So I suppose that we should ban series about suicide... Also the more people that drive, also increases the number of people who die on the road, thus it follows that we ban driving.
Release of “13 Reasons Why” Associated with Increase in Youth Suicide Rates
231–240 of 264 posts
Re: Release of “13 Reasons Why” Associated with Increase in Youth Suicide Rates
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
The scary thing is that both this article and the example you cited are used as reasons to limit constitutional freedoms: Limit second amendment more to prevent mass shootings. Limit first amendment more to prevent suicides. Really though, we should be focusing on the root cause: lonely/sad/broken people. Focus on helping/loving them and I bet suicide/mass shooting rates drop significantly.
We know for a fact access to firearms increases the chance of a successful suicide. That suggests a clear change that could help save lives and limits to the 2nd Amendment have already been settled as constitutional. "Focus on helping/loving them" is not a policy change, to me it's nothing but "thoughts and prayers". Rhetoric that might make us feel better but will help nothing.
Limiting freedoms won't fix this, it just gives the government more incentive to keep the ball rolling and ban everything. Getting power begets the persons wanting more power after that, and on and on.
Re: Release of “13 Reasons Why” Associated with Increase in Youth Suicide Rates
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely a controversial viewpoint currently. Forget assault rifles, an individual could own a machine gun well into the 70s but mass shootings were unheard of back then. I am for gun control but the underlying issues are being ignored if we treat it like the root of the problem.
You can own a machine gun today - they just cost as much as a car.
You still have to get a license and those are expensive and not easy to get.
Re: Release of “13 Reasons Why” Associated with Increase in Youth Suicide Rates
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've always wondered the validity of a "constitutional freedom" that allows random everyday people to own and operate tools that are essentially killing machines. Not sure why you put quotes around constitutional freedom. The reason for the amendment is such that when someone or someones come along and attempt to abridge your rights you can kill them with the killing machine. As simple as that.
> when someone or someones come along and attempt to abridge your rights Isn't that what highly trained and professional law enforcement is for? At least that's what they're for in my part of the world.
> Isn't that what highly trained and professional law enforcement is for?
> At least that's what they're for in my part of the world.
I really wish the Jewish populations of Warsaw had known this. If only they had called on the professional law enforcement to help them! And then the Tutsi made the same mistake in Rwanda 50 years later - shouldn't people have learned by then?
Point is, sometimes it's the "professional law enforcement" that's coming to kick your face in, and asking them to defend you doesn't work so well. And even when they aren't the ones doing the kicking, their priorities might not match yours - as Koreatown found in the LA riots.
Re: Release of “13 Reasons Why” Associated with Increase in Youth Suicide Rates
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
The scary thing is that both this article and the example you cited are used as reasons to limit constitutional freedoms: Limit second amendment more to prevent mass shootings. Limit first amendment more to prevent suicides. Really though, we should be focusing on the root cause: lonely/sad/broken people. Focus on helping/loving them and I bet suicide/mass shooting rates drop significantly.
> Really though, we should be focusing on the root cause: lonely/sad/broken people. The US is an extreme outlier in terms of gun homicide in the first world, is the assumption that every country except the US has solved lonely/sad/broken people? The second amendment (the full reading of it) doesn't give carte blanch coverage to own firearms and the US populace agrees that, for instance, inmates in prison and domestic…
> The US is an extreme outlier in terms of gun homicide in the first world
But it's not nearly as extreme an outlier when it comes to homicide, which is what should be compared. I don't care how someone killed me, I care that they killed me.
And when you start comparing demographic groups, the gap between the US and Europe goes down even more. (Approximately half of the total US homicide rate is African Americans killing other African Americans. This is a major problem, but also says that perhaps gun ownership rates are not always the primary factor here. After all, African American gun ownership rates are about 2/3rds that of caucasian ownership in the US)
> Defenders of the second amendment often say it's an opposition to tyranny, but I fail to see how a hand-gun will help to protect you against an Abrams wielded by a tyrannous government - or should tanks, jets and battleships be objects that private citizens should be able to purchase and own for self-defense?
Vietnam. Afghanistan.
Suppressing insurgents with small arms is really damn hard. It'd be even harder in the continental US, since there wouldn't really be a "home" to rotate back to. Not a safe one, at least.
Re: Release of “13 Reasons Why” Associated with Increase in Youth Suicide Rates
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Really though, we should be focusing on the root cause: lonely/sad/broken people. The US is an extreme outlier in terms of gun homicide in the first world, is the assumption that every country except the US has solved lonely/sad/broken people? The second amendment (the full reading of it) doesn't give carte blanch coverage to own firearms and the US populace agrees that, for instance, inmates in prison and domestic…
>Defenders of the second amendment often say it's an opposition to tyranny, but I fail to see how a hand-gun will help to protect you against an Abrams wielded by a tyrannous government - or should tanks, jets and battleships be objects that private citizens should be able to purchase and own for self-defense? You could say the same thing for the 1st amendment for individuals vs large media companies. Individuals wil…
> I have been arguing lately that the "well regulated militia" should mean that gun owners should be required to attend militia training at least once a year
If the militia was self organized and this came with a relaxation of all the other gun regulations, I'd be all for it! 'destructive devices' would be rather useful in any sort of real insurgent campaign, but are basically banned for civilian ownership today.
But that's not what "well regulated" meant, and I suspect you know that.
Re: Release of “13 Reasons Why” Associated with Increase in Youth Suicide Rates
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Access to bridges also increases the chances of successful suicide. The clear change that should be suggested is more proactive identification of mental illness and increased guaranteed access to mental health services. If that reads to you as nothing but "thoughts and prayers", I don't know what to say.
50% of suicide in the USA are via firearms, 2.4% are by falling (off bridges or other structures). Focusing on lowering the 2.4% number is not going to be as effective as focusing on the 50% one. https://www.sprc.org/means-suicide It turns out more willpower/commitment is needed to jump off a bridge than pull a trigger. The same with stabbing or suffocating yourself. Yes, someone with lots of willpower/commitment wil…
Focusing on any of those numbers misses the point: people are killing themselves for actual reasons, and addressing those reasons (namely: by actually maintaining a robust mental healthcare system, and by doing what we can to end or at least significantly reduce poverty) will cause all suicides to decrease in frequency.
Also, you know what takes even less willpower than passing a background check (or stealing/borrowing/buying a gun + ammo from someone else illegally), paying hundreds of dollars for a gun + ammo, pointing it at the right spot on one's own head (to actually die instead of just maiming oneself) and pulling the trigger? Buying $20 worth of over-the-counter painkillers and chugging the bottle, or buying a $10 bottle of hard liquor and chugging that (with or without the painkillers), or running a $5 tube from the exhaust of a running car to the interior and taking a nap.
And on that note, firearms are only more popular than other means of suicide among males; per your source, females typically prefer poisoning (though firearms are almost tied). Both males and females have an equally-high tendency (around 25%) to commit suicide via suffocation (and for females under 24, that skyrockets to almost an absolute majority). A "perfect" world where firearms don't exist won't make those go away, and the people who'd kill themselves with guns would almost certainly gravitate toward other means (as the multitude of suicidal young people without firearms access already tend to do).
(Additionally: your source doesn't seem to specify whether or not those numbers are for actual deaths or attempts; lots of people survive their suicide attempts, whether because they didn't use an effective method or because someone intervened. It'd be interesting to see that distinction; I suspect the graphs are only recording actual deaths, which means that firearms are going to be skewed because they're more effective at actually ensuring death, while poisoning and suffocation might be far more popular but less effective.)
Re: Release of “13 Reasons Why” Associated with Increase in Youth Suicide Rates
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
50% of suicide in the USA are via firearms, 2.4% are by falling (off bridges or other structures). Focusing on lowering the 2.4% number is not going to be as effective as focusing on the 50% one. https://www.sprc.org/means-suicide It turns out more willpower/commitment is needed to jump off a bridge than pull a trigger. The same with stabbing or suffocating yourself. Yes, someone with lots of willpower/commitment wil…
Focusing on any of those numbers misses the point: people are killing themselves for actual reasons , and addressing those reasons (namely: by actually maintaining a robust mental healthcare system, and by doing what we can to end or at least significantly reduce poverty) will cause all suicides to decrease in frequency. Also, you know what takes even less willpower than passing a background check (or stealing/borrow…
It’s pretty easy to get access to a gun in the states, it’s not like we have the lock box policy that Germany has (responsible gun ownership laws are ironically faught against by the NRA). Most kids use their parents’ gun, no background check required.
Getting enough pills to do yourself in without a prescription is super hard and not very reliable. Most OTC drugs will cause you to vomit long before you die. Anyways, this is the route my terminally ill mom took with a doctor’s help, the best way to do it anyways. (I only knew two people who committed suicide, the other one was a girl who shot herself in the head in high school)
Surviving a suicide by gun is kind of gruesome, it isn’t something I want to think about.
There are plenty of great reasons to restrict firearms, making suicide more difficult is just one of them. Honestly, it’s only something you have to worry about if you have guns in the house in the first place (the girls’ dad was the heavily pro gun type, so she had easy access), so it’s easy to opt out of that problem for us anti gun types (unlike say mass school shootings).
Re: Release of “13 Reasons Why” Associated with Increase in Youth Suicide Rates
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
I oppose capital punishment, but yes — that's how democracy works.
Yes, if you use a strict denotative definition of "works" as being a method of operation. But that says nothing as to the ethical justification relative to the other case that you complained about. Your position just comes off as saying "in its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges".
I'm saying that democracy is the least worst way of a society determining the rules by which it abides. Is your position that dictating those rules under threat of violence is better?
Re: Release of “13 Reasons Why” Associated with Increase in Youth Suicide Rates
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but lowering the 50% one will increase usage of the other methods significantly. The US isn't magically going to have insanely low suicide rates if you make guns illegal. Sad/depressed/broken people are still sad/depressed/broken (nothing has changed on that front). There will be a slight drop in overall suicides and a very large increase in non-firearm suicide attempts (re: Japan). Here's an idea that doesn't…
That isn't how suicide works. I know the US is just very bad at this, but you can literally look at other countries and learn from their experiences. I know, some of them don't speak the same language, but it turns out Americans are just human like everybody else. Interventions _work_ without making suicide impossible, because the suicide victims aren't rational people looking to kill themselves, they are crazy and h…
> they are crazy and have fixated on a plan that would kill them
And if guns aren't available, they'll fixate on a plan which does not involve them. The coal→natgas switch only worked to prevent suicides because (at least per your description) people still expected the gas to kill them; if suicidal people already know ahead of time that a particular strategy is not actually an option (e.g. because they know they can't get guns, or they know that the gas in their ovens ain't toxic), then they'll consider some other strategy in the "pick a strategy" stage of suicidal ideation.
That is: this sort of "prevention" is temporary at best. Even in the UK, phasing out coal gas only decreased suicides specifically via carbon monoxide inhalation, while other methods of suicide rose in frequency [1]. The overall rate did decrease, but more for males than females (who readily seemed to start flocking toward other methods of suicide, at least per the graphs and the apparent far-more-modest decrease in overall suicide rate), and primarily only in England and Wales (Scotland's male suicide rate barely budged, and the female suicide rate held steady, with a visible switch from CO suicide to non-CO suicide in the graphs).
Hangings are currently the most common means of suicide in the UK [2], with poisonings a close second among women. Neither of these are likely to go away any time soon without actually addressing why people feel inclined to self-terminate in the first place (unless you're going to propose trying to ban all alcohol and drugs - like the US tried (and failed) to do - and require background checks and mental health checks when buying ropes and bedsheets, and even that almost certainly won't be effective).