"They would have happened otherwise? You know this for certain, do you? "

No, and some wouldn't. But this was my point with the national statistics. If they wouldn't have happened otherwise, that means the US had 20,000 extra suicides that it wouldn't have had if guns were illegal, and that would be quite the bump in suicide rate. In reality, the US is very middle-of-the-road in suicide rate, which suggests that many of those people would probably be killing themselves some other way if they didn't have access to a gun.

Even if it's true that your position is the one of the courts pre-Heller (and I doubt that very much), Heller happened. Like Roe v. Wade and the Slaughterhouse cases, it's settled, no matter how badly you think the reasoning was.

"Ropes are a particularly tortuous and difficult way to kill yourself. The ease of killing is a factor in the decision to do it."

Then insert sleeping pills or running your car in the garage. The point isn't the rope per se, but that people who want to commit suicide will do it regardless of whether there's a gun about.

Roe is not settled, as anybody who hasn't been living in a bunker has been able to notice from all the heartbeat bills and other restrictions being passed.

And even if Heller was 'settled' it doesn't mean my interpretation is bizarre compared to Heller's unprecedented decision. That's irrelevant.

Evidently Invictus & Semck are experts in suicide and the mind of the suicidal. No surprise here, it means protecting access to their dangerous toys.

Why does suicide strongly correlate with lax gun laws in the USA? Just a funny coincidence that Wyoming has the highest rate in the country and the laxest gun laws.

Settled doesn't mean people won't challenge it, it just means they'll lose. As they have.

It does mean your interpretation is bizarre. It doesn't reflect reality. You'll challenge it in court and every judge will say something to the effect of "Sorry, Heller" and it's over, johnny.

No they haven't, as these laws haven't been repealed and subsequent SC decisions have been passed which restrict the scope of Roe. Sorry, johnny.

"Just a funny coincidence that Wyoming has the highest rate in the country and the laxest gun laws."

Could just be that's it's pretty goddamn depressing to live in Wyoming.


I don't claim to be an expert on suicide. I hope I never am even close. I just know that people will kill themselves regardless of whether there's a gun, and it's dishonest to include suicides in a statistic claiming that gun violence has killed more people over the last 45 years than all of America's wars.

Putin jus' mad cause he ain't got no gun.

"I just know that people will kill themselves regardless of whether there's a gun"

No, you don't that. You and Semck are just assuming that, all the while laughingly calling me dishonest and hilariously in Semck's case accusing me of making shit up. When your whole argument is just one big assertion without support.

"No they haven't, as these laws haven't been repealed and subsequent SC decisions have been passed which restrict the scope of Roe. Sorry, johnny."

First off, it's SCOTUS.

It's been restricted, sure. But that's a far different thing than overturning it.

"Evidently Invictus & Semck are experts in suicide and the mind of the suicidal. No surprise here, it means protecting access to their dangerous toys."

Well, no, although I know a good deal more than I'd like. But I do know something about statistics.

It's always possible that none of those people would be killing themselves if there weren't guns. But it would follow that Americans were one of the least suicidal nations in the world.

"Why does suicide strongly correlate with lax gun laws in the USA? Just a funny coincidence that Wyoming has the highest rate in the country and the laxest gun laws."

A lot of cold, barren western states have high suicide rates. As Invictus says, they're depressing places.

But I'm curious. Do you actually believe that the US has a remarkably UN-suicidal population, and a huge percentage of these people would not be killing themselves otherwise, leading us to vastly outperform other western nations in this statistic?

So how did the Romans kill themselves? Or any depressed person before 1700 or whenever guns were the sort of thing anyone could own? It's crazy how you're picking quite possibly the weakest method possible of arguing your anti-gun cause.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

I'm almost certain the Greenlanders, Koreans, Lithuanians etc all kill themselves with guns, they too should ban gun ownership

Oh wait...

Ah, Greenland, the least densely populated nation in the world... very useful for making points regarding the United States...

By the way, just a statistical observation - but if you're going to remove the suicides from the "gun death" statistics, you should remove suicides from the statistics for armed forces personnel killed in wars, too.

In 2009, 319 American military personnel were killed in Afghanistan, and 150 were killed in Iraq. In the same year, 334 active* American military personnel committed suicide.

*i.e. not veterans, among whom the suicide rate is much higher.

(Sorry - citation: http://www.globalresearch.ca/marked-increase-in-us-military-suicides/5345552)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Guyana

"About 40% of people who commit suicide in Guyana poison themselves by consuming agricultural pesticides"

We might also ban those damn pesticides as well

You realize that the EU has banned a number of those pesticides, right?

Citation

"Ah, Greenland, the least densely populated nation in the world... very useful for making points regarding the United States..."

Well it's interesting you say that, bo. As others have pointed out in responding to putin's points, it is also the least densely populated states in the US that have the highest suicide rates. You're probably onto something a lot more relevant than guns, right there.

But if you don't like Greenland, for the statistical point, then how about South Korea, Russia, Ukraine, Belgium, or France? All have higher suicides than the US.

By the way, now that you've grasped the important differences that population and density can make, may we assume we'll never have to put up with a thread comparing the economies or health care systems of Scandinavia with the US? (Not that I know if you've ever done so).

Probably not because people were eating them to commit suicide. Any pesticide will kill you if you eat enough, they likely just banned ones that had some other effect on the environment.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2012:026:0023:0025:EN:PDF

(Sorry, that was a citation for Santa C)

" By the way, just a statistical observation - but if you're going to remove the suicides from the "gun death" statistics, you should remove suicides from the statistics for armed forces personnel killed in wars, too. "

Yes that's a mildly fair point. It would make the statistics a little harder to collect, but it wouldn't change the falsehood of putin's claim.

I say it's only a mildly fair point, because the suicide rate is vastly higher among the military than among civilians. Unlike the case with guns (where the suicide rate is at most slightly higher where guns are legal than otherwise), there is a very strong case to be made that those mililtary suicides are casualties of war.

But like I say, remove them if you wish. A factor of two won't help putin's absurd claim.

We might as well go and buy some clorox, maybe we too might be praised by thousands of teenage girls and become internet celebrities, and if you're lucky enough you might even get your own FB page.

@ semck: I wasn't seeking either to support or dispute Putin's case, I was just saying that removing the suicides from one data set, but leaving them in the other, would be a bit shoddy.