had some mental issues and was getting help for them but his depression got worse and he snapped. Another one of his friends used a hose from his exhaust pipe to the inside of his car in his garage and took some sleeping pills. bothe men had depression and were former army officers (out of service over 10+years).
MightyMopar
(735 posts)
gejohnston
(17,502 posts)they just define it as different types of suicide many times.
Cold cases homicides have been known to be written off as suicides as well.
Undismayed
(76 posts)
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)
bubbayugga
(222 posts)but ban those assault rifles anyways.
jimmy the one
(2,708 posts)generalhh: Japan has the highest rate of suicide of 1st world countries. Its their culture.
CORRECT - it's more 'acceptable' in japan, to commit suicide. There's little or no stigma as there is in america. You don't immediately go to 'hell' in japan, like american christians do if they suicide (they must stick it out till natural death, 'god's law').
gejohnston .. but Japan has more murder suicide {SHINJU} than you seem to think .. they just define it as different types of suicide many times.
True, are you with me or agin me?
from your link, johnston: Fuso (1985) noted an interesting difference here between Japan and {USA}. Some of the officials who were found guilty in the Watergate Scandal, when on bail or after release from prison, wrote memoirs, and gave lectures.....Almost no one killed themselves suffering from the crime they committed. {DID ANY?} ... When scandals occur in Japan, persons who hold important information and feel loyal to the key figures who actually control from behind the scenes often commit suicide. It is rare for the key figures themselves to commit suicide
.. from your link, johnston: shinju in Japanese, originally meant a mutual suicide agreement by lovers in order to prove the genuineness of their love to each other.
..Shinju has been classified into 2 categories, johshi (mutually consented lovers' suicide) and oyako-shinju (parent-child suicide), the latter of which is subclassified further such as boshi-shinju (mother-child suicide), fushi-shinju (father-child suicide), and ikka-shinju (family suicide)... Most cases of shinju are boshi-shinju in which the children, who are too young to decide on suicide themselves, are killed by their mothers.
... Japanese often show considerable sympathy toward parents who are not able to find any other recourse but to commit suicide with her/his children.
Japanese logic, the suicidal mother cannot bear to leave the child to survive alone; she would rather kill the child because she believes that nobody else in the world would take care of the child better than she, and that the child would be better off dying with her.
Some boshi-shinju may be a way for a wife to get revenge on her husband. She may react to the discover of her husband having an extramarital affair or demand for divorce by killing her children in order to punish her husband after she commits suicide.. there is a strong tendency for the mother to consider the children as an essential part of herself.. It is believed that children cannot or should not be left alone in the world where parent(s) have killed themselves. The children are killed before the parent commits suicide, because they are loved deeply. (eh)
..it should be emphasized that the adults involved in shinju do not represent the norm of Japanese society. These are usually individuals who become desperate due to a combination of a life stressor, concomitant psychiatric illness such as depression or psychosis, and premorbid personality vulnerabilities..
The average psychologically healthy Japanese would not consider shinju as a solution to their problems
wiki: Japanese nonbank lenders, starting in mid-90s, began taking out life insurance policies which include suicide payouts on borrowers that included suicide coverage, and borrowers not required to be notified.. unemployed accounted for 57% of all suicides,
Japanese society's attitude toward suicide has been termed "tolerant,"..many occasions suicide seen as a morally responsible action
Imagine, ~40% the population of USA (~130 million) stuffed into a state the size of california. JAPAN.
gejohnston
(17,502 posts)at least out of the OECD countries.
sylvi
(813 posts)"I would like to kill myself," she told Luis, the voice at the other end of the line. "I know that life is an option for me, but I know it's been an option for the past 12 years, and it hasn't gotten any better, and when it does, it always gets bad again."
Terry Stadler tears up as he talks about his daughter's 12-year battle with mental illness. She fought it with everything she had, he says. With repeated hospitalizations, with medication and an electrical implant designed to help with her deep depression. With crisis counseling and years of work with psychiatrists. She fought hard, her father says, right up until that day in May 2009 when the Phoenix Police Department handed her a loaded gun. Fifteen hours later, Kristi Lee Stadler was dead.
If we advocate for "death with dignity", as in the case of euthanasia for folks suffering from chronic, debilitating and painful physical maladies, why would we be so reticent in extending that same option to those experiencing the torment of this unfortunate young lady?
While the adage, "Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem" may be true in many if not most cases of, say, major depression, in some cases such as the one described above, the "temporary problem" was anything but. She had tried various treatment modalities from multiple sources for twelve years and was still unbearably tormented. Was her decision any less rational than someone facing years of physical pain from an intractable disease?
This is not for me to advocate either way, simply to both raise a question and point out that this particular example might not have been the best one to illustrate the "evil" in gun availability.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
Posted at Democratic Underground
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,479 posts)...increase the number of lies and other meaningless blather often propagated on the internet.