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Guns Don't Cause Suicides

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Pointman

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Force Science issues 100 and 101 deal with law enforcement officer suicides. As officers, they handle a gun more often than the general population, yet the study doesn't recommend separating officers from guns as a potential solution to suicidal tendencies. Guns are not a cause of depression, stress, frustration, mental instability, or any of the many other factors in suicides.

No matter what the occupation, whether military, special agent, or postal worker, guns are not a contributing factor to suicides or murders, they are only the tool used in a percentage of unfortunate occurrences. The entirety of tools used can never be eliminated from existence, nor should they be, and taking the focus off the problem and putting it on the tool solves nothing.
 
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caltain

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Pointman-

You are absolutely correct. The only real problems with the presence of a gun in a suicide situation are that guns are easier, faster, usually more painless and DEFINATELY more effective than other first attempt methods.

Start with the gun, then we'll blow right by regulating bathtubs and toasters.
 
deepdiver

deepdiver

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Pointman, right on the money with that one. My mother is a licensed therapist and was a suicide crisis intervention therapist for several years and your comments mirror comments she recently made to me about the subject.
 
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Weak 9mm

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I just got finished reading #100. That is quite a terrible thing to read about, so I can't imagine actually having to go through it. Particularly the teenager jumping on the hood of the car with a gun screaming "I'll blow your head off!" I can't say I would have acted any differently, but that action still has to have an effect on you. Oh, and seeing the dead woman still buckled to her seat, holding her dead baby in her lap. That sounds rather severe as well.

The final statistics on that page are probably the most telling though, as he basically said, their own minds are more dangerous to them than the bad guys are.

Oh, and on their main webpage there are these crazy videos called "Subject Motions." From what I understand, these are just folks randomly selected off the street. The time it takes them to perform many of these actions is incredibly short. I was amazed at some of them, particularly the woman drawing and shooting the snubby.

http://www.forcescience.org/demos/subject/


There's also a series of animations on the page you linked that shows a shooting where this idiot charges the cops with a rock or something and gets shot a bunch of times. 11 shots are fired in 1.8 seconds or so and it seems like 7 of them hit him. Incidentally, the one that goes in his left butt cheek was the fatal round.

http://www.forcesciencenews.com/visuals/carr_video/
 
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Citizen

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Pointman wrote:
By Pointman of OpenCarry, 07/10/2008

SNIP The entirety of tools used can never be eliminated from existence, nor should they be, and taking the focus off the problem and putting it on the tool solves nothing.
Click to expand...

+1 You're totally right, of course. But, I'd like to play with your words just a little bit:



Sure it does. It solvesa dirty little problem psychiatry has. It makes it easier for them tocover up that they really haven't gotten anywherewith curing people of suicide. And that some of the drugs they push...er...prescribe may actuallystartsuicidal thoughts in some people.

Look into the adverse reaction reports and clinical study reports of some of these drugs. I think its gotten bad enough that government is making them put black-box warnings on some drugs.

Go to the drug store and ask for the...what's it called?... the drug facts sheet on a few of the anti-depressants. Anti-depressants! You'll find warnings that side-effects can include something called "suicidal ideation." What the hell is that, you might ask? It means that you might have "suicidal thoughts" asa side-effect of the drug. Side-effect? The effect the person wants is less depression and he starts having suicidal thoughts, and they only call it a side-effect?

Blaming the gun takes the focus off that billions of dollars a year industy.
 
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