Senior men have higher rates of suicide than average, and firearms were involved in more than three-quarters of those deaths in 2021, according to a CDC report
Senior men have higher rates of suicide than average, and firearms were involved in more than three-quarters of those deaths in 2021, according to a CDC report
Not just me, but everybody involved in suicide prevention. It doesn’t matter how unintuitive you find it, means reduction works.
Suicide is an impulse and when people have access to guns, they can act on that impulse in minutes, if not seconds. It’s painless and requires zero preparation time.
What other method even comes close?
You might have the tools to slit your wrists, but it hurts, it’s easy to get wrong, takes much longer than you’d think and sucks the entire time.
It’s also extemely difficult to seriously injure yourself on purpose. Most people have heard of “hesitation marks” but nobody has heard of “hesitation gunshots”, because they’re not a thing.
Okay, so what about hanging? For most people, step 1 is going to be Googling “how to tie a noose”, which will immediately present them with local suicide prevention resources.
So fuck it, lets head outside.
Maybe jump off something high? How long would it take you to get to a bridge or building that would definitely be fatal? Would you need to drive? Would you need directions? Could you leave without anybody asking where you were going? Once you got there, could you climb on the edge without being seen by passers by, all of whom will immediately try and help you or call someone who can.
And of course once you were looking out over the edge, could you do it? It’s terrifying and a very primal survival instinct will tell you to stop. Even once you jump, you’re still not arriving at oblivion faster than someone with a gun would.
Maybe you could overdose on something? The 90s made it look so cool. But of course, few people have fatal amounts of drugs just laying around and for most people, it’s far quicker and easier to go to a gun store.
So whats left? Shit that practically nobody does, despite the pro-gun community insist every suicide method is the same. People don’t gouge their eyes to get to their brain or feed themselves into a tablesaw.
No, it doesn’t sound like that at all, you just want to signal to others that you’re not right wing but still love guns.
But sure, we can stick with that analogy. Do women who aren’t pregnant still have abortions? Do they just find another medical proceedure to have instead?
If you’re pro gun, there’s no use pretending “saving womens lives” is a thing you care about. 70 women are shot and killed by their partners each month, over 4 million report being threatened with a gun.
Abusers with access to guns are 5x more likely to kill their partners and guess what the gun lobby does? Openly opposes domestic abusers losing their guns.
Suicide is everything from highly planned to impulsive. You’ve built your argument on a fallacy.
So this isn’t about male suicide but guns…
Great minimization to wedge your rhetoric.
When the causes of death is compared across genders is blatantly obvious the difference is the means to ACT on it. Men are less likely to seek help, more likely to ACT. This is not a uniquely American issue, its world wide in fact America does not rank in the top 20 countries.
To make my point, here is the Australian suicide statistics. Notice how its the same problem and we do not have guns accessible? https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/deaths-by-suicide-in-australia/suicide-deaths-over-time
Sure, I probably should have said “many suicides are an impulse”, but you’re going to have to do better then semantics.
But if that’s the game we’re playing, by your own admission, it’s not a fallacy, it just doesn’t cover every suicide.
Which is fine, because I’ll never claim that gun control will prevent all suicides, but the types of impulse suicides I specifically detailed.
Means reduction is means reduction. It remains one of the most effective methods of suicide prevention and that wont change just because this particular means reduction upsets pro-gun reactionaries.
People also got upset when their access to barbiturates, toxic gas and easy to jump off bridges was reduced. But people went ahead and saved a measurable number of lives anyway, because bridge aficionados aren’t part of a death cult backed by a powerful lobby group.
So you’re saying that men have greater access to some kind of “means”, that are more lethal than other means, which increases the number of them that die by suicide?
Damn, who’d’ve though?
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m the one advocating that we take steps to reduce the suicide rate, using repeatedly proven strategies.
It’s the pro-gun commenters that you seemingly agree with who are advocating that we do less.
I even did it without bringing gender into it, because I don’t feel that someones genitals makes their suicide any more of less tragic.
Unfortunately, that didn’t stop you from seeing the words “women” and “suicide” used in the same post and twisting it into something you could get upset about.
Yep, I see the statistics that have nothing to do with the point I was making.