That depends entirely on you and your family's level of responsibility around firearms. Unless you act like an idiot with regards to guns, you are unlikely to be accidentally injured by them. That is what I mean by 'least common denominator': people shouldn't be denied firearms because certain people can't be responsible with them.

Awesome. Sounds like you're in favour of reasonable gun control via strict license requirements and tests. You know - to make sure irresponsible idiots don't get them.

We agree.

Sort of. I don't believe its the government's job (nor position) to protect idiots from themselves, so I would not support such regulations.

I dunno, maybe this is a super controversial opinion but I think it may be harmful to categorize a bunch of people who commit suicide as idiots. Particularly given that those people in America are more and more often veterans and men.

I also think that by some tragic circumstance or another a lot of those mentally ill people have no friends or family to support them. I'm happy to pay the government to care for those "idiots", to be frank.

What do you think?

Note that I said 'accidentally injured' in my original comment; obviously suicide is a different matter entirely. This might actually be a controversial opinion, but I believe people who want to end their lives have a right to do so.

Barring that, we already have measures in place (e.g. involuntary hospitalization) for the acutely suicidal. For others, why stop at taking away their guns? Take away their kitchen knives, Tylenol, and spare rope while you're at it. Hell, throw them in a padded cell so they aren't tempted to visit any bridges or tall buildings. Taking away guns doesn't treat the actual problem.

Agreed on all counts

According to this page: https://www.who.int/gho/mental_health/suicide_rates/en/

Suicide rates are: 21.1/100k for US males 17.4/100k for Australian males

Guess you aren't paying enough?

You're right, we should increase support for mental health services.

Similarly, having a syringe in your house correlates to increased death risk by opioid poisoning, so... ban syringes?

Imagine if you bought a syringe into your house to prevent syringe related deaths.

Imagine if you bought a strawman into your comment. Or maybe we don't have to imagine.

How many people do you know who brought a gun into their house solely for protection against someone with a gun?

How many people do you know that would be pleased to learn owning a gun actually makes their family more prone to dying of gunshot wounds? It is not possible to have liberty when you are dead.

The same amount that should laugh off "learning" that percentage of black population makes their family more prone to dying of gunshot wounds.

Except if we're trying to identify demographic issues, poverty and gender both explain the correlation better than race.

The correlation between guns and gun violence and injuries undermines any claim that owning a gun increases liberty or enables self-defence.

You've made that claim several times on this thread alone but have yet to provide any supporting reference.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00029... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15522849 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12764330 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8371731 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8485675

How many references will be sufficient evidence?

None that you merely googled for. I'm looking for content that actually supports your specific claim.

1) a survey on firearms-related deaths that doesn't even look at in-home use or defensive vs offensive use.

2) A review of 26-year-old death certificates. Did you read this part? "Blacks, persons less than 35 years of age or older than age 100 years, and persons who died from external causes of homicide, suicide, and unintentional injury were oversampled in this survey."

3) Uses same cooked data as #2, study done by an anti-gun interest group (VPC).

4) Again uses the same cooked data from 26 years ago.

5) A thirty-year-old phone survey that doesn't even examine in-home gun use. Seriously?

So, no, none of those is "evidence" of anything. Now, how many of those were you previously familiar with vs just googling on "gun death home study

> None that you merely googled for. I'm looking for content that actually supports your specific claim.

Ok. How do you want me to look for the data?

> 1) a survey on firearms-related deaths that doesn't even look at in-home use or defensive vs offensive use.

It's not just a survey.

> 2) A review of 26-year-old death certificates. Did you read this part? "Blacks, persons less than 35 years of age or older than age 100 years, and persons who died from external causes of homicide, suicide, and unintentional injury were oversampled in this survey."

Oversampling doesn't invalidate studies. Are you annoyed they acknowledged it? A less rigorous study wouldn't.

> 3) Uses same cooked data as #2, study done by an anti-gun interest group (VPC).

What neutral groups do you think are studying this stuff? The CDC? Well, they can start now.

> 4) Again uses the same cooked data from 26 years ago. > > 5) A thirty-year-old phone survey that doesn't even examine in-home gun use. Seriously?

Could you help me understand what you'd consider "evidence", considering you won't accept articles from peer-reviewed journals. Why does suicide or homicide have to happen "in-home" for it to be valid?

I'll provide more references if you can explain exactly what evidence would satisfy you. Otherwise it seems like a waste of time on my part.

  How do you want me to look for the data?

Thank you for acknowledging that you didn't have actual data you were basing that claim on in the first place.

Oh I did, its just I never printed it out. It's just so easy to find evidence that gun ownership correlates with more gun deaths and injuries for the owner that I don't really need to save it anywhere.

Often when I'm google searching its because I remember the title of something or the general concept. Its something lots of young people do these days rather than printing articles out to scrapbook or saving them to desktop or whatever it is old people do.

Let me know what evidence would satisfy you that owning a gun increases the chance of dying via gun. Cheers.

What? You won't take a pinky swear as proof?

Prepare for some kind of snarky defense of a flawed "correlation is causation" argument.

I'm not entirely sure what they would take as proof.