Because those are separate problems with separate solutions.
If people use guns to kill themselves, will they stop killing themselves if we take the guns away? Maybe some will, if the alternatives take so much more time, but the impact won’t be massive. Instead of making suicide harder, we should be treating the root cause of suicide, which is desperation (i.e. have a decent social safety net) and depression (make mental health resources widely available).
If people get hurt due to gun accidents, I highly doubt they’d be happy if we took their guns away, since that’s like solving traffic deaths by banning cars. The better solution is to improve safety features on guns and teach people gun safety so they can use them safely, or in the car example, we should be improving road design and driving education (and making cars less necessary, but that’s a separate point).
Suicides and gun accidents are certainly interesting statistics, but mixing them with homicides just makes it harder to see what’s going on and arrive at effective solutions.
If people use guns to kill themselves, will they stop killing themselves if we take the guns away? Maybe some will, if the alternatives take so much more time, but the impact won’t be massive.
Generally yes, Suicide tends to be a spur of the moment decision to go through with it and having immediate access to a very easy, very lethal method increases the rate significantly. There have been numerous studies that show that putting up barriers at bridges etc that are commonly jumped from dreastically reduces the suicide rate from them without raising it elsewhere e.g.
Instead of making suicide harder, we should be treating the root cause of suicide
Or… both?
If people get hurt due to gun accidents, I highly doubt they’d be happy if we took their guns away, since that’s like solving traffic deaths by banning cars.
it’s not even remotely the same thing since cars’ primary purpose is not killing. Also there’s a very wide middle ground of options between “do nothing” and “take all guns away”. This is not a binarry issue.
Suicides and gun accidents are certainly interesting statistics, but mixing them with homicides just makes it harder to see what’s going on and arrive at effective solutions.
it doesn’t really. what does make it harder to arrive at effective solutions is making any excuse possible to avoid gun control.
Because those are separate problems with separate solutions.
If people use guns to kill themselves, will they stop killing themselves if we take the guns away? Maybe some will, if the alternatives take so much more time, but the impact won’t be massive. Instead of making suicide harder, we should be treating the root cause of suicide, which is desperation (i.e. have a decent social safety net) and depression (make mental health resources widely available).
If people get hurt due to gun accidents, I highly doubt they’d be happy if we took their guns away, since that’s like solving traffic deaths by banning cars. The better solution is to improve safety features on guns and teach people gun safety so they can use them safely, or in the car example, we should be improving road design and driving education (and making cars less necessary, but that’s a separate point).
Suicides and gun accidents are certainly interesting statistics, but mixing them with homicides just makes it harder to see what’s going on and arrive at effective solutions.
Generally yes, Suicide tends to be a spur of the moment decision to go through with it and having immediate access to a very easy, very lethal method increases the rate significantly. There have been numerous studies that show that putting up barriers at bridges etc that are commonly jumped from dreastically reduces the suicide rate from them without raising it elsewhere e.g.
Or… both?
it’s not even remotely the same thing since cars’ primary purpose is not killing. Also there’s a very wide middle ground of options between “do nothing” and “take all guns away”. This is not a binarry issue.
it doesn’t really. what does make it harder to arrive at effective solutions is making any excuse possible to avoid gun control.