Approximately 67 people per day commit suicide by gun in the U.S. Less than 1 per day by bridge.
Certainly the wide availability of guns is leading to more suicide.
Guns are immediate and deadly. Traveling to a bridge, walking out…gives the person time to contemplate and many turn back.
The teenager who swallows a bottle of pills can change her mind 2 hours later and seek help…hopefully to live a long and fulfilling life.
@wisdad23:
I didn’t blame the gun culture per se, it is the part of the gun culture that I don’t like, where people think of guns like they would a hammer or a screwdriver or whatnot, where they don’t even think to have them secured (at least the ammo). Unfortunately, in states where guns are more common, they either don’t have laws requiring guns to be secured or they don’t enforce them, and many people to me seem to think gun ownership=the right to have them lying around, it is the mentality too many people have that guns somehow should be treated like something non lethal, that’s all. Like I said, we secure houses when we have toddlers around, knowing what they will do, we secure houses when we have puppies running around because we know what they will do, yet people will leave a gun loaded lying around in a closet or drawer. People who would think twice about leaving an oxycontone prescription drug or the like lying around in the medicine chest when they had teens around, but will have weapons readily accessible.
And no, nothing can totally prevent someone from killing themselves if they want to, but if guns were better secured in the home, a lot of suicides would not happen. I had some training with suicide (part of training I took as a first responder), and one of the things about suicide is for many it is impulsive, and if you can get them to look at what they are attempting, a lot of people will blink. I have heard arguments that securing guns won’t work, that a teen can for example figure out how to break into a gun safe, but they miss the point, to do that the kid would have to spend time figuring out how to break in, and it is likely that in a large percentage of the time, the heat of the moment will pass and they won’t follow through. I don’t know the numbers, but many suicides are not these long drawn out, planned events they show on tv, they are someone has a very dark moment, get way down, and act impulsively. A gun happens to be the quickest way to kill oneself, one where you can on impulse in a split second blow your brains out, other things like pills, cutting of the wrists, are not sure, and jumping off a bridge or high place will tend to dissuade anyone but the most determined shrug. The fact that we have so many guns in this country does contribute to the suicide rate, simply because of the number of people with access to guns (something like 100 million people own guns) and how lethal and quick they are, makes that no surprise, the sad part is the lax way so many deal with having guns around IMO.