Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[crazy canuck]

Tyr's absolutist statement (and CC's ideologically-driven blindness to its absoluteness) aside - why does anyone even try to argue with them? -  it's pretty clear that everyone here is agreeing while picking nits about differences.

I think that it is entirely possible to do a cost-benefit analysis in terms of lives lost with various levels of access to firearms.  And I think it is pretty clear that the loss of life will be lowest in the scenarios with the least access.

That misses the fact that the gun debate isn't about cost-benefit.  It is about paranoids who sincerely believe that, without access to guns, they will be unable to defend themselves and "the American Way of Life" from socialists, foreigners, minorities, and other such unAmerican types.  They saw what happened in South Africa to their counterparts and want to be able to use force to stop that in the US.

The US gun fetish isn't about guns.  It's about the power to resist history through violence.

If ideological means confronting American gun nuttery, then that is me.

[DGuller]

A considerably larger fraction would find other methods, some of which pose a greater risk to bystanders.

Larger fraction relative to those approved for assisted suicide, but still a minority.  Cold hard stats show that access to guns leads to suicides that would not have otherwise happened.  Maybe we can't tell about any particular suicide, but we can judge on the totality of suicides.

[Razgovory]

The question of whether or not a gun can be used to protect yourself from another human is pretty obvious.  Yes, that is in fact physically possible.  Guns are made to kill people and killing a person will stop them from doing... well, anything.  We shifted over to talking about guns over the Holocaust thingy. The question there was: "Can a tiny minority spread out over an entire country successfully defend themselves from the government armed with private firearms?"   The answer is "no".


Out of curiosity does anyone know how much of a population can be realistically made into soldiers?  I couldn't be a soldier.  If you handed me a gun and you handed my cat a gun it's a toss up on which of us would be a better soldier.  Even with significant training I probably wouldn't be fit to be a soldier.  I'm nearly 40 and quite fat.  I can't run around like 18 year old even if a lost the weight.  I also have diabetes (well borderline diabetes) and I'm crazy as a loon.  I see these gun nuts talking about resisting the government (or UN or whatever), and these guys are in their fifties.  One of the insurrectionists at the Capital last month a photo of himself holding two AR-15s and was bragging how wanted to go after Antifa.  He was 50 and badly overweight and died from a heart attack in the capital.

[Admiral Yi]

I remember reading somewhere that 20% of high school graduates in the US can pass the army's physical requirements.

[alfred russel]

One of the insurrectionists at the Capital last month a photo of himself holding two AR-15s and was bragging how wanted to go after Antifa.  He was 50 and badly overweight and died from a heart attack in the capital.

To be fair the insurrectionists at the Capital last month are a data point that should be ignored by those making the "what can a minority of citizens with small arms do against the federal government? argument."

Obviously a small group succeeded in briefly taking the capital without firing a shot, despite assembling without subterfuge on the steps of the building and not "sending their best".

[Berkut]

A considerably larger fraction would find other methods, some of which pose a greater risk to bystanders.

So your argument against gun control is that by giving people and easy way to kill themselves, it protects the lives of others?

Right now, in the US, there are about 50k suicides per year. About half of those are with guns.

For the remanining half, can you give us some stats on how many of them result in siginficant harm to others in the process, such that we could figure out how saving 25,000 a year from killing themselves will just end up killing a bunch of other people.

I am really curious to know the answer to this one. Who knew that  letting people shoot themselves was such a key factor in reducing the deaths and injuries to countless innocents caught up in the wanton carnage of non-gun use suicide!

[grumbler]

A considerably larger fraction would find other methods, some of which pose a greater risk to bystanders.

So your argument against gun control is that by giving people and easy way to kill themselves, it protects the lives of others?

Right now, in the US, there are about 50k suicides per year. About half of those are with guns.

For the remanining half, can you give us some stats on how many of them result in siginficant harm to others in the process, such that we could figure out how saving 25,000 a year from killing themselves will just end up killing a bunch of other people.

I am really curious to know the answer to this one. Who knew that  letting people shoot themselves was such a key factor in reducing the deaths and injuries to countless innocents caught up in the wanton carnage of non-gun use suicide!

I'd think that stats would show that trying to commit suicide with a gun is one of the methods of suicide posing the greatest risk to others.

Suicide bombing is probably the most risky for others, and then maybe suicide by cop.  I'd think suicide by self-inflicted gunshot would follow close behind those two.  The "flinch factor" is quite high.

[Berkut]

I would imagine suicide by jumping off a building has to be pretty dangerous to others.

[Malthus]

It is reasonably common for people to attempt to shoot them selves in the head, and miss, or just end up disfiguring themselves without dying. I presume from last second flinching.

[The Minsky Moment]

More than 90% of suicides are done with firearms, ingesting poison or suffocation.  Jumping off buildings doesnt appear very common.

[The Minsky Moment]

Motor vehicles are rare causes (less than 5%) but presumably are very dangerous to others.

[DGuller]

What makes firearms cause unnecessary suicide deaths is that typically people that go through with the suicide attempt don't try it again, whether they succeed or fail.  With firearms they are very likely to succeed, however, even if they flinch.

[Valmy]

What makes firearms cause unnecessary suicide deaths is that typically people that go through with the suicide attempt don't try it again, whether they succeed or fail.  With firearms they are very likely to succeed, however, even if they flinch.

Yeah the fact that fire arms tend to mostly end up hurting or killing somebody in the family that owns them is why I don't have one. The tiny chance I would ever need to use it in self defense, and actually do so under that kind of stress, seems to be dwarfed by that likelihood.

[viper37]

A considerably larger fraction would find other methods, some of which pose a greater risk to bystanders.

So your argument against gun control is that by giving people and easy way to kill themselves, it protects the lives of others?

Right now, in the US, there are about 50k suicides per year. About half of those are with guns.

For the remanining half, can you give us some stats on how many of them result in siginficant harm to others in the process, such that we could figure out how saving 25,000 a year from killing themselves will just end up killing a bunch of other people.

I am really curious to know the answer to this one. Who knew that  letting people shoot themselves was such a key factor in reducing the deaths and injuries to countless innocents caught up in the wanton carnage of non-gun use suicide!

Even if you remove all guns from the US, you would still have 50k suicides a year, it would just be with different means.
I don't think suicide is dependent on the tools at your disposal.

[viper37]

What makes firearms cause unnecessary suicide deaths is that typically people that go through with the suicide attempt don't try it again, whether they succeed or fail.  With firearms they are very likely to succeed, however, even if they flinch.

Depends on the arm, depends on how it's done.  With a handgun, it's unlikely they would miss.  With a hunting rifle, it happens. They get mutilated, they lose their nose and part of their face, put their family in distress and in stress there after because they want to finish the job, but they survive.

I do wonder, sometimes... well, always, since a long while, if we're really doing these people a favor by forcing them to live when they're ready to quit.  Would I want people around me trying to bring me back to life when I'm done for it all?  I'm not even sure.