Suicides don't count? For the record: I'm 100% in favor of public policy that results in large decreases in the suicide rate.
They also don’t count 1 for 1.
It’s much easier to substitute something else for a gun when committing suicide than when murdering someone.
That idea seems to be belied by the upthread assertion that gun deaths disproportionately represent suicides.
What else is highly effective and messy? Jumping from someplace high. There are lots of high places. I'd much prefer they go the gun route because jumpers sometimes land on someone as most such places that are readily available are in urban areas.
Suicide is a mental health issue, not a gun issue.
> Suicide in the United Kingdom declined after coal stoves were phased out, removing a means of suicide by carbon monoxide that had been available in many homes. Tylenol (or acetaminophen) overdoses in England and Wales fell by 43 percent after legislation passed requiring that the medication be sold in “blister packs” where you have to pop out each individual pill; that simple switch from big bottles was enough to save lives. When the Israeli Defense Forces stopped letting soldiers bring their guns home over the weekend, suicides fell 40 percent, primarily due to a drop in firearm suicides committed on weekends.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/11/15/18095174/pesti...
And if someone does decide to try to kill themselves, guns are more likely to be fatal:
> About 85 percent of suicide attempts with a firearm end in death. (Drug overdose, the most widely used method in suicide attempts, is fatal in less than 3 percent of cases.) Moreover, guns are an irreversible solution to what is often a passing crisis. Suicidal individuals who take pills or inhale car exhaust or use razors have time to reconsider their actions or summon help. With a firearm, once the trigger is pulled, there’s no turning back.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/guns-...
“ In the early 1960s, asphyxiation with domestic gas accounted for nearly half of suicides in England and Wales.3 The conversion of the British gas supply to North Sea gas, which was free of carbon monoxide, essentially eliminated domestic gas suicides in England and Wales and, moreover, was accompanied by a steep decline in the overall suicide rate (a 30% decline in England and Wales between 1960 and 1971, and a smaller decrease in Scotland), driven by the fall in gas suicides.”
Additionally, in the case specifically of guns, they’re more impactful for suicides BECAUSE they’re so effective. In the US they account for 1% of suicide attempts, but 50% of suicide deaths.
There was a complete prohibition on CO containing gas. Go read the story again.
The point is that perspective matters. You want to treat "crime" as a single thing because it seems like "the actual argument" to you, and when I see that same argument it looks like senseless spin because it's trying to dilute the US's outrageous homicide rate in an analysis by comparing it to burglaries in Amsterdam or whatever.
Yes, and I'm not advocating for that.
My only point is that "less gun deaths in countries without legal guns" isn't addressing the original claim that other crimes have decreased as a consequence of legal guns. I'm not taking a position on whether that claim is true, or what exactly they mean by that, which are both questions I also would like to be answered.
The argument is that legal guns increase gun deaths but reduce other types of crime, either by substitution (e.g. reducing knife crime) or by deterrence (e.g. reducing home burglaries).
That claim has its own burden of proof that it needs to meet before it can be accepted, but looking at other countries and saying "More guns means more shootings" isn't addressing the actual argument.