Handgun Widespread Availability Increases Suicide Rate

[Royston]

Lance - How about you focus on the topic and not on me, shall we? You do that far too often, and it shows just how weak your position truly is.

 

Which begs me to ask the question...are you two sleeping together ?

[SkepticLance]

Man, did I stir up a hornets nest!!

I have observed this phenomenon (overreaction to a single post) before. It represents the reactions when someone threatens other people's firmly held emotional beliefs.

 

I have noticed in other threads that gun ownership is one of the emotional buttons that, when pressed, cause an eruption of passionate protest that should be a case history in a psychological study.

 

Of course, people who think emotionally are incapable of realising that they are thinking emotionally, and come up with all sorts of spurious and ridiculous arguments without even knowing that their arguments are spurious and ridiculous.

 

I accept that the idea of the right to own a gun being more important, versus an extra 20,000 odd deaths from suicide each year, is an opinion. It is not based on data. My opinion is that human life is important, and 20,000 extra deaths each year is too high a price to pay. But other people put a lower value on human life and a higher value on the right to own and keep in their possession instruments designed to kill humans. I cannot prove they are wrong, since that is opinion.

 

But there are other things I can demonstrate are wrong, since there is official data to demonstrate that.

 

To iNow : It may seem like a personal attack. But my statement was firmly directed at one of your arguments, not at you.

 

Sayonara.

Suicide rates can be high in nations that have low gun ownership. That is because suicide rate is a function of several, not one, variables. That does not change the fact that the single variable I am concentrating on is vitally important. I could argue that, if we increased gun availability in Japan, or the UK, that successful suicide rates would increase substantially. I believe that to be true, but cannot prove it until the experiment is carried out. For the United States, however, the position is clear. Easy gun ownership substantially increases death rate by suicide. That is clearly shown by the Harvard researchers paper, which shows that suicide death rate is higher in states with easier gun ownership.

 

You said :

"You seem to be completely ignoring the successful suicide attempts which occur without any firearms involvement whatsoever, which means you cannot have considered whether firearms access plays any kind of role there at all."

 

That's where official statistics come into play. They show where one outcome dominates. Sure, some people successfully suicide without guns. That happens in Japan, UK, Lithuania and all round the world. But the percentage of successful suicides increases drastically when guns are available. And official stats show that 90% of suicide attempts are not repeated.

 

Pangloss said :

 

"It's also not a scientific point at all, and I think it's a cop-out to pretend that it is. You're deliberately interpreting the data in a specific manner. That's a political message."

 

Yet the conclusions I come to are exactly the same as those in the papers published in JAMA or the Harvard study etc. You are accusing eminent researchers of being unscientific at the same time as you accuse me. My view is that this opinion is so far off beam that is must be motivated by emotion, not rational thinking.

 

Guys,

 

I know I am asking something very difficult. But how about you stand back away from your emotions? Look at the data. Discard your prejudicial ideas. Start again with data, not opinion.

[Sayonara]

We are not being "emotional" or "prejudiced", we are pointing out the shortcomings in the way you interpret the data. I don't think any of us are on the NRA payroll.

 

You are being most uncooperative.

 

I notice that as usual you ignore the parts of my posts where I suggest factors which are significant in demonstrating the veracity of your case.

Edited August 16, 2008 by Sayonara³
multiple post merged

[insane_alien]

yes, we have looked at the data and we agree that handguns are an effective tool for commiting suicide. what we are disagreeing on is what action to take.

 

I have already said i oppose the banning of guns because of this because they are not the cause of suicides. and i do not consider it a right for someone to own a gun(especially as i come from the uk).

to treat a problem you need to go for the cause. guns are not the cause, they are merely the mechanism.

 

the phrase 'guns don't kill people, people do' applies here as well.

 

If we invest more in helping those with suicidal tendencies and treating the causes of those tendencies then i predict we will see a more dramatic drop in suicides across the board. eliminating one avenue will just push those to other methods which can be just as effective if you are serious about it.

[iNow]

Instead of addressing everyone's points, Lance, you accuse them of being overly emotional. Thanks for reminding me AGAIN why I should just ignore you. I appreciate your continued reminders. Thank you.

[SkepticLance]

There are two kinds of conclusions in this world.

1. A rational, logical, and reasonable conclusion drawn from data. This can be correct or wrong. And its correctness or falsehood can be demonstrated.

2. Opinion. This is subjective, and there are no right or wrong answers.

 

In my mind, I draw a clear cut distinction between the two.

 

Where insane alien agrees that access to guns increases suicide deaths, that is item 1 - conclusion based on data.

 

Where insane alien disagrees with me on the correct action to take, that is opinion. When we discuss opinion, no-one is 'right' and no-one is 'wrong'. I am just as likely to be 'wrong' as anyone else.

 

To Sayonara

I am sorry if I seem to have overlooked some specific point you have made. Perhaps you could be kind enough to repeat the point you want me to address?

[ParanoiA]

I think Lance feels that his data lends a conclusion that is not based on opinion. He seems to think that by exercising mathematics on the data (banning guns = less suicide), that he's not actually expressing an opinion.

 

It *is* an opinion Lance. What about data that might suggest that a ban on guns could equal more non-criminal death? banning guns = less gun ownership by law abiding citizens = more death by the hands of criminals. Just an example of a whole myriad of possible data as a consequence of your exercise in math. The fact that you don't consider the consequences of banning guns - the resultant data of such action in other areas of interest - is an expression of opinion.

 

Whether you like it or not, you are arguing opinion, Lance.

 

I seem to remember Phil having a sig to the effect that piles of data is no more science than a pile of stones is a house. Very appropriate here.

 

Edit: Think of it like an equation. A + B = 7. If you change A, B will change too, otherwise it would not equal 7. Your ban on guns will produce a change in other data in some other area - and you're not considering that data set. We are.

[Sayonara]

To Sayonara

I am sorry if I seem to have overlooked some specific point you have made. Perhaps you could be kind enough to repeat the point you want me to address?

Or you could re-read. You seem to do a lot of overlooking and I am not going to get into the habit of repeating everything I say to you just to get a response.

[Pangloss]

Pangloss said :

 

"It's also not a scientific point at all, and I think it's a cop-out to pretend that it is. You're deliberately interpreting the data in a specific manner. That's a political message."

 

Yet the conclusions I come to are exactly the same as those in the papers published in JAMA or the Harvard study etc. You are accusing eminent researchers of being unscientific at the same time as you accuse me. My view is that this opinion is so far off beam that is must be motivated by emotion, not rational thinking.

 

Who says they can't tack on their own political opinion coyly posed as "scientific reasoning"? Who's going to stop them? A journalist? Don't make me laugh. They'll just get ten more scientists to say "the debate is over" and then the journalist just looks like an idiot.

 

Man, did I stir up a hornets nest!!

I have observed this phenomenon (overreaction to a single post) before. It represents the reactions when someone threatens other people's firmly held emotional beliefs.

 

I have noticed in other threads that gun ownership is one of the emotional buttons that, when pressed, cause an eruption of passionate protest that should be a case history in a psychological study.

 

That is complete nonsense, because we just had a freaking membership ROLL CALL of agreement with you about what the science says. It's only the CONCLUSION they don't agree with you on.

 

The obvious truth is that you're hiding your own emotional investment here. You haven't spent 11 pages backed into a wall just because you think the suicide rate is higher with easier handgun availability. No, you want the guns. But the data doesn't steer us over obstacles like personal defense or home invasion or the freedom to kill one's self. So you keep jamming this down everyone's throats, insisting that this scientific data forces a specific political conclusion, even though you know full well that people just aren't going to go there with you.

 

So you keep saying the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result. That's not science, it's insanity.

[SH3RL0CK]

SL,

 

I have a serious question for you. Since you seem to be very intent on reducing suicides, and since it is not in your power to ban guns, what other steps have you personally taken to address this issue? Any work as a conselor, or hot-line operator? What research have you done regarding causes and solutions to this problem, other than what is related to handguns?

 

Can you tell me what "trigger" events tend to cause people to attempt suicide? What are some warning signs of people who may be suicidal? Where can I find resources to help friends and family who may be suicidal?

 

I think this information would be more useful in this forum, than endless disagreements on gun laws.

 

And for the record, I agree (along with most of the posters here) that elimination of guns won't solve the problem of people committing suicide.

[SkepticLance]

To ParanoiA

 

You are putting words in my mouth. I did not suggest banning guns. What I suggest is that tighter gun control leads to fewer deaths by suicide. Not the same thing at all.

 

The result of differences in how strict gun control is on suicide rate - well that is an experiment that has already been done, in that different states have different levels of gun restriction. Those states that have tighter gun control have fewer deaths by suicide. My conclusion that tighter gun control reduces deaths is actually rather solid.

 

To Sayonara

 

Yes, I did re-read your post. I still could not make out exactly what you wanted, which is why I asked for clarification.

 

To Pangloss

 

You want to know my own emotional involvement. Let me tell you a true story.

 

When I was a lot younger - in my 20's - I went with a bunch of male friends to another house for a beer drinking session, as young men do. When we were somewhat lubricated, one of the guys who lived at that house was induced to show us all his 'treasure'. He had bought a hand-gun in working order, plus a heap of ammunition, on the black market (hand-guns are strictly prohibited in NZ, except for police).

 

He showed us all how it operated and gave us all a chance to heft it. I was surprised by its weight, and even more surprised by my own emotional response. I felt big, and powerful! After I got home and sobered up a bit, I felt utterly appalled at my own reaction. To let an instrument designed almost solely for killing people make me feel so powerful - well that was a serious disillusionment for me with regard to my self image. I felt seriously disappointed in myself.

 

I was also in a position to observe the reactions of the other guys, and discover through the inevitable bull session that followed how they also felt. My reaction was exactly mirrored by the other guys. The main difference was that they saw nothing wrong with feeling good because they were in a position to deal death!

 

This gives me something of an understanding of the emotional commitment gun owners have to their hand-guns. I have used rifles on many occasions, mainly for rabbit hunting, but never felt that sense of power. I do not believe there is anything positive about private ownership of hand-guns, except for that emotional thrill.

 

The thesis that you need it for self protection is so much garbage. The United States has five times the per capita murder rate of New Zealand, but New Zealand has just as much overall violent crime. The difference is guns, and the US would be much better off with tighter restrictions, both in reducing suicides and reducing murders. Instead of guns reducing crime and reducing violence, they increase it, and dramatically. I do not want to veer off on a tangent and debate murder rates, though. The above is just to explain my own feelings about guns, since I have been asked to explain my own emotional bent. Lets keep to subject.

 

Further to my personal emotions - yes - suicide is personal, since a flatmate of mine suicided. It was more personal since I appear to have been his only friend and his suicide occurred 48 hours after I went off on holiday, leaving him alone. I try to avoid inappropriate guilt, and I was not responsible for his suicide, but it leaves suicide as a touchy subject for me. The idea of large numbers of preventable suicides occurring due to irrational gun love leaves me unhappy.

 

To SH3RLOCK

 

Sure, restricting guns will not stop suicides. I have never made that claim. However, it will reduce the number of deaths from suicide. The United States has about 33,000 deaths per year from suicide, and 57% are using guns. 90% of attempts are not repeated. Simple sums show that, if there were no guns available, that would save 17,000 human lives each year.

 

OK, the US is not going to make guns unavailable. Even with a progressive political effort, guns will be readily available for many years to come. But eventually the suicide rate would be reduced and dramatically.

 

The argument that other factors are important is just a red herring, in relation to this debate. Again, I have not tried to suggest that society should not attack the causes of suicidal moods, such as depression. Quite the contrary. To reduce a problem such as suicide, many approaches need to be followed. However, one approach which would have very substantial positive results would be tighter gun control.

[Mr Skeptic]

Speaking of opinions, it seems to me that SkepticLance has the opinion that people successfully kill themselves because of the lethality of the method they happened to chose, rather than that people who truly intend to kill themselves tend to choose more lethal methods. This opinion then leads him to conclude that banning a particularly successful tool of suicide would lead to a large decrease in successful suicides.

 

It is widely agreed that most attempts at suicide "fail" because death was never the intention.

[Sayonara]

I have a serious question for you. Since you seem to be very intent on reducing suicides, and since it is not in your power to ban guns, what other steps have you personally taken to address this issue? Any work as a conselor, or hot-line operator? What research have you done regarding causes and solutions to this problem, other than what is related to handguns?

 

From his posts, I am going to go with absolutely none. He does not seem to be interested at all in the various suicidal mind-sets and is instead focusing on broadly-harvested percentages from data which has lost all granularity. I tried to point this out to him a couple of posts ago, but he has ignored and hand-waved his way around it, as usual.

 

 

 

To Sayonara

Yes, I did re-read your post. I still could not make out exactly what you wanted, which is why I asked for clarification.

Well, that explains a lot.

 

Sure, restricting guns will not stop suicides. I have never made that claim. However, it will reduce the number of deaths from suicide.

Someone who is serious about killing themselves will not change their mind just because they cannot get a gun.

 

As has been repeatedly stated in this thread, the vast majority of "failed suicides" are from habitual repeat practitioners who know perfectly well that the method they choose will not kill them before any medical intervention is carried out. They have no intention of dying, which is why we all keep putting "failure" in quotation marks. Did you not wonder about that?

Your high-level data ("90% of ALLLLLL suicide attempts!") does not have enough granularity to show these details, and that is why your conclusions are erroneous. Flawed assumptions; flawed argument.

 

OK, the US is not going to make guns unavailable. Even with a progressive political effort, guns will be readily available for many years to come. But eventually the suicide rate would be reduced and dramatically.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

 

The argument that other factors are important is just a red herring, in relation to this debate.

That is not the argument, so your red herring is actually a straw herring.

 

However, one approach which would have very substantial positive results would be tighter gun control.

Yes, assuming you see increased creativity as being "substantial positive results".

[doG]

To i.a.

 

The logic is simple.

 

- 90% of all suicide attempts with guns leads to death

- 90% of all failed suicide attempts are not repeated

- 43 out of 44 suicide attempts are not successful

- 57% of all successful suicides in the US use guns

 

Since most suicide attempts fail, and most with guns succeed, then most suicide attempts do not involve guns. But those that do, drastically raise the death rate out of all proportion.

 

Therefore, if guns are not available, the death rate will fall.

 

Your application of logic is as flawed as your statistical analysis. Your predicted conclusion that the death rate will fall if guns are not available is not supported by any of the data you have presented thus far. Your assertion is that there will be a lower per capita suicide rate in a population subjected to tighter gun controls and it has been shown to you time and time again that there already are many populations of people living under tighter gun restrictions with higher per capita suicide rates. The absence of guns does not seem to be a factor in their per capita rates. The very existence of these populations refutes your assertion and causes your prediction to fail.

 

If you could go back and resurrect the dead in the population of people your statistics are based on then there would be some validity to your assertion. The fact is that you cannot bring these people back to life and you cannot use statistics based on them to predict how it would effect a future population living under different conditions. That these populations have different conditions should suggest to you that you cannot do a statistical analysis on one group, a society where handguns are available, and then use an extrapolation of the results to predict the behavior of the group living under different conditions, a society with no handguns.

 

If you want to attempt a more realistic scientific analysis you should look at all of the datasets available, all the populations where per capita suicide statistics and gun ownership statistics are available and do a comparative analysis of the populations with high gun ownership rates versus those with low gun ownership rates. You could then attempt a prediction on what might happen in those populations of people with high gun ownership rates based on the analysis of those populations with low gun ownership rates if you took away their guns. If you look back through this thread you will find some links to more datasets you could use in such an analysis.

 

You will need to overcome one other obstacle and that is your desire to use only the data and methods of analysis that support your desired conclusion and predictions. You must cast aside all bias and use all of the data available, that which supports your prediction and that which refutes it. That's science and science is what counts, not just your opinion.

[ParanoiA]

The result of differences in how strict gun control is on suicide rate - well that is an experiment that has already been done, in that different states have different levels of gun restriction. Those states that have tighter gun control have fewer deaths by suicide.

 

Right, I got that part, Lance. Now, let's take the next step. In those states, what happened to the number of victim deaths in the commission of a crime? What about that data? What happened to the number of criminal deaths in the commission of a crime? What happened to the violent crime rate in those states? Where's that data?

 

See, that's what I'm talking about Lance. Restricting guns changes more sets of data that JUST suicide rates. However, the only metric you're using to measure success with is suicide rates. You're not looking at the change in OTHER data to consider as part of the measurement of success.

 

What if, for the sake of argument, there's a sharp increase in home invasions and other violent crime as a result of the criminal element being less worried about an armed public? What if that rate dwarfs the successful gun suicide rate?

 

All I'm trying to point out is that you are arguing an opinion and pretending as if it's NOT an opinion by claiming the data speaks for itself. It only speaks accurately when you're considering ALL of the data. So far, you're only looking at suicide data - you're not looking at all of the other dynamics that change other data when you introduce your gun restriction.

 

So you can stop claiming you're not arguing opinion here. That's all this thread is about - opinion derived from data and lack of data, and your refusal to consider any other data but that one precious metric - gun suicide rates.

 

Ridiculous, particularly for a scientist.

[iNow]

Really, doG's metric about other countries with vastly stricter gun control laws having higher suicide rates than those with more open gun control really says it all.

 

I suppose another metric that would speak to this issue is countries with little or no gun control laws, but also little to no suicides. I haven't bothered searching for this data, but I presume it's out there.

 

 

Either way, I am sorry to hear of the experience you had with your fiend, Lance. Those situations are extremely trying, and the emotional burden is often enormous. Thanks for sharing. I still disagree with your conclusions for the reasons stated above, but I'm not a total monster and I can empathize with your story. Take it easy.

[Pangloss]

You want to know my own emotional involvement.

 

I didn't make that request, and I think your story just underscores my point. And as long as we're tossing straw men around, my cousin didn't need a handgun -- his father's hunting rifle (which New Zealand doesn't ban) did the job just fine. And I've always felt that his decision was casual and based on a temporary situation that could easily have been resolved had he only asked for help.

 

I did not suggest banning guns. What I suggest is that tighter gun control leads to fewer deaths by suicide.

 

Nonsense. That would be a completely hypocritical position given that you've declared this evidence to be absolute proof that they raise the suicide rate, and you've also declared that handguns serve no useful purpose. You have to support a ban -- your own conclusion requires it. So the only reason you'd say something like the above is to appear moderate. Well that's a dishonest position and I don't buy it.

 

Though frankly I have no idea why you even have an opinion on the subject at all. You already HAVE a handgun ban. Congratulations, you've produced 11 pages of advocacy about something which doesn't impact you and which you have no vote on.

 

Well I disrespectfully dismiss New Zealand and its holier-than-thou attitude toward handguns. And nuclear weapons. And the ecology. And human rights. I guess if you don't HAVE the technology or resources to do a thing, you might as well insist that it's because you don't want to and everyone else is wrong to do it. Doesn't cost you anything, and might gain you something.

[SkepticLance]

Interesting how this debate is going. It reminds me of waves crashing on the shore. The leading edge of the wave is one argument - say the comment that nations with tight gun laws also have suicides. I refute that argument and the leading edge crashes. The middle of the wave follows with its argument - say that a person who wants to suicide will do so with or without a gun. I refute that and the middle crashed. Then the tail end arrives - say a denial of the accuracy of my data. I refute that and the tail crashes.

 

And in between waves? No arguments left, so someone tries to destroy my credibility with a personal comment. The low part of the wave with a lower tactic.

 

Then what happens - the next wave and the same old arguments repeated to be refuted the same way.

 

My data and statistics are good, and come from highly reputable sources. Suicide rates outside the USA are irrelevent. Places like Lithuania and Japan have high suicide rates, but so what? Japan has a suicide culture, and Lithuania has a serious problem of national depression. Either way, it is not relevent to this argument.

 

The argument that a person who wants to suicide will do so is refuted by those who study suicides. The Harvard paper said that 90% of suicide attempts are done on impulse, and are not repeated if the attempt fails. If that impulse occurs where a gun, especially a hand-gun is available, there is a 90% chance death will result. If no gun is available, the overall statistic applies - that is a 90% chance that the suicide will fail.

 

ParanoiA came up with a slightly novel argument - that lives are saved with guns in defense or deterrence - hence balancing the lives lost to suicide. However, in most states and all developed countries, deaths from suicide outnumber deaths from crime by a large margin. Simple arithmetic tells you that an equivalent reduction in death from suicide or death from crimes means more lives saved by the suicide reduction. In addition, the USA has 5 times the murder rate of NZ on a per capita basis, even though NZ has a high violent crime rate. This comparison applies if we make the comparison pretty much any other developed nation. That difference is gun availability.

 

This is not a solitary statistic. Third world nations tend to have the highest murder rates, and among them the nations with high gun availability have the highest murder rate. In other words, the availability of guns leads to more deaths, not less, even excluding suicides.

[Pangloss]

Sure, that must be it. The mantra of the closed mind: "You're all waves crashing upon the shore, and nothing you can say will ever change my mind. Now sit there and read while I opine about the tone of the discussion and show you how little your opinion matters to me, now that I've delivered my message. If you're lucky maybe I'll deign to notice you."

 

How's that working out for you so far? Getting everything you need out of the discussion? Cool. Good for you.

Edited August 17, 2008 by Pangloss

[Sayonara]

Lance, you are repeating the same tactic here that has led you into these protracted arguments in many other threads. I have no idea why this thread in particular has resulted in everyone deciding not to let it slide any more, but I can point to the nature of the problem for you.

 

You take a set of data and draw an inference from it. This is absolutely fine.

 

You then skip a number of steps ahead, disregarding necessary tests of the involved proposals. This is NOT fine.

 

You then declare by fiat a conclusion based on those proposals, disguising the declaration as the logical conclusion of the arguments, and refuse to acknowledge valid objections. This too is very much NOT fine.

 

The approach is unscientific and disingenuous, and you have a nerve levelling the same accusation at the people who have spent their free time discussing the issue in this thread.

 

There have been several warnings, which were all ignored. The result is that this thread is now closed.