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As someone else pointed out, including suicides in gun death statistics is pointless: they would have found another method had guns not been available. I looke

by Firehed 14y ago

As someone else pointed out, including suicides in gun death statistics is pointless: they would have found another method had guns not been available. I looked into the stats briefly on murders per 100k by country, and the US was somewhere in the middle of the pack. If you assume that removing guns would eliminate those deaths (I doubt this), we were actually quite safe. If on the other hand you assume that those deaths would have been caused in other ways - we are still in the middle of the pack.

philwelch 14y ago
Let's be honest, the biggest factor is organized crime, and the strongest correlates are with the drug trade.
MartinCron 14y ago
As someone else pointed out, including suicides in gun death statistics is pointless: they would have found another method had guns not been available That implies that suicide is a rational act committed by rational actors. The fact that suicide prevention fences on bridges absolutely have been proven to work refutes that. Regardless, it is misleading to include suicides when talking about gun violence, just how it's misleading to only talk about rifles when talking about gun violence.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  > The fact that suicide prevention fences on bridges absolutely have been proven to work refutes that. Have they been proven to prevent suicide, or to prevent suicide by jumping from a bridge? I always thought those were to stop people from throwing crap at cars/trains anyway; I have never seen them on bridges that just go over water. I've also noticed that you can often judge the niceness of an area by what they put along the sides of bridges: if nothing then it is probably a nice area, if a fence then it is not notably nice but kind of average, if a corrugated steel then it is probably a fairly shitty area.
  - MartinCron 14y ago
    Yes, they do prevent suicide, putting up a fence on bridge A will not increase jumpers at nearby bridge B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bridge#Prevention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bridge#Prevention Suicide is not a rational act, common sense does not apply here.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      That seems like a very poor experiment to me. What happens to the total suicide rate in a city when suicide fences go up?
      - simonw 14y ago
        A cursory reading of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_prevention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_prevention suggests that it is widely understood that reducing access to easy methods reduces the overall incidents of suicide. This makes intuitive sense to me: it's common for people to be hospitalised for attempted suicide and then make a full physical and mental recovery - this outcome is less likely if a gun or bridge is involved.

by Firehed 14y ago

philwelch 14y ago

Let's be honest, the biggest factor is organized crime, and the strongest correlates are with the drug trade.

MartinCron 14y ago

As someone else pointed out, including suicides in gun death statistics is pointless: they would have found another method had guns not been available That implies that suicide is a rational act committed by rational actors. The fact that suicide prevention fences on bridges absolutely have been proven to work refutes that. Regardless, it is misleading to include suicides when talking about gun violence, just how it's misleading to only talk about rifles when talking about gun violence.

jlgreco 14y ago
> The fact that suicide prevention fences on bridges absolutely have been proven to work refutes that. Have they been proven to prevent suicide, or to prevent suicide by jumping from a bridge? I always thought those were to stop people from throwing crap at cars/trains anyway; I have never seen them on bridges that just go over water. I've also noticed that you can often judge the niceness of an area by what they put along the sides of bridges: if nothing then it is probably a nice area, if a fence then it is not notably nice but kind of average, if a corrugated steel then it is probably a fairly shitty area.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  Yes, they do prevent suicide, putting up a fence on bridge A will not increase jumpers at nearby bridge B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bridge#Prevention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bridge#Prevention Suicide is not a rational act, common sense does not apply here.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    That seems like a very poor experiment to me. What happens to the total suicide rate in a city when suicide fences go up?
    - simonw 14y ago
      A cursory reading of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_prevention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_prevention suggests that it is widely understood that reducing access to easy methods reduces the overall incidents of suicide. This makes intuitive sense to me: it's common for people to be hospitalised for attempted suicide and then make a full physical and mental recovery - this outcome is less likely if a gun or bridge is involved.