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That's not a particularly compelling argument. It suggests we should never attempt to solve any problem, because other smaller problems will continue to exist a

That's not a particularly compelling argument. It suggests we should never attempt to solve any problem, because other smaller problems will continue to exist and we need to solve them to.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
That's not the argument at all. Rather it's that if you address the root cause, which you need to do anyway, then you don't need to worry about mitigations. If your house has a gas leak and someone says "don't turn on the light, it's dangerous" then even if they're right, the real solution is to do something about the gas leak, not to sit in darkness and do nothing while your house is full of gas. And once the gas is out of your house there is no reason not to turn on the light.
- tomlockwood 7y ago
  Luckily for gun control advocates the rate of firearm injuries also sharply increases for households that own guns, too. So while yeah, there may be other issues with mental health, gun training, domestic violence etc, you can significantly reduce deaths and injuries by removing guns - which people often have because they think having a gun will reduce those.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    > Luckily for gun control advocates the rate of firearm injuries also sharply increases for households that own guns, too. Uh, ... wow. "Luckily?" > you can significantly reduce deaths and injuries by removing guns - which people often have because they think having a gun will reduce those. There may be better ways to reduce these than trying to remove the guns, though-- ways that mitigate and reduce harm and that don't impact personal liberties or the beneficial aspects of firearms.
    - tomlockwood 7y ago
      Gun ownership decreases liberty via death.
    - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
      > Uh, ... wow. "Luckily?" That is what one would say if they were grateful for the deaths, isn't it? Isn't it just a bonus that it happens to The Other?
      - tomlockwood 7y ago
        Considering my argument has been about attempting to reduce gun deaths you might want to reconsider that assumption. However, lucky for you, I'm pretty sure that assumption would make it easier for you to dismiss my argument. I say lucky for you, but what I really mean to say is it'd be bad if you did that. Its a little turn of phrase that isn't literal and which is probably lost via text. Lets reduce gun deaths. They are tragic and often unnecessary. Also, fear of The Other, seems to be what drives some of the people in this thread to defend gun ownership. One responder here justified gun ownership by saying other people were "animals" that given the chance would exact violence upon them.
        mlyle 7y ago
        I spend a lot of time at and around a cabin up in the Sierras; sometimes with no means to contact law enforcement; and other times with law enforcement about 45 minutes out. 99.9% of people you might meet are decent folks. But there's meth around, etc. I'm not a huge dude. I probably would have already been stabbed if not for carrying a firearm during some of the questionable encounters I've had up there. What do you propose for my use case?
        tomlockwood 7y ago
        If your use case is staying safe and alive, and you already own a gun, my recommendation is that you seek out psychological support every now and then. Obviously, this is difficult in a rural community, which is probably one of the factors that makes committing suicide by gun a much higher risk amongst men in rural communities than murder. Also, regardless of whether police are 45 minutes or 10 minutes away, that's not going to help you during a meth-fuelled knife attack. But, putting all that aside, a gun won't protect you if someone sneaks up on you. If you're in a cabin in the sierras, you probably aren't encountering thousands of people, so your risk of getting stabbed is considerably lower than someone in a city. If someone's far enough away from you a bolt-action is probably good enough to protect you. They're legal in Australia - you can own one if you pass the licensing requirements. Presumably you haven't shot anyone yet, so I'm pretty sure calibre isn't a concern. So the real scenario you're worried about, in your mountain cabin in the Sierras, is someone being close enough to stab you, or too drug-addled or foolhardy to care about being threatened or shot with a 22 and not sneaking up on you. My question to you is why you see that as more of a risk than suicide? Is addressing the use case of defence against violent crime worth the excess risk you are exposing yourself to? Not many people expect to be struck with depression, but it happens, particularly in rural communities - and there's a lot of evidence of that, too.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > So while yeah, there may be other issues with mental health, gun training, domestic violence etc, you can significantly reduce deaths and injuries by removing guns - which people often have because they think having a gun will reduce those. The thing about statistics is that they have causes. More people having guns causes more criminals to be shot (or, better yet, deterred), but also more accidents. But those are two different things, one good and one bad, so why don't we work to reduce the bad and keep the good instead of losing both? We know that much of the bad is caused by poor safety training and by teenagers, so why not add firearms safety training to the school curriculum? How many accidental deaths would be prevented by a semester of "always assume it's loaded and don't point the barrel at anything you wouldn't want to shoot"? We know that gun safes and range practice reduce accidents, so why not institute some tax incentives? These things may cost less than requiring additional law enforcement and much less than accidental shootings. And soon you have a net positive instead of a net negative. (Though your original claim did fail to account for the deterrent effect on crime. Which is hard to measure since it's area-wide rather than per-household given that criminals know local culture but not which individual households are armed, but just measuring the households with firearms against those without fails to account for it at all.)
    - tomlockwood 7y ago
      > The thing about statistics is that they have causes. More people having guns causes more criminals to be shot (or, better yet, deterred), but also more accidents. Actually, people tend to more often die of homicide if they own a gun.
- DanBC 7y ago
  Metaphors are unhelpful. First of all, here's the US CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicideTechnicalPackage.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicideTechnicalP... Page 12 says "Reduce access to lethal means among persons at risk of suicide" Here's the World Health Organisation: https://www.who.int/mental_health/mhgap/evidence/suicide/q7/en/ https://www.who.int/mental_health/mhgap/evidence/suicide/q7/... > At the population level, restricting access to means of self-harm (such as pesticides, firearms, high places) is recommended. > Strength of recommendation: STRONG > Quality of the evidence: MODERATE > Collaboration between health and other relevant sectors should be established and the community should be involved actively to find locally feasible ways to implement interventions at the population level to reduce access to means of suicide to decrease deaths from suicide, suicide attempts and acts of self-harm. > Strength of recommendation: STRONG > Quality of the evidence: MODERATE If you have tens of thousands of people dying each year from one method of suicide you need to reduce access to that method while you're putting in place other stuff to reduce suicidality in the population. The reducing access to means and methods is equivalent in your metaphor to "as you're leaving this gas filled house do not strike any matches". In your analogy "doing something about the gas leak" (fixing suicidality across a population) is something that takes years of concerted effort across national and local government agencies, see the linked CDC report above for examples. By not reducing access to means and methods you're saying you're content for people to die a painful death in gas explosions because you think the gas leaks should be fixed quicker, even though everyone who knows anything about gas leaks is telling that's not how it works.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > Page 12 says "Reduce access to lethal means among persons at risk of suicide" Yes of course. People on psychiatric hold shouldn't have access to firearms any more than they should have access to cutlery or shoelaces. > The reducing access to means and methods is equivalent in your metaphor to "as you're leaving this gas filled house do not strike any matches". Leaving the house is equivalent to a psychiatric hold. > If you have tens of thousands of people dying each year from one method of suicide you need to reduce access to that method while you're putting in place other stuff to reduce suicidality in the population. We already do this for anyone known to be at immediate risk, the problem is in accurately identifying who that is. There is also a real risk that if you do things like condition voluntary outpatient psychiatric treatment on losing access to firearms, that would deter people who own firearms from seeking treatment. Then the choice isn't between treatment and firearms or treatment and no firearms, it's between firearms and treatment or firearms and no treatment. > In your analogy "doing something about the gas leak" (fixing suicidality across a population) is something that takes years of concerted effort across national and local government agencies, see the linked CDC report above for examples. Which is, nonetheless, still the only real solution. What are you suggesting that we do? Declare a state of emergency and confiscate all firearms, but then give them back in a few years once we better address the root causes of suicide? Considering that firearms are used in about half of US suicide deaths and some non-zero number those would only switch to another method, that seems rather extreme for a temporary solution that would solve less than half of the problem, even if it wasn't politically infeasible. And spending time fighting over that instead of starting to address the root causes right now means that the same number of people die in the short term (as we do nothing but argue) and more die in the long term because it's that much longer before a real solution that addresses the problem independent of method is actually implemented. We know that there is a large contingent of people who oppose restricting firearms, but who is it in opposition to getting underway with this "concerted effort across national and local government agencies" right away?

That's not a particularly compelling argument. It suggests we should never attempt to solve any problem, because other smaller problems will continue to exist and we need to solve them to.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

That's not the argument at all. Rather it's that if you address the root cause, which you need to do anyway, then you don't need to worry about mitigations. If your house has a gas leak and someone says "don't turn on the light, it's dangerous" then even if they're right, the real solution is to do something about the gas leak, not to sit in darkness and do nothing while your house is full of gas. And once the gas is out of your house there is no reason not to turn on the light.

tomlockwood 7y ago
Luckily for gun control advocates the rate of firearm injuries also sharply increases for households that own guns, too. So while yeah, there may be other issues with mental health, gun training, domestic violence etc, you can significantly reduce deaths and injuries by removing guns - which people often have because they think having a gun will reduce those.
- mlyle 7y ago
  > Luckily for gun control advocates the rate of firearm injuries also sharply increases for households that own guns, too. Uh, ... wow. "Luckily?" > you can significantly reduce deaths and injuries by removing guns - which people often have because they think having a gun will reduce those. There may be better ways to reduce these than trying to remove the guns, though-- ways that mitigate and reduce harm and that don't impact personal liberties or the beneficial aspects of firearms.
  - tomlockwood 7y ago
    Gun ownership decreases liberty via death.
  - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
    > Uh, ... wow. "Luckily?" That is what one would say if they were grateful for the deaths, isn't it? Isn't it just a bonus that it happens to The Other?
    - tomlockwood 7y ago
      Considering my argument has been about attempting to reduce gun deaths you might want to reconsider that assumption. However, lucky for you, I'm pretty sure that assumption would make it easier for you to dismiss my argument. I say lucky for you, but what I really mean to say is it'd be bad if you did that. Its a little turn of phrase that isn't literal and which is probably lost via text. Lets reduce gun deaths. They are tragic and often unnecessary. Also, fear of The Other, seems to be what drives some of the people in this thread to defend gun ownership. One responder here justified gun ownership by saying other people were "animals" that given the chance would exact violence upon them.
      - mlyle 7y ago
        I spend a lot of time at and around a cabin up in the Sierras; sometimes with no means to contact law enforcement; and other times with law enforcement about 45 minutes out. 99.9% of people you might meet are decent folks. But there's meth around, etc. I'm not a huge dude. I probably would have already been stabbed if not for carrying a firearm during some of the questionable encounters I've had up there. What do you propose for my use case?
        tomlockwood 7y ago
        If your use case is staying safe and alive, and you already own a gun, my recommendation is that you seek out psychological support every now and then. Obviously, this is difficult in a rural community, which is probably one of the factors that makes committing suicide by gun a much higher risk amongst men in rural communities than murder. Also, regardless of whether police are 45 minutes or 10 minutes away, that's not going to help you during a meth-fuelled knife attack. But, putting all that aside, a gun won't protect you if someone sneaks up on you. If you're in a cabin in the sierras, you probably aren't encountering thousands of people, so your risk of getting stabbed is considerably lower than someone in a city. If someone's far enough away from you a bolt-action is probably good enough to protect you. They're legal in Australia - you can own one if you pass the licensing requirements. Presumably you haven't shot anyone yet, so I'm pretty sure calibre isn't a concern. So the real scenario you're worried about, in your mountain cabin in the Sierras, is someone being close enough to stab you, or too drug-addled or foolhardy to care about being threatened or shot with a 22 and not sneaking up on you. My question to you is why you see that as more of a risk than suicide? Is addressing the use case of defence against violent crime worth the excess risk you are exposing yourself to? Not many people expect to be struck with depression, but it happens, particularly in rural communities - and there's a lot of evidence of that, too.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > So while yeah, there may be other issues with mental health, gun training, domestic violence etc, you can significantly reduce deaths and injuries by removing guns - which people often have because they think having a gun will reduce those. The thing about statistics is that they have causes. More people having guns causes more criminals to be shot (or, better yet, deterred), but also more accidents. But those are two different things, one good and one bad, so why don't we work to reduce the bad and keep the good instead of losing both? We know that much of the bad is caused by poor safety training and by teenagers, so why not add firearms safety training to the school curriculum? How many accidental deaths would be prevented by a semester of "always assume it's loaded and don't point the barrel at anything you wouldn't want to shoot"? We know that gun safes and range practice reduce accidents, so why not institute some tax incentives? These things may cost less than requiring additional law enforcement and much less than accidental shootings. And soon you have a net positive instead of a net negative. (Though your original claim did fail to account for the deterrent effect on crime. Which is hard to measure since it's area-wide rather than per-household given that criminals know local culture but not which individual households are armed, but just measuring the households with firearms against those without fails to account for it at all.)
  - tomlockwood 7y ago
    > The thing about statistics is that they have causes. More people having guns causes more criminals to be shot (or, better yet, deterred), but also more accidents. Actually, people tend to more often die of homicide if they own a gun.
DanBC 7y ago
Metaphors are unhelpful. First of all, here's the US CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicideTechnicalPackage.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicideTechnicalP... Page 12 says "Reduce access to lethal means among persons at risk of suicide" Here's the World Health Organisation: https://www.who.int/mental_health/mhgap/evidence/suicide/q7/en/ https://www.who.int/mental_health/mhgap/evidence/suicide/q7/... > At the population level, restricting access to means of self-harm (such as pesticides, firearms, high places) is recommended. > Strength of recommendation: STRONG > Quality of the evidence: MODERATE > Collaboration between health and other relevant sectors should be established and the community should be involved actively to find locally feasible ways to implement interventions at the population level to reduce access to means of suicide to decrease deaths from suicide, suicide attempts and acts of self-harm. > Strength of recommendation: STRONG > Quality of the evidence: MODERATE If you have tens of thousands of people dying each year from one method of suicide you need to reduce access to that method while you're putting in place other stuff to reduce suicidality in the population. The reducing access to means and methods is equivalent in your metaphor to "as you're leaving this gas filled house do not strike any matches". In your analogy "doing something about the gas leak" (fixing suicidality across a population) is something that takes years of concerted effort across national and local government agencies, see the linked CDC report above for examples. By not reducing access to means and methods you're saying you're content for people to die a painful death in gas explosions because you think the gas leaks should be fixed quicker, even though everyone who knows anything about gas leaks is telling that's not how it works.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > Page 12 says "Reduce access to lethal means among persons at risk of suicide" Yes of course. People on psychiatric hold shouldn't have access to firearms any more than they should have access to cutlery or shoelaces. > The reducing access to means and methods is equivalent in your metaphor to "as you're leaving this gas filled house do not strike any matches". Leaving the house is equivalent to a psychiatric hold. > If you have tens of thousands of people dying each year from one method of suicide you need to reduce access to that method while you're putting in place other stuff to reduce suicidality in the population. We already do this for anyone known to be at immediate risk, the problem is in accurately identifying who that is. There is also a real risk that if you do things like condition voluntary outpatient psychiatric treatment on losing access to firearms, that would deter people who own firearms from seeking treatment. Then the choice isn't between treatment and firearms or treatment and no firearms, it's between firearms and treatment or firearms and no treatment. > In your analogy "doing something about the gas leak" (fixing suicidality across a population) is something that takes years of concerted effort across national and local government agencies, see the linked CDC report above for examples. Which is, nonetheless, still the only real solution. What are you suggesting that we do? Declare a state of emergency and confiscate all firearms, but then give them back in a few years once we better address the root causes of suicide? Considering that firearms are used in about half of US suicide deaths and some non-zero number those would only switch to another method, that seems rather extreme for a temporary solution that would solve less than half of the problem, even if it wasn't politically infeasible. And spending time fighting over that instead of starting to address the root causes right now means that the same number of people die in the short term (as we do nothing but argue) and more die in the long term because it's that much longer before a real solution that addresses the problem independent of method is actually implemented. We know that there is a large contingent of people who oppose restricting firearms, but who is it in opposition to getting underway with this "concerted effort across national and local government agencies" right away?