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If you had a way of ascertaining the path to the back door, that is the one you should follow if you can. Duck out the back, run to the neighbors, call 911. That's how it works if you want to remain alive.
Under what system of ethics should an innocent person have to retreat from an aggressor, rather than put a stop to the aggression?
You really need to separate out the suicides from homicides and accidental deaths.
Reminder: Dead is dead. There are no shades of death. In considering the matter of gun-related deaths, the intent or lack thereof is not even remotely relevant. This whole idea is a scurrilously dishonest smokescreen
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
Japan has a higher suicide rate than the US. In Japan, the most common method is hanging.
More naked diversionary escapism. The thread has not a thing to do with hanging-related death. It has to do with the massive amounts GUN-RELATED death and mayhem that plague this country. Try to stick to the actual topic. Try to tell us what you would be willing to do or see done to help reduce the tragic toll that individuals and families pay every day as the result of uncontrolled gun-violence.
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
Reducing gun related suicides in the US is a mental health problem, not a gun problem.
Totally wrong yet again. The whole idea in suicide-prevention is to introduce delay -- precious time in which a conflicted or confused person can come to change his or her mind. Guns do EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE. They make it not just possible, but all too probable, that a moment's weakness will come to produce an irreversible tragedy. GUNS are the problem. It's just the GUNS.
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
Accidental deaths are by and large a result of poor firearms training and irresponsibility.
Accidental deaths from guns are 100% the result of the presence of guns. Absent a gun, no case of accidental gun-related death has ever been recorded. Of course, it may not be the gun-owner who ends up dead. It may well be some unrelated person who would never in a million years have allowed a gun into his or her home.
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
A significant number of homicides are domestic violence situations. Remove the gun, and substitution of another method is likely.
And death is again nowhere near as likely. FACE THE SIMPLE FACTS HERE: It's the freaking guns that make the outcome of death so much more likely in a whole variety of circumstances. Simply put, it's guns that are the problem.
Under what system of ethics should an innocent person have to retreat from an aggressor, rather than put a stop to the aggression?
That would be under any system of ethics that places a value upon survival. I know you all do that "Go ahead, make my day!" thing in front of the bathroom mirror every morning, but the simple facts are that trying to pull a weapon on an armed intruder is the best way to get yourself killed. Over mere stuff that your insurance would have replaced anyway. How freaking dumb is that? If you want to live to embrace your friends and family ever again, do the best you can to retreat, get out, and run away. That's what works. Testosterone doesn't work. Even in Texas.
Reminder: Dead is dead. There are no shades of death. In considering the matter of gun-related deaths, the intent or lack thereof is not even remotely relevant. This whole idea is a scurrilously dishonest smokescreen
Intent is indeed relevant. As I previously showed you, countries with strict control of firearms still can have high suicide rates. Making guns more difficult to get does not stop suicides. Therefore suicides should not be included in an argument for gun control.
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More naked diversionary escapism. The thread has not a thing to do with hanging-related death. It has to do with the massive amounts GUN-RELATED death and mayhem that plague this country. Try to stick to the actual topic. Try to tell us what you would be willing to do or see done to help reduce the tragic toll that individuals and families pay every day as the result of uncontrolled gun-violence.
The point is that banning guns does not prevent all suicides. A person determined to kill himself can just substitute another method.
I would like to see more funding for mental health care in this country. Psychiatry is so poorly reimbursed compared to some other medical specialties that medical school graduates do not want to enter the field and there is a shortage. Domestic violence needs to be prosecuted more stringently, without the need for the battered party to press charges and with prison sentences for batterers.
I would have no problem requiring anyone who wants to buy a handgun to have formal instruction on gun safety and handling and storing the weapon, including a gun safe if there are children in the home. (To those who would say that that discriminates against poor people, if you are too poor to pay for a safe and a gun course, you probably should not be spending several hundred dollars on a gun, either.)
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Totally wrong yet again. The whole idea in suicide-prevention is to introduce delay -- precious time in which a conflicted or confused person can come to change his or her mind. Guns do EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE. They make it not just possible, but all too probable, that a moment's weakness will come to produce an irreversible tragedy. GUNS are the problem. It's just the GUNS.
Someone can choose to hang himself with items quickly available in any home.
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Accidental deaths from guns are 100% the result of the presence of guns. Absent a gun, no case of accidental gun-related death has ever been recorded. Of course, it may not be the gun-owner who ends up dead. It may well be some unrelated person who would never in a million years have allowed a gun into his or her home.
That is why anyone who owns a gun should be required to demonstrate knowledge of gun safety.
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And death is again nowhere near as likely. FACE THE SIMPLE FACTS HERE: It's the freaking guns that make the outcome of death so much more likely in a whole variety of circumstances. Simply put, it's guns that are the problem.
A knife or hammer can make you just as dead as a gun.
It's not as if anyone argues that guns get up by themselves and shoot people. Many of us just don't see a reason why so many people need to have the ability to kill people so easily and so MANY of them (as you can with a gun).
Yesterday I watched my movie 'THE ISLAND' from 1980 and the guys son JUSTIN wanted to buy a gun and they had a discussion about it and the son said "Guns dont kill people,PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE" and the father joined him in saying it...
So even in 1980 they thought about this!! -- No guns alone dont do it (Usually),THEY NEED A HOST!!
Intent is indeed relevant. As I previously showed you, countries with strict control of firearms still can have high suicide rates.
The concern once again is harm-reduction. Any sort of barrier that slows down or prevents access to the most common and most efficient means of suicide would help lower rates of suicide, not to mention other gun-related causes of death. No one believes that suicide itself can be eliminated.
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
Making guns more difficult to get does not stop suicides. Therefore suicides should not be included in an argument for gun control.
So any step that does not stop suicides altogether is not worth undertaking? The concept of marginal improvement is simply not to be recognized? Should we repeal all our drunk driving laws because alcohol-related fatalities still occur on our highways?
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
The point is that banning guns does not prevent all suicides. A person determined to kill himself can just substitute another method.
Yet again, this is not a point at all. Suicide attempts are typically impulsive acts. Introducing delay to create time for a person to reconsider and think things through in a different light is the #1 tactic of suicide prevention. Guns, in stark contrast, do exactly the opposite -- they speed up the process and make its worst possible outcome more likely. This is NOT a good thing.
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
I would like to see more funding for mental health care in this country.
Yes, of course, and so would the NRA, because they and others immediately rebrand any person who commits a gun crime as having been plagued with undetected forms of mental illness. Of course, the day before the crime, they had all been seen as rational law-abiding model citizen types whose 2nd Amendment rights could never be compromised or violated. Such a simplistic bunch of patent post hoc flim-flam.
Moderator cut: Off Topic
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
Domestic violence needs to be prosecuted more stringently, without the need for the battered party to press charges and with prison sentences for batterers.
Dead victims of course can't file any charges at all, and easy access to guns in the home creates dead victims out of ordinary family spats and squabbles at quite an alarming rate. These situations are also rife for sudden impulsive action that guns only turn into instant and permanent tragedy.
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
I would have no problem requiring anyone who wants to buy a handgun to have formal instruction on gun safety...
The first rule of gun safety is not to shoot yourself or anyone else. How much "formal instruction" do you think it will take to get that basic point across to people?
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
...and handling and storing the weapon, including a gun safe if there are children in the home.
You expect that folks will purchase handguns for self-defense within the home and then lock them all up inside a gun safe? I think I see a flaw in that reasoning.
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
(To those who would say that that discriminates against poor people, if you are too poor to pay for a safe and a gun course, you probably should not be spending several hundred dollars on a gun, either.)
Poor people won't be checking in with you for a budget review. Like many others, they'll simply be buying a (probably stolen) used gun on the street for fifty bucks or less.
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Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
Someone can choose to hang himself with items quickly available in any home.
That is why anyone who owns a gun should be required to demonstrate knowledge of gun safety.
A knife or hammer can make you just as dead as a gun.
You aren't likely to have the chance to take him out. Reach for a weapon, and you'll most likely end up bleeding out on the living room carpet as your family looks on in horror.
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Originally Posted by Slowpoke_TX
Wrong. Armed criminals are more likely to kill unarmed victims (witnesses) than armed victims (witnesses).
Too many James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson movies. People do not come to your home in order to kill you. They come to steal stuff (like your guns), and what they want is a quick and easy in and out with no surprises or hassles. They usually come when they think that no one is home, but they know that there can be trouble-makers out there, so they'll be armed and prepared to cut you down if they have to.
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Originally Posted by Slowpoke_TX
Insurance cannot replace the peace of mind that a rapist takes from a victim, nor can it replace the lives of those killed by a murderer.
It's always good to be rational about these things, and the simple facts are that there would be more to worry about in the idea of being attacked by an angry swarm of bees. No one at your house is apt to be the target of any sort of rape or murder plot. Both of these crimes are typically carried out by people who were known to the victims. Keep an eye on your poker buddies.
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Originally Posted by Slowpoke_TX
The armed intruder can shoot you as you run away. A dead intruder can't shoot anybody.
No armed intruder is going to just stand there while you go get your gun. He will have the drop on you, and you after all will be quaking in your slippers. It's a huge mismatch and one where the deck is not at all stacked in your favor. Run away if you can. If you cannot, do your best to hide and be very quite. If you can't do that either, sit calmly and quietly and do what you are told. Later on, you can go tell the undertaker how you cheated him out of some business.
That would be under any system of ethics that places a value upon survival. I know you all do that "Go ahead, make my day!" thing in front of the bathroom mirror every morning, but the simple facts are that trying to pull a weapon on an armed intruder is the best way to get yourself killed. Over mere stuff that your insurance would have replaced anyway. How freaking dumb is that? If you want to live to embrace your friends and family ever again, do the best you can to retreat, get out, and run away. That's what works. Testosterone doesn't work. Even in Texas.
Here is the problem with your take...
By the time you have discovered there is an intruder or multiple intruders in your home, its likely too late to gather the wife and children in various rooms of the house and excuse yourself from the home invaders.
However you do have a tactical advantage over intruders. YOU know the layout of your likely dark home. YOU can gather the family in a barricaded room, call 911 and stay there with your firearm at the ready. If they never breach that room then you won't have to shoot anyone. Or, YOU know where the best spot is to take cover in a dark place and create an ambush.
Everyday there are stories of successful defensive gun uses. Don't pretend like they don't happen.
Here are almost 7000 instances of successful defensive gun uses. Each can be verified with the citation to the local news story.
They usually come when they think that no one is home, but they know that there can be trouble-makers out there, so they'll be armed and prepared to cut you down if they have to.
You did NOT just call people willing to protect themselves, their loved ones, and property… "trouble-makers."
With your logic and view on life, I shudder at the thought of you as a passenger of United flight 93 on September 11, 2001.
The displaced compassion people have for truly bad people astounds me. The concept that some hide behind… that whole "all life is precious" mantra, I don't agree with it. You don't truly care, you care about the idea, and how good and righteous it sounds. I assure you that on your way home from work, you passed by a homeless and hungry person holding a sign up, asking for spare change for food. You dismissed him or her, sure that they'd be helped by someone else, that they'd make it to a shelter that evening, no biggie. The next day, you don't see that person. No idea where they went, and you have no inclination to find out. Let's say that person died from exposure, and malnutrition. Do you care? No, because you have no idea, let alone ties to that person or their circumstances. This happens DAILY. You get home and turn on CNN. CNN reports a 19 year old man was killed in "a robbery gone wrong." You become incensed, vowing that this violence must end, that a life cut so short is a tragedy, that if guns were banned, this would never have happened, etc, etc.
Then the facts come out. The 19 year old has a rap sheet as thick as a paperback, that he was armed with a stolen pistol he was too young to have purchased… legally, he sold drugs to kids at the local high school, and he'd just had a baby with a girl he ditched during her first trimester. The sad part is I don't even consider that 19 year old "evil," just bad. There are FAR, FAR, FAR worse people in this world.
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