I'm a student in Texas in a small western city.
At lecture in medical school today, one of our attendings talked about how if you sense the patient is depressed, you should ask if they keep any guns in the house (or carry them). Evidently, the single biggest risk factor for a person successfully committing suicide is if they have access to a firearm.
You also are supposed to ask the gun question if they have children.
If the patient has children, you're supposed to ask if they keep the guns locked up separately from the ammunition in the house. If the patient is depressed, you're supposed to advise them to lock the gun in a safe deposit box.
Why is this relevant? Well, accordingly to the CDC, in 2006 there were 33,300 deaths from suicide and 18,573 deaths from murder in the United States.
I've also read about a study where all of the shootings happening in private homes were tallied up, and the number of homicides/suicides versus self defense shootings were compared. As I recall, the evidence was every time firearms were used, it was a suicide or a homicide.
What's my point? I have a strong hunch, that could probably be eventually supported with irrefutable statistical data, that ON AVERAGE owning a gun decreases your ultimate life expectancy very slightly. That for the average person, it does NOT help you make it to the end of the line to die in your own drool in a nursing home or hospice.
Now, don't get me wrong, here. There are plenty of folks who live in crime ridden areas or out in the country who clearly have a legitimate need for a firearm. I've very much enjoyed the chances I got to shoot at the range while I was in the military, and using friend's weapons in civilian life. I think EOTech sights are pretty cool, and that a magazine for a rifle should hold at least 30 rounds in it like the manufacturer intended. I don't think that fat government bureaucrats should be able to deny me the right to own a gun if I find I need one.
But this whole thing reminds me about the comparison between travel by car or by airplane. The statistics say that if you stand in line and get searched and treated like a suspected terrorist and file aboard the airplane like a good little sheep, you have a better chance of making it to your destination alive an uninjured than if you drive. Yet, paradoxically, it certainly feels more dangerous to cram yourself aboard a jet aircraft with strangers than it does to fire up your silverado crew-cab and drive the same distance. In one case, you've given up all control and are at the mercy of a penny pinching airline, in the other you're at the wheel of a 6000 lb American made machine.
In a similar manner, it might actually be safer to escape through a window and run for your life in fear if you hear someone breaking in. To just pull out your wallet the moment you think a mugger is closing in. To bend over and take it if someone tries to rape you in a dark alley. All of these things might boost the odds that you'll live to your 80s or 90s to die from metastatic tumors invading all your organs or to drown in a pool of your own secretions.
In short, I understand. Some day, I'd like to own a few rifles and shotguns myself. Firearms are incredibly cool toys, and a key cornerstone of defense for the house built stout as a castle that I'd like to own someday. But, I'm having trouble with this fundamental liberal idea : while gun bans might not be in the spirit of freedom, unrestricted civilian ownership of firearms appears to kill a lot more people than they protect. It's actually the same argument that is used to support socialized medicine : while waiting for months in lines in run down government run hospitals doesn't sound like something I want, giving medical care to everyone seems to save more lives than are lost.
I'd appreciate well thought out responses. Please, no anecdotal evidence : the plural of anecdote is not data.
At lecture in medical school today, one of our attendings talked about how if you sense the patient is depressed, you should ask if they keep any guns in the house (or carry them). Evidently, the single biggest risk factor for a person successfully committing suicide is if they have access to a firearm.
You also are supposed to ask the gun question if they have children.
If the patient has children, you're supposed to ask if they keep the guns locked up separately from the ammunition in the house. If the patient is depressed, you're supposed to advise them to lock the gun in a safe deposit box.
Why is this relevant? Well, accordingly to the CDC, in 2006 there were 33,300 deaths from suicide and 18,573 deaths from murder in the United States.
I've also read about a study where all of the shootings happening in private homes were tallied up, and the number of homicides/suicides versus self defense shootings were compared. As I recall, the evidence was every time firearms were used, it was a suicide or a homicide.
What's my point? I have a strong hunch, that could probably be eventually supported with irrefutable statistical data, that ON AVERAGE owning a gun decreases your ultimate life expectancy very slightly. That for the average person, it does NOT help you make it to the end of the line to die in your own drool in a nursing home or hospice.
Now, don't get me wrong, here. There are plenty of folks who live in crime ridden areas or out in the country who clearly have a legitimate need for a firearm. I've very much enjoyed the chances I got to shoot at the range while I was in the military, and using friend's weapons in civilian life. I think EOTech sights are pretty cool, and that a magazine for a rifle should hold at least 30 rounds in it like the manufacturer intended. I don't think that fat government bureaucrats should be able to deny me the right to own a gun if I find I need one.
But this whole thing reminds me about the comparison between travel by car or by airplane. The statistics say that if you stand in line and get searched and treated like a suspected terrorist and file aboard the airplane like a good little sheep, you have a better chance of making it to your destination alive an uninjured than if you drive. Yet, paradoxically, it certainly feels more dangerous to cram yourself aboard a jet aircraft with strangers than it does to fire up your silverado crew-cab and drive the same distance. In one case, you've given up all control and are at the mercy of a penny pinching airline, in the other you're at the wheel of a 6000 lb American made machine.
In a similar manner, it might actually be safer to escape through a window and run for your life in fear if you hear someone breaking in. To just pull out your wallet the moment you think a mugger is closing in. To bend over and take it if someone tries to rape you in a dark alley. All of these things might boost the odds that you'll live to your 80s or 90s to die from metastatic tumors invading all your organs or to drown in a pool of your own secretions.
In short, I understand. Some day, I'd like to own a few rifles and shotguns myself. Firearms are incredibly cool toys, and a key cornerstone of defense for the house built stout as a castle that I'd like to own someday. But, I'm having trouble with this fundamental liberal idea : while gun bans might not be in the spirit of freedom, unrestricted civilian ownership of firearms appears to kill a lot more people than they protect. It's actually the same argument that is used to support socialized medicine : while waiting for months in lines in run down government run hospitals doesn't sound like something I want, giving medical care to everyone seems to save more lives than are lost.
I'd appreciate well thought out responses. Please, no anecdotal evidence : the plural of anecdote is not data.