In about two weeks we will mark the 11th anniversary of my H’s brother’s death by suicide. He was 59 (tomorrow would have been his 70th birthday). He did not use a gun. I know without having physical proof that he had a plan and was going through a check list in the days and weeks before his death.
This may not be a normal suicide. I just tell this story to put it out there that people will die by suicide if they want to bad enough with or without guns. Not having a gun may slow a suicidal person down and a few lives may saved.
Just like putting a stop to mass shootings will have multiple answers, there is no one answer to stopping a suicide.
^Yes, my nephew used no weapon or any other accessory to cause his own death.
And “electroshock therapy” is still being used, but a modified version called electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). It helped my son greatly. I do believe that more psychiatric hospitals need to be built. DS had to sit for 71 hours in an ER before a bed was available in December. Ten of those hours were in a hallway. Something has to change.
People picking up a gun are motivated. If the gun were not available, they would use another high percentage method that would likely entail even more pain and perhaps worse if they survive. I very much doubt that the overall rate would go down absent guns, because it is not guns that are causing the suicidal thoughts in the first place. We can easily see that by the rates of suicide in gun-free European and other high income countries - they are comparable to our own.
Perhaps those who use a gun to commit suicide are determined to be successful while some attempts are more of a cry for help or way to get attention. I know my ex-husband took handfuls of pills on more than one occasion(and then told us that he did), he wasn’t intent on dying, if he were he would have used one of his guns. I have known more than one person who has committed suicide, the one that always comes to mind is a boy in the neighborhood I grew up in who was a little bit younger than me. His mother came home and found him where he had put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. They eventually moved, I guess the memories in that house were too much. It hasn’t changed her view on guns, she still supports gun rights, they realize that it was a personal choice that he made. I think that is a big thing in my area, the idea of personal responsibility. If someone commits a crime, it is because they chose to do so, a gun(or anything else) is merely a tool and is as good or bad as the intent of the person using it.
I do believe that our move away from God as a nation has a lot to do with a lot of the changes we are seeing. Our society has become more self-focused and many have lost their hope and their moral compass. I realize this is not 100% inclusive, but I do think it is enough of a change to be behind a lot of things we are seeing now.
I remember when I was in school all of the trucks with gunracks and guns, most of the time the vehicle wasn’t even locked. We had fights, usually by the flagpole, but no one ever went and grabbed a gun. I remember one time a boy in my grade brought a handgun to school, he was kicked out of school for the rest of the year. He dated one of my friends when we were older and I later found out that he was abusive, so I guess he was just a bad person.
For a country that wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for armed citizens, I’m not sure why people are surprised by the way many people feel about guns. For those that actually enjoy the study of history, there are multiple examples of groups that were slaughtered after giving up their weapons, some prefer not to put themselves in that position. Sure, the government has more powerful weapons, but the British army also had more firepower than the Colonials. History is full of examples of countries or groups that should have been defeated, but things don’t always happen that way. I think it comes down somewhat to the fact that a large number of people just don’t trust the government to do the right thing. If you look at the last 4 years you can see that we as a country are divided, people have no faith in most politicians and many of us do not like the direction the country has been heading. I don’t live in fear, but if I were looking at things from a secular viewpoint, I would definitely be living in fear.
“the one that always comes to mind is a boy in the neighborhood I grew up in who was a little bit younger than me. His mother came home and found him where he had put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. They eventually moved, I guess the memories in that house were too much. It hasn’t changed her view on guns, she still supports gun rights, they realize that it was a personal choice that he made. I think that is a big thing in my area, the idea of personal responsibility. If someone commits a crime, it is because they chose to do so, a gun(or anything else) is merely a tool and is as good or bad as the intent of the person using it”
This is applied to a boy?? Why did he have access to a gun in the first place. Gun owners should have responsibility to keep them out of harm’s way.
"I do believe that our move away from God as a nation has a lot to do with a lot of the changes we are seeing. Our society has become more self-focused and many have lost their hope and their moral compass. "
Religious people don’t have a lock on moral compasses. You can have strong morals without believing in God. Many, many, many do.
Bullet velocities aren’t appreciably different than when I grew, back when guns were still being carried in truck racks, trunks, or on the back seat. Semi-auto shotguns and rifles were in widespread use at the time, so it’s not really accurate to consider guns more powerful today than they were. The AR-15, which I’ve never owned, is supposedly fun to shoot, with little recoil in the original .223 version, so that’s some difference from the guns I grew up with but not enough that it would prompt me to turn one on people I don’t know… or do know, for that matter.
More pertinent to the OP: there are multiple gun cultures. The one that includes my cohort, those who (includes more women than you might think) who weren’t raised with guns but have bought one for self-defense, and those who buy them to misuse them. An imperfect list but it sums what I consider the major groups. That the first two groups might resent being punished for what the last is doing is pretty predictable, human nature being what it is.
As to why people are using them to kill people they barely or don’t even know? What eyemamom said, along with: fewer fathers, internet forums, obsessive media coverage of the type of shootings that beget these threads, etc.
None of the above constitutes a desire to debate a single thing, btw.
@doschicos
I said boy because that was how I thought of him since he was younger than me, but he was over 18 so old enough to buy a rifle or shotgun legally.
First of all I didn’t say religious people, there are plenty of “religious people” who have no morals or relationship with God. Second, I said this is not 100% inclusive so I never said nor implied that others cannot be moral people, some certainly are, but others are not.
People need to realize that “armed citizens defending themselves from a tyrannical government” in practice usually means either civil war or wholesale slaughter by the said government, as we can see in many countries with high weapons ownership (e.g. Iraq and Syria). @HeartofDixie With all due respect, historically “moving away from God” also meant moving away from segregation, unequal rights for women, and, going back to more and more religious societies, slavery, religious wars, witch burnings, and crusades.
@oldmom4896 I guess I’d need to know how you define “gun culture” before I can answer whether we need a label at all, let alone how to classify things.
@yucca10
That is very possible, but what is the alternative, not defending yourself and being slaughtered? I would rather die trying than rounded up and executed.
What does moving away from God have to do with segregation, unequal rights for women, and the other things you mentioned? I don’t support those things and neither does my church, like I said in my previous post, “religion” offers no solution for our problems. Please don’t confuse my reference to God with religion.
My best friend from high school use to live in a pretty little suburban town outside of Dallas. A number of years ago, I was able to fly out for a visit and spend 2 wonderful weeks catching up and confirming the reasons why we became bffs almost instantaneously upon meeting. While there, I was introduced to most of her considerable social circle, including a feisty and hilarious Texas blue belle. This gal lived in an upscale neighborhood in Grapevine, and over dinner, she mentioned that she and her husband always—and I do mean, always—each packed heat in the form of a .45 caliber handgun. I was shocked. Why did she feel the need to carry a lethal weapon even as she shopped nearby boutiques, galleries, and restaurants, all populated by people very much like herself? I was too taken aback and rendered silent to ask. My bff and I talked later, and she said her friend once told her she considers the world an extremely unsafe place. I would agree that not a few parts of the United States can be described as very dangerous indeed, but the little town of Grapevine, TX. would not number among them. I found this lady to be sweet, charming, and someone I would otherwise never suspect was comfortable constantly carrying around a loaded gun, but it opened my eyes to the fact that many, many ordinary Americans are armed on a daily basis. Just because I’m not one of them shouldn’t lead me to assume most people are like me. I’ve only touched a gun once in my life, and that was when I was training in boot camp, when we had a day of firing .22s on the target range.
What I want to understand is why so many people like this woman feel threatened enough to carry guns at all times. I’d feel as though I were carrying a deadly snake in my handbag. It would make me anxious. If you commonly carry a gun everywhere you go, can you describe how it makes you feel?
This has nothing to do with God. Most of the countries with the least amount of gun violence per capita are also the least religious countries in the world. The countries listed below meet these two criteria: 1) gun deaths per capita less than half that of the U.S., and 2) >50% of population say that religion is unimportant to them in daily life (Gallup poll).
Japan, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Hong Kong, UK, Switzerland, France, Estonia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Canada, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Belgium, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Hungary, Taiwain, Spain, Netherlands, Cuba, South Korea, Iceland, and Belarus.
Israel and Ukraine came very close (less than half the gun deaths per cap, but only 49% said religion was unimportant).
You seem to like to ask the shooting a gun question. It’s not relevant to anything here. Plus, Brantly’s question was specifically targeted towards AR-15s. Do Olympic shooters use AR-15s?
I was going to ask this same question. Are there competitions with AR-15s?
I participated in riflery in summer camp, in the 1960s and '70s. I even got a certificate of safety from the NRA (when it was solely a gun safety and sportsmen’s organization).
I don’t know how one divorces one’s God from religion, given that belief in a God is usually tethered to some standard of religious doctrine. Is there one particular God you have in mind, HeartofDixie, or just the general belief in a higher power? Most of the world’s religions espouse a doctrinal injunction against murder. Is it a decline in the belief in a God that you think has something to do with a perceived rise in gun violence today?
America is still considered by much of the world to be quite a religious country, especially by many Western European standards. A lot of Nordic countries are notably non-religious, and they have virtually no gun violence, and comparatively low crime in general. Japan and South Korea also have low murder and general crime rates, but what they do have that it seems to me we lack more and more here, is a societal sense of responsibility for how one’s actions can impact those around them, family in particular. I’ve noticed an uptick in casually selfish behavior virtually everywhere I go anymore—speaking strictly from my own point of view, of course. There also seems to be a trend toward “othering” people in order to justify inhumane treatment. Again, a personal observation. YMMV.