This comment of yours is just another example of that when you ask "Do you need an assault rifle (I didn't mention semi-auto rifles) to defend against meth heads with knives?"
Is it your understanding that any of the firearms being discussed are assault rifles? That's pretty damning.
AR-15 stands for assault rifle 15 lol
So I'm guessing you're pro gun control - considering you're ok with the control of assault rifles? Just an example. Lets control some of the most dangerous guns. No miniguns please. Also tighter controls on handguns.
That's the joke. I thought the "lol" I put at the end of that phrase would really sell that fact.
> assault rifles are already heavily controlled.
Awesome! Perhaps we can better control other guns for which self-defence is not a valid justification.
I have odd ideas about the behavior of itinerants who pass through rural areas. It's amazing the amount of crime you can have when law enforcement effectively doesn't exist.
> Do you need an assault rifle (I didn't mention semi-auto rifles) to defend against meth heads with knives?
Civilians (with exceptions for grandfathered items before 1984 and manufacturers, etc) can't legally own anything that meets the real definition of "assault rifle". Things people call "assault weapons" are often synonymous with a subset of semi-auto rifles. If semi-auto rifles are nearly irrelevant in violent crime epidemiology, subsets of them are even more so. :P
Handguns are the weapon of choice for ordinary defense scenarios, because they can be readily carried, have a muzzle energy that limits overpenetration risks, and can be positively controlled by the wielder even in short-range engagement scenarios.
I "need" "assault rifles" (which they're not) because I shoot them in competitive events and for fun and training. They're not a particularly good choice for suicide; they're not really that useful in crime scenarios; they are good at marksmanship and plinking. They're functionally identical to other semi-automatic rifles.
> Actually, some studies have found a slight negative correlation for other types of suicide when people own guns. Haven't seen one yet that says the risk increases for non-gun suicides.
First, Ludwig and Cook performed a time-series analysis of the Brady law and found a statistically significant reduction in gun suicide rates after the law's passage, but a non-statistically significant change in suicide rates. So that right there is enough to question the efficacy of what you suggest (gun control as a mechanism to prevent suicide).
In 2004, the NRC said:
> There is also cross-sectional, ecological association between gun ownership and overall risk of suicide, but this association is more modest than the association between gun ownership and gun suicide; it is less consistently observed across time, place, and persons; and the causal relation remains unclear
It's a bit dubious that internet-rando-from-outside-the-US can be trusted to confidently proclaim the efficacy of gun control as a suicide reduction technique when the nation's research academies are not so sure. ;)
Also a surprisingly large fraction of guns used in suicide are purchased shortly before death, which calls into question the efficacy of removing guns from households as a means to prevent suicide.
But for what I directly asserted, "Guns and Suicide,” , Duggan (2003) found a positive correlation between firearm prevalence and nonfirearm suicide. “The Epidemiology of Case Fatality Rates for Suicide in the Northeast,”, Miller, 2004 found a positive correlation between firearm prevalence and nonfirearm suicide attempts. The finding that high firearm prevalence is correlated with increased nonfirearm suicide rates is also supported by multiple analyses by different authors of the CDC's BRFSS data.
But anyways-- time for me to move on. We're down in the weeds and won't be read by others; the stuff you assert seems to vary between uninformed and dubious; and neither of us is gonna convince the other.
It isn't really, because we have lots of other evidence to show that reducing access to means and methods is useful.
Mann JJ et al(2005), "Authors identified 6 studies that have demonstrated a decrease in firearms-related suicides after introduction of firearm control legislation, two of which also proved a positive effect on overall suicide rates without substitution of methods (in Canada and the USA"
Lambert MT, Silva PS(1998) "This review concludes that reducing the availability and accessibility of firearms appears to decrease firearms-related suicide rates without this leading to substitution of means of suicide"
There are others.
But let's assume that method substitution does happen immediately: that's still a good thing, because it means that fewer people will die.
"While firearms are used in less than six percent of suicide attempts, over half of suicide deaths are with firearms." - Miller M, Azrael D, Barber C. Suicide mortality in the United States: the importance of attending to method in understanding population-level disparities in the burden of suicide. Annual Review of Public Health. 2012;33:393–408.
You're already measuring the lethality of the suicide method in the reviews you cited, because the studies involved measured actual suicide rates and not attempts. So let's not double count any effect or handwave away any failure to show an effect based on dubious logic.
> two of which also proved a positive effect on overall suicide rates
Another way to put this is that four of six studies failed to show an effect. ;) The language "proved" here is a little loaded compared to what's usually used in meta-analyses and systemic reviews for this exact reason.
> "While firearms are used in less than six percent of suicide attempts, over half of suicide deaths are with firearms."
One way to interpret this: people who choose to commit suicide spin a roulette wheel to pick suicide method (or pick whatever is convenient), and the people who pick firearms die more.
Another way to interpret this: people who are more determined to die choose more lethal suicide attempt methods, implement them better, and then die at a higher rate. Firearms are one "more lethal" choice.
Truth is probably somewhere in-between... Everyone knows that hanging is a lot more lethal than overdose attempts, and is roughly equally convenient/available. Including the people committing suicide.
We can even see e.g. research has shown that people who attempt a more lethal method and fail are more likely to successfully commit suicide later-- even when the later method is different.
In any event, I do not really like banning things to avoid possible damage people might do to themselves with those things. There's all kinds of things we could get rid of that would cause a big, clearer improvement to public health at a cost to personal liberty (cigarettes, motorcycles, fast food, processed meats, poutine, etc)...
This is great because the self-defence argument isn't applicable at all for these guns, then. Hooray!
> It's a bit dubious that internet-rando-from-outside-the-US
This seems a little emotional. You're an "internet-rando" too.
> First, Ludwig and Cook performed a time-series analysis of the Brady law and found a statistically significant reduction in gun suicide rates after the law's passage, but a non-statistically significant change in suicide rates. So that right there is enough to question the efficacy of what you suggest (gun control as a mechanism to prevent suicide).
Is this the same Ludwig and Cook that found in 2004 that handgun owners accounted for a much higher rate of suicides than long rifles? That's one of the reasons I suggest owning a 22 bolt action.
I'm curious about what mechanism you think explains the result that owning a gun increases the non-gun suicide rate. Many meta-analyses across studies such as Santaella-Tenorio's in 2016 which stretches across 10 countries and 130 studies, suggest a strong link between better gun control and less gun violence and suicide.
> But anyways-- time for me to move on. We're down in the weeds and won't be read by others; the stuff you assert seems to vary between uninformed and dubious; and neither of us is gonna convince the other.
I'm really interested in how people form beliefs about their safety in the world, and this has been informative. Thanks!
But you ignored the whole actual line of argument around the guns used for defense, so you could get a little snipey comment in here.
> I'm curious about what mechanism you think explains the result that owning a gun increases the non-gun suicide rate.
Do you think that people who choose to own guns are identical to people who don't? Do you think attempts to pick a few controlling variables to try and even out the populations makes a difference? Maybe there are differences in values and personality attributes between gun owners and non-gun owners?
Seriously, everyone knows that epidemiological studies, and even case control studies suck, in large part because of just how prone they are to finding associations that are actually caused by unmeasured factors that affect multiple measured variables.
> Is this the same Ludwig and Cook that found in 2004 that handgun owners accounted for a much higher rate of suicides than long rifles? That's one of the reasons I suggest owning a 22 bolt action.
Again, handgun owners have different underlying beliefs and demographics than people who only own rifles. And if you're going to buy a weapon just for suicide, everyone knows a rifle is less convenient than a handgun and only equally effective. But-- if one were to accept your argument-- this further "exonerates" "assault rifles". ;)
I'm done with your cherrypicking of arguments and sniping at little passages. Have a nice day.
What argument negates the fact that owning a gun is dangerous for the owner, in some of the exact ways a gun is meant to defend against (and some of the ways rural men seem to think they're immune to)?
> Seriously, everyone knows that epidemiological studies, and even case control studies suck, in large part because of just how prone they are to finding associations that are actually caused by unmeasured factors that affect multiple measured variables.
What superior alternative are you proposing?
> And if you're going to buy a weapon just for suicide, everyone knows a rifle is less convenient than a handgun and only equally effective.
Again, this is precisely one of the reasons why I recommend owning a 22 bolt action.
I did talk about range. I did talk about deterrence rather than stopping power.
> There are a whole lot of sketchy people who come out because the area is isolated and police response is slow. > > I'm not rural BTW; I just spend a couple months a year up there recreationally.
I grew up in a rural area, I own rural property and I will be back for Christmas. I think you have some odd ideas about why people live in rural areas.
> Civilian semi-auto rifles use in crime (which aren't "assault rifles" btw)-- and in suicide-- is negligible. It's rounding error on the statistics.
If you get rid of your guns in a rural area, your chance of dying from both suicide and murder, drops. Do you need an assault rifle (I didn't mention semi-auto rifles) to defend against meth heads with knives?
> Correlation equals causation, amirite? Risk of non-gun suicide increases with firearm ownership, but it's still clearly causative. ;)
Actually, some studies have found a slight negative correlation for other types of suicide when people own guns. Haven't seen one yet that says the risk increases for non-gun suicides.