Is this a valid gun death statistic?

[mvccd1000]

I'm honestly interested in opinions from both gun-control advocates and gun-rights supporters. When we read statistics of gun deaths and gun violence in the US, how should we count deaths like these?

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/05/04/20120504prescott-elderly-man-kills-wife-self.html

PRESCOTT -- Police in Prescott say an 88-year-old man killed his wife and them himself after calling 911 and saying both were terminally ill and planned to commit suicide.

Police spokesman Lt. Andy Reinhardt says the man called police at about 8 p.m. Thursday from a medical center parking lot and told dispatchers where they could be found. Arriving officers discovered the man dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and his wife severely wounded. She was flown to a Phoenix hospital where she died.

Reinhardt says the couple lived in a nearby assisted living facility and had apparently walked to the medical center where they were found.

The couple were identified as Robert Grossman and his 85-year-old wife Joanne Grossman.

Obviously this couple had thought out and planned their actions, and at 85 and 88 years old had probably decided that there was not much they still wanted to see and do in life. I would guess that, with this much planning involved, the odds are very good that they would have found another way to accomplish their goals if a gun were not available.

1) Do you feel they should have been dissuaded from their choice?
2) Assuming they were going to do it, is it fair to label this "gun violence?" (They could have chosen pills or a car's exhaust to accomplish the same thing.)
3) (Not really on topic, but...) Do you support people's right to end their lives when they see fit?

1 and 3 go together for me. Having witnessed a formerly vital and active grandmother reduced overnight to a stroke victim who could not feed or bathe herself, and having had her beg me in tears to kill her every time I saw her for the next two years, I completely support the rights of people in the late stages of life to make their own decisions to end it. If you're already in horrible pain and suffering, and the only direction you will go is downhill until you die, why should you be forced to wait for it?

With those facts in mind, and assuming you live in the 99% of the world that does not allow you to make your own decisions about the end of your life, is it valid to call this "gun violence" and use it as a call to restrict the availability of handguns?

[rfranklin]

1. How do you know she agreed to this?

"Obviously?"

[Kalidurga]

3. It is possible her husband lied to her...

invented a pretext for going to the clinic, but I think it is more likely she walked with him of her own free will. Or maybe she had Alzheimer's and had no idea what was going on and just did what she was told. What is unlikely though is that she was violently forced into a parking lot and shot.

As for the OP, this is statistically a violent gun crime. It could be put into a special category suicides by gun. What would make it otherwise?

[Meiko]

2. I think you would

first have to agree that suicide constituted an act of violence, can you commit violence against yourself? Second this was a murder suicide, not a double suicide,unless the wife shot herself. I am not really sure what you are driving at here, are you?

[mvccd1000]

7. Not driving at anything...

... just looking for people's thoughts on the subject.

I'm operating under the assumption that they discussed this and chose to do it together. Either this article or one of the others in a local paper said they had made preparations and phone calls before they did it, so I believe it was consensual.

Had they chosen to use pills and the husband handed the wife the pills and glass of water, or had they chosen carbon monoxide and the husband turned the key, it was still a mutual decision. ("WE could go out together using....&quot

1) Would you tell them they don't have that option?
2) If not, do you condemn one method but approve of others?

Personally, if I was terminally ill, I would probably not use a gun. I also would not want anyone else telling me that I couldn't/shouldn't make that choice.

[geckosfeet]

4. Death due to firearm wounds. Not much to think about there now is there?

My take on your your "questions":

1. The police should have done everything in their power to dissuade them. Society as a whole needs to give all people, especially older people who are in dire health and life situations better choices and care.
2. Yes
3. Yes, in tandem with answers to number 1. After exhausting societies (now limited) life help, society should also offer some kind of dignified exit.

[mvccd1000]

8. Interesting.

I agree with your number 3, I'm fine with your number 2, but curious about number 1. Why should someone who's clearly at the end of life be "dissuaded" from deciding when the end arrives?

[geckosfeet]

11. In general I would say not.

But in this case, calling the police or any emergency service seemed like a call for help to me. More like they were saying "we are so desperate that society has left us no choice that we are going to kill ourselves" with the unspoken subtext of "can you help us".

Once the police or fire dept. or ambulance crew arrive, the process of providing a dignified eol can begin.

[PavePusher]

18. Or it's entirely possible they didn't want their bodies lying around indefinitely....

...or found by someone accidently, and not prepared for the shock.

As someone who's seen such several times from a variety of causes ranging from suicide to murder to military action to accident, it's not the kind of mess I'd wish on my worst enemy.

[AtheistCrusader]

25. Maybe didn't want the grandkids to discover it.

Pretty shitty mess to leave behind. I can think of less messy options, and more effective as well, as her brief survival of the wound can attest.

[PavePusher]

26. Agreed.

This whole mess brings to mind Robert Heinlein and his "suicide switch" (Time Enough for Love). The man who was so liberal, even current liberals haven't caught up with him. And they hate him for it.

[ileus]

5. Volunteers shouldn't count.

Last edited Sun May 6, 2012, 09:33 AM - Edit history (1)

No harm... No foul....

1 maybe...maybe not
2 no
3 yes

[BiggJawn]

6. Won't take the bait, but on question 3...

I support people's right to die when they want. This culture does people a huge dis-service by making them live until they're bankrupted or in excruciating pain.

We give our companion animals the dignity of a release from pain, don't we?

The thing I don't understand is how a country that professes to follow the death cult of christianity forces it's people to live when they want to die. Those evil, Socialist Europeans have the right idea, and they provide for a dignified, painless death. This culture of ours requires violence.

[mvccd1000]

9. No bait intended

I think this issue intersects with the gun violence statistic issue enough to bring it up here and get opinions. I think most people on DU, regardless of their stance on gun rights, support the right to make personal choices about end-of-life care.

Assuming you do support that decision (and your post indicates that you do), and acknowledge that the methods of making that decision in the US are extremely limited, you can probably reach the conclusion that guns will be used in some such cases.

Obviously there should be better, safer, and more dignified choices available. There aren't, though, and guns get used. Is it fair to rate this a "gun violence" episode on the same scale as a 6-year old getting caught in a gang shootout?

[BiggJawn]

16. Not even a gun is guaranteed

Be a little off on your aim and you're either blind or the beneficiary of a do-it-yourself lobotomy or both. But, given out limited choices for terminating ourselves, yes, guns will be used more often than not. I'd rather have Smilin' Jack's cocktail.

I don't think it's fair to rate suicide as "gun violence". The Brady Bunch will disagree, but if somebody decides to open a vein and bleed out in the bathtub do we chalk that up to "knife violence"?

[Hoyt]

10. Strong supporter of Euthanasia. No person should have to use a gun to end a life of pain,

misery, terminal illness, etc. Jack Kevorkian is a true hero in my opinion.

[ileus]

12. For once we agree.

[mvccd1000]

13. Agreed.

One of us should buy a lottery ticket.

[BiggJawn]

17. I'm with you on that, Hoyt. n/t

[PavePusher]

19. Agreed. n/t

[SoutherDem]

14. Right to die?

Why do we give more dignity to our beloved pets at the end of their lives than we do our human loved ones? If we allowed the dog or cat to suffer for days, weeks, months and years we would be thought of as cruel, but grandma we are murderers if we want to end the suffering.
I guess it should be a gun stat, but my question is why do we not allow a better way so that it doesn't need to be?

What is odd is the same people who demand we murder people in the name of justice, are the same ones who demand every zygote formed becomes a living person which must live to a "natural" end, yet want to erode/eliminate any social safety net. (sorry a little off topic)

[ManiacJoe]

15. "valid" - yes. "Useful" - open to debate.

Legally, this probably be written up as a murder-suicide while it actually might be a double suicide. If we rely only on the media, we will never know what actually happened.

What you are attempting to do with the numbers is often more important than the numbers themselves.

[Nanjing03]

20. The Issue is a Lack of Compassion -- Not Guns

I am 100% for the 2nd Amendment and the right of the people to keep and bear arms. I will answer these questions as best I can, but I feel they will differ little from most people on either side of the gun control/gun rights issue.

1) Do you feel they should have been dissuaded from their choice?

I feel that society should have been more humane to these people. The medical, hospital and pharmaceutical communities were their usual dysfunctional selves. Even though I detest having Pelosi/Obama-Care rammed down our throats, I do feel that there should be a safety net to care for those who are old and/or infirmed -- and better than the county and state run and squalid "elder-care death houses" that are out there now. They should have been dissuaded from their choice and made as comfortable as possible in the months they had left.

2) Assuming they were going to do it, is it fair to label this "gun violence?" (They could have chosen pills or a car's exhaust to accomplish the same thing.)

No, this was clearly not "gun violence" in the sense of the term. This was death by suicide -- violent or otherwise. They could have taken pills or died by some other self inflicted means such as people do in Japan which has the tightest gun control of any industrialized country, yet the highest suicide rate by far in the entire world. Guns were not the problem. Rather a lack of societal compassion.

3) (Not really on topic, but...) Do you support people's right to end their lives when they see fit?

I have some experience here. My mother was dying of kidney failure and an overworked heart with three of four heart valves that were either not working or working in a weakened state. She was eighty years old and she had always told us that she would be fortunate to live to be 65. She was highly educated, a research microbiologist and entomologist by training and profession with a strong background in chemistry and pharmaceuticals. She was healthy most of her life but suffered from respiratory diseases from childhood. She knew that she had taken life as far as she reasonably could. Too, as a devout Catholic, she expected to die well and she was not afraid. Death is something some people anticipate all their lives. She refused at the age of 80 (a full 15 years longer than anticipated) all attempts by high dollar surgeons to cash in on her limited insurance and perform their implied miracles in heart surgery and kidney transplants. She was educated enough to see their hypocrisy and literally stared one of them, who was persistent, out of her hospital room after telling him that he was a greedy and dishonest shark. He was visibly shaken and I think she got some joy out of that. My mom then held my hand and asked me to move her to a hospice where she could die in peace and with all of us there. We adhered to her wishes. As her heart and kidneys failed, she was given a steady dose of pain medication as she asked for it. A few days later she died a natural death when her heart stopped. The hospice asked only for the Medicare payments and any donations from family and friends. While I believe in extraordinary measures to preserve life, I do not believe in interfering with the natural course of death or forcing life on a ventilator. This can be a difficult process, but when somebody is old and unafraid of death, then I believe that they will know when it is time to go.

[mvccd1000]

21. Thank you

for the well thought out answers, and for sharing your experience in #3.

I wish we'd been able to do the same for my grandmother, but her children (my parents and aunts and uncles) wouldn't hear of it; they wanted everything done to keep her alive as long as possible. I don't understand how they could think there was anything compassionate about that choice, and it's not the choice I would have made, but I was too selfish to throw my life away on a murder charge for helping my grandmother find the end that she was seeking.

The current system is barbaric.

[PavePusher]

27. Wow.

Powerfully spoken. Thank you for sharing that with us.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

22. With the current state of affairs:

1. Yes, often a call for help is really a call for help. There should be an option available to obtain medical/psychological assessment for those approaching suicide, to rule out a need for mental help or simple despair over a lack of support. The reason is that often those looking to kill themselves are sometimes not qualified to make the decision.
2. Those interested in tracking "gun" violence will continue to track what they wish. Since guns are inanimate and don't cause violence tracking the tools used is often more of a distraction from the problem.
3. Personally, I believe that voluntarily ending a life, whether it's your own or that of another, is a choice of last resort.

[mvccd1000]

23. For you, perhaps...

... ending a life is a choice of last resort. For others, perhaps not.

I would hope that, just like the choice to carry or not carry a gun, you'd leave that up to the individual.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

24. It's simpler than that.

The choice to end a life is always up to the individual.