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I was thinking exactly the same thing. Yet there's a whole subthread debating the wisdom of gun ownership because that's a popular axe to grind. Getting at the

I was thinking exactly the same thing. Yet there's a whole subthread debating the wisdom of gun ownership because that's a popular axe to grind. Getting at the root of the issue is trickier. Clearly depression and suicide are popular topics on HN. We know that there's some kind of social problems that lead to depression and suicide, but the best some people can come up with is to talk about gun ownership. Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r..., the US is in a tie for 50th place for suicide rates. So in spite of the fact that the US has a high gun ownership rate, we're not anywhere close to being the top of the suicide rates. Also, recall the articles around middle aged death rates in the US: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10499434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10499434 One of the takeaways is that people may be committing de-facto suicide by following a pattern of life choices (addiction for example). The "Leaving Las Vegas" effect (if you saw the movie, recall Nicholas Cage's character tried to drink himself to death) is really hard to measure. Side note: suicide is illegal in Nepal and "attempted suicide is illegal in Nepal and people who attempt suicide when caught are subject to imprisonment, fines or both", yet Nepal is ranked 7th on the list. One might be led to conclude that this law is ineffective, if not counter-productive.

sandworm101 10y ago
The gun thing is just crazy. It's one of those subjects where everyone can paint on their own philosophy. So it winds up in every discussion. That makes it a great weapon for those who want to maintain the status quo. They throw the gun debate into the mix in full knowledge that it will shut down any other meaningful discussion, thereby preventing anything from changing. In terms of suicide, guns just make attempts more likely to succeed. I'd rather focus on preventing the attempts from happening in the first place. Laws against suicide are a little silly imho. Someone willing to kill themselves is operating at a level beyond criminal laws. Nepal probably needs to keep suicide legal for purposes of inheritance, so that surviving families don't suffer. Laws that penalize suicide risk encouraging non-suicide suicides that endanger other people such as "suicide-by-police".

sandworm101 10y ago

The gun thing is just crazy. It's one of those subjects where everyone can paint on their own philosophy. So it winds up in every discussion. That makes it a great weapon for those who want to maintain the status quo. They throw the gun debate into the mix in full knowledge that it will shut down any other meaningful discussion, thereby preventing anything from changing. In terms of suicide, guns just make attempts more likely to succeed. I'd rather focus on preventing the attempts from happening in the first place. Laws against suicide are a little silly imho. Someone willing to kill themselves is operating at a level beyond criminal laws. Nepal probably needs to keep suicide legal for purposes of inheritance, so that surviving families don't suffer. Laws that penalize suicide risk encouraging non-suicide suicides that endanger other people such as "suicide-by-police".