As far as my “45,000 words of an attempted rebuttal” goes, it started because Greg posted his blurb and I replied that gun availability has no impact on overall suicide rates. He specifically asked me to back up my assertion, which is where the lengthy response came into play.

As far as failures vs. successes, do we know how many of those who fail try again and succeed?

Has anyone entertained the notion that perhaps different people choose different methods based on how badly they really want to die? Someone who sorta wants to die might eat an entire bottle of Aspirin or try to ashphyxiate themselves, whereas someone who really wants to die shoots themselves or jumps off the Empire State building, like happened a couple weeks ago right here in NYC. Maybe the failures vs. success rate has more to do with the actual desire to die than we’re thinking about.

As an additional side thought, do you support assisted suicide? I do. I mean, suicide is tragic, but I do think that people actually have a right to kill themselves if they want to. We’re talking about suicide as if it’s something that happens to people instead of something that they purposefully do to themselves. I don’t think we can legislate suicide away.

My comment about the stats was an attempt to illustrate the difference between interpretive studies and raw data. A study, using any variety of methodology, can lead people to believe that owning guns increases their risk of suicide. But who knows how they came by their figures? There are a lot of common numbers thrown around in this debate by both sides (”a gun in the home is 47 times more likely blah blah” or “guns are used defensively 2.5 million times a year blah blah) and quite a few of the most often-quoted statistics were arrived at by extremely questionable methods, and some have been totally refuted yet are still used by people who don’t know any better.

On the other hand, I didn’t provide a study with Australia. I’m not interpreting anything. I’m showing that removing guns from a population does not save lives when it comes to suicide. And that is relevant to note when people bring up suicide when discussing the gun debate. Because there’s no indication that guns have the first thing to do with suicide other than as a tool among many others that people use to kill themselves.

“1) If you’re suicidal and like guns, there’s a good chance you might end up like one of the forty-four people who kill themselves with a gun every day. Unlike other methods of suicide, you don’t hear a whole lot about people who tried shooting themselves and surviving.”

IF is a pretty important word in that sentence, which is maybe why it comes before all the other ones. None of what you’ve stated refutes that; you quickly invented an argument that guns cause suicides, which is nowhere in the above paragraph. You then produced roughly 45,000 words of an attempted rebuttal, all the while ignoring Greg’s assertion, which remains blatantly true: If you attempt suicide with a gun, you will almost certainly succeed.

Yes, when countries ban guns, people find other ways to kill themselves, and succeed in doing so. I noticed no mention of how many hanging/poisioning/asphyxiation attempts fail, versus how many succeed, but there sure is a whole lot more room for failure when you don’t have the option of painting the ceiling with your brains.

Also, in regard to this little comment …

“Statistics can be used to prove almost anything when they are used to show cause and effect and used to draw conclusions—especially when there is an underlying agenda.”

… Is this a refutation of what you claim the Harvard study is doing, or an explanation of what you’re attempting to do with the Australian statistics? With the drawing of the conclusions and the underlying agenda and the whatnot?

Here’s the difference between my evidence and your evidence. Statistics can be used to prove almost anything when they are used to show cause and effect and used to draw conclusions—especially when there is an underlying agenda (the Harvard study was funded by the Joyce Foundation, which spends about $2 million a year on antigun efforts). We should be skeptical of claims made by organizations pushing a specific viewpoint based on interpretations of statistics—that goes for the Brady Campaign or the NRA.

The evidence I presented are not studies. They are not manipulations of statistics or interpretations of polls, they are raw numbers. Australia banned guns from private ownership, but the suicide rate didn’t change—just method did. Canada introduced restrictive gun control measures, but the suicide rate didn’t change—just method did. According to the Canadian National Institute of Health and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, firearm availability does not have any correlation with the overall suicide rate—when you remove guns from a population, people start hanging themselves more often. You can’t just ignore that. According to your claim, restrictive gun control should lower the suicide rate. A flat-out gun ban should significantly lower the suicide rate. But they haven’t.

Your “killer statistic” doesn’t refute any of what I showed you, but it does tell me a couple of things. If only 5% of suicides are even attempted with a gun, then obviously gun owners are the least likely to try to kill themselves (If one has access to a gun, why wouldn’t one use it to kill themself?) and gun owners are doing a pretty good job of preventing their firearms from being used by suicidal family members.

To me, the killer statistic is found at the end of the article I linked to in my previous comment :

In 2002, more than 30,000 Americans killed themselves, with just over half using a gun.

Firearms are used in only 5 percent of attempts, the study said, even though, with a 90 percent fatality rate, they cause more than half the deaths. So even a small decline in the number of attempts involving guns could mean many fewer deaths, the researchers said.

To back up my contention, I give you the following: From 1972 to 1995 the per capita gun stock in the US increased by more than 50% but during this same period, the U.S. suicide rate was virtually constant—in 1972 the suicide rate was 11.9 per 100,000, and after this “arms build-up” the total suicide rate remained unchanged at 11.9 in 1995. In 2003 it was 11.0.

There are many things that cause suicide rates to fluctuate slightly—they go down in times of war, and increase when the economy is bad—but in general suicide rates in most countries (regardless of firearm availability) remain constant.

I believe we have the highest firearm suicide rate on the planet. But there are least a dozen countries with much higher total suicide rates than us—obviously lack of firearm availability is not preventing them from killing themselves, so I don’t know why it would be expected to affect our total suicide rates.

According to an abstract from the Canadian National Institute of Health:

BACKGROUND: This paper examines the trends in youth suicide from 1979-1999 and the association with changes in the firearms act in 1991.

RESULTS: Although the overall rates did not change from 1979-1999 in youth aged 15-19, there was a substantial change in the methods used. In particular, the rates of suicide by firearms dropped from 60% to 22% while suicide due to hanging/suffocation increased from 20% to 60% in this age group over this period of time.

CONCLUSION: These results suggest a possible association between changes in the firearms act in 1991 and the methods used by youth to complete suicide. However, the overall rates of suicides did not change over this same period. These trends underscore the need for broader prevention interventions that do not solely focus on methods of suicide but rather, their underlying causes.

In other words, people who want to commit suicide will do so, regardless of gun availability.

Australia is worth examining because following the the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, the government instituted sweeping gun control legislation, banning all semiautomatic firearms (rifles and handguns), including .22 caliber rifles and duck-hunting shotguns and spent half a billion dollars buying citizens’ newly-illegal guns from them.

Let’s go to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. They are not pro or anti-gun control, they just keep track of things. In their summary of the report Suicides: Recent Trends, Australia, 1993 to 2003, they state:

In 2003 the most common method of suicide was hanging, which was used in almost half (45%) of all suicide deaths. The next most used methods were poisoning by ‘other’ (including motor vehicle exhaust) (19%), Other (15%), poisoning by drugs (13%), and methods using firearms (9%). This distribution was consistent with that of the previous few years. However, over the decade strong trends were apparent such as the increase in the use of hanging, and a decrease in methods using firearms. See Table 4 for data on broad groupings of method of suicide. [emphasis added]

Let’s look at Table 4 where they directed us (Page 13 of the PDF). You will see that in 1993, 435 of the suicides in Australia were with firearms. In 1997, only 330 Australians killed themselves with firearms. By 2003, that number had dropped to 194! That’s an amazing decrease in firearm suicides.

Yet in 1993, the total number of suicides in Australia was 2,081. In 2003, the total number of suicides was 2,213—it was actually higher. So although the number of firearm suicides steadily declined over that decade, the total number of suicides remained basically the same, fluctuating between a low of 2,081 and and a high of 2,720.

Remember, they basically banned firearms in 1997. And predictably, firearm suicides decreased. But more people started hanging themselves.

Judging from other countries experiences with virtually complete gun bans, there’s no indication that people who are so miserable that they want to end their lives will not do so regardless of whether or not they have easy means to do so.

Furthermore, you say “Foregoing medical attention to avoid giving up a gun collection is lunacy.” Well yes, greg, and in case you hadn’t noticed, the lunatics are the ones who need medical attention for their mental illness.

…but it has no effect on the overall suicide rate

Care to back that up? A study released last week reached the opposite conclusion :

Availability of Guns Raises Suicide Rates, Study Finds

The problem is not that forty-four people kill themselves *with a gun* every day, the problem is that those forty-four people *kill themselves* every day.

1) If you’re suicidal and like guns, there’s a good chance you might end up like one of the forty-four people who kill themselves with a gun every day. Unlike other methods of suicide, you don’t hear a whole lot about people who tried shooting themselves and surviving.

2) Is the choice between mental well-being and gun ownership is really that difficult? Foregoing medical attention to avoid giving up a gun collection is lunacy.

3) In this case, it’s not just a matter of whether or not someone is “suicidal”, since Cho was considered a danger to himself and others, had been accused of stalking other students, and had intimidated people with his writings. His rage went far beyond depression.

What the judge in this case did was incorrect on many levels. You don’t just order a person who is a danger to himself to get outpatient treatment. That’s just stupid. If you think there is a real problem then you order a 3-day stay at a very nice mental facility, starting immediately, at the very least. After that, you let the doctors evaluate him and release him if they believe that he is no longer a danger to anyone because of his mental condition. The judge’s decision could only indicate that he didn’t believe that Cho was actually dangerous but that he did need help and was simply limited in his choice of findings by legal precedent.