Real numbers?

Suicide by firearm is by far the most successful method (85%) and a method which one has no chance to change one's mind. Once the trigger has been pulled you can't take it back.

Other methods have very low rates. Overdosing is only 2% effective, cutting only 1%. (Those two methods make up 80% of total attempts)

Add it all up and on average only 9% of people that attempt suicide succeed.

buck460XVR said:

I got Stonecutter's point. His point is that folks on both sides fudge numbers in attempt to make their point. This is why so many folks don't trust polls or the statistics given from the other side, i.e. the point of this thread.

Should suicides by guns be included? This thread shows which side you are on may influence your decision subjectively. Objectively, if folks used a gun, and suicide is considered a homicide, then it is correct to include it.

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Nobody said suicide using a gun shouldn't be included in the homicide statistic.

But using the homicide statistic to support a ban on certain rifles, or ammunition purchase limits, or whatever else, is stupid and bias and intentionally deceptive.

Why would suicides using guns be considered "puffing" the numbers in favor of the anti stance?

They used a gun to kill themselves, right?

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This gets to a bigger picture question. To figure out how statistics might be relevant or not relevant you have to ask and answer clearly, WHAT are you trying to find out with these statistics? Or more usually, what point are you trying to prove to people by quoting this statistic?

The promise of gun control is safer society. Really, that's the only (publicly stated) purpose of gun control laws. Do something to make "us all" safer. That implies violence enacted against us. Violence enacted against us by someone else, against our will.

Suicide is a completely tangential matter to gun control and it muddies the issue drastically. If a politician comes out raging on his speachifyin' stump that he's going to pass laws to take away people's ability (via tools) to end THEIR OWN lives --- well, he's going to have a few eager fans (mostly from the extreme social conservative wing, ironically), but most folks are going to be looking with an eyebrow raised, and trying to figure out if that's something they're really ready to swallow.

I mean, is it not any person's ultimate (and perhaps greatest single!) right to decide if they do not wish to live any further? How incredibly oppressive and restrictive and downright tyrannical is it for a political leader to tell someone, "you don't have the RIGHT to stop living, and I'm going to take away your means to do so?"

All that to say, then, lumping suicide-by-gun numbers into the statistical pool used to show what a threat of violence we citizens live under is inapt, at best, and I'd say is disingenuous. Anti-gun politicians and promoters do it, and I believe do it knowingly, because it DRAMATICALLY increases the apparent weight of the problem they're trying to get folks to let them "solve." NO, they will not come right out and say, "I'm for taking away your ability to kill yourself if you decide to no longer live." But they will throw into their speeches the lump sum numbers of firearms deaths as though ALL of them represent external violent threats to the "good folks at home."




If you want to say, "But I'm just looking at deaths in which a gun was used, period, absent any deeper meaning or purpose," ok, that's fine. But that's very rarely why anyone is looking at these things. What would be the use of that information, then, if you're going to limit this to deaths involving firearms? Might as well look at ALL deaths, if you aren't trying to influence or find significance in the discrete factor of which tool was used.

I do a lot of stats in my profession, and have been watching both sides of the argument for a long time.

The first thing people have to realize is that you will almost never get a definitive answer to such questions from historical data. There are too many confounding variables and interactions. To get a definitive answer, you need methods that yield well-structured data, and that would be impossible to get in this case.

What you can say is that if an effect were at least "so big", the test we apply would have a X% chance of detecting it. So we can sometimes say that the effect is so small as to be of no concern.

Since the burden of proof is on the party promoting change, we are often in the position of saying that there simply is no convincing evidence to support the claims of the antis. And that is sufficient, in well reasoned circles. But apparently not for the antis.

For a beat-down of some of the anti's claims, see my blog at https://notsofast2015.wordpress.com/

Warp said:

Yes, they used a firearm...hence the statistic...but it's not particularly relevant to gun control law proposals. Do you understand that?

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But....using JSH1's numbers, anti's could and do claim that making guns harder to get to those with mental disease would greatly decrease suicide deaths also, thus they feel it is highly relevant to gun control. Is it a realistic statement? It is according to them, and they have the numbers in their favor.

JSH1 said:

Suicide by firearm is by far the most successful method (85%) and a method which one has no chance to change one's mind. Once the trigger has been pulled you can't take it back.

Other methods have very low rates. Overdosing is only 2% effective, cutting only 1%. (Those two methods make up 80% of total attempts)

Add it all up and on average only 9% of people that attempt suicide succeed.

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Don't get me wrong, I do not support any more gun control measures. I am only stating what the numbers show as the antis may interpret them. Don't kill the messenger. The personal interpretation of certain numbers and statistics is much like the personal interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. It varies greatly and can be very argumentative. It also is never going to change as long as folks let their emotions control the way they look at things. Doesn't matter which side you are on.

Suicides are the theoretical fly in our ointment for the antis. They include that number in their list of "homicides" to show how "violent" guns make people. Their theory. The US suicide average is about 10 per 100,000 people. By comparison Japan and Russia are much higher (19.1 and 22.8). How on Earth do so many people in those countries kill themselves with such strict gun control? Easy. Other methods. People who are determined to kill themselves will do so whether they have a firearm or not. I have lost more than a dozen friends to suicide by firearms. I am no closer to being a gun control advocate than I was before their deaths.

The bulk of the 10,000 homicides are inner city gangs or violent crime related that no laws will effect.
But what is sad is you hear no effort to change the even larger death statistics from other means.

The public justifies 30,000+ motor vehicle deaths each year because they want their cars and that toll is "acceptable" and are just "accidents".
1/3 of those were drunk driving, but you don't hear nearly as much about it in the media.

You never hear ANYTHING about the 100,000 PREVENTABLE medical error deaths that occur each year.
Stupid mistakes from overworked hospital staff and it's treated as an "opps, sorry".

Or that the public in general has little interest in the social issues leading up to ONE MILLION abortions every year because it's a "choice".

Face it, too many people view guns as an "unnecessary" tool that should be taken away from you if someone used it to kill even one person.
But everything else has an acceptable loss to benefit ratio they find acceptable, even the blunt objects that kill more people than AR15's.

The homocide rates that antis often use, usually include not only suicides, but justifiable homocides and police shootings.

The funny thing about stats are the statistics that are impossible to track. When it comes to how many times people with guns have have successfully defended themselves against a crime without ever firing a shot, or missing their target completely, it starts gettinga lot harder to collect statistics.

HammsBeer said:

The bulk of the 10,000 homicides are inner city gangs or violent crime related that no laws will effect.
But what is sad is you hear no effort to change the even larger death statistics from other means.

The public justifies 30,000+ motor vehicle deaths each year because they want their cars and that toll is "acceptable" and are just "accidents".
1/3 of those were drunk driving, but you don't hear nearly as much about it in the media.

You never hear ANYTHING about the 100,000 PREVENTABLE medical error deaths that occur each year.
Stupid mistakes from overworked hospital staff and it's treated as an "opps, sorry".

Or that the public in general has little interest in the social issues leading up to ONE MILLION abortions every year because it's a "choice".

Face it, too many people view guns as an "unnecessary" tool that should be taken away from you if someone used it to kill even one person.
But everything else has an acceptable loss to benefit ratio they find acceptable, even the blunt objects that kill more people than AR15's.

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1. There are things that can be done to effect gang deaths. Those that are on the right side of the gun issue are on the wrong side of dealing with the root problem.


2. We don't simple accept 30k traffic fatalities. Things are being done ever year to reduce traffic deaths and deaths per vehicle mile are way down.

3. Abortion is WAY off topic but again those that are on the right side of gun issues are on the wrong side of preventing unwanted pregnancies.

All of which makes things much more complicated than many here make it out to be.

The other tack to take is to look at the historical racism/classism of gun (or in the case of Rome, sword) control. The most base fact of this, one that most bleeding hearts that advocate gun control, is that controlling the armament of the citizenry is all about domination of one group of people by another. We cannot ignore the statistics in the conversation, but we need to make it clear that gun control at its heart is racist. And I don't know if our President or former Attorney General even realized that, or care.

Thing is that those other issues kill FAR more people than guns, yet the one topic we hear about from the media, online editorials, and left wing politicians day in day out is "GUN CONTROL". When is the last time the media mentioned medical error death prevention efforts? When doctors are jumping on the gun control bandwagon, they need to back up and clean their own house first.

If the media and politicians are so concerned with saving lives, they should focus on the biggest issues at hand. But frankly the issues that kill 10-100 times more people than guns are not the hot button topics today that attract viewers or political attention.

buck460XVR said:

But....using JSH1's numbers, anti's could and do claim that making guns harder to get to those with mental disease would greatly decrease suicide deaths also, thus they feel it is highly relevant to gun control. Is it a realistic statement? It is according to them, and they have the numbers in their favor.

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Now you need to be specific.

Quantify "making guns harder to get". What guns, harder how?

Quantify and define "with mental disease". What disease(s)? Diagnosed by whom? For how long?

Then we can talk about if it is even appropriate to try and prevent somebody from taking their life, as Sam was talking about...then after that, if we decide yes, we can talk about whether or not the "harder to get" you are speaking of would make those people with "mental disease" (have to specificy which ones and who decides remember) possibly unable to get a firearm when they previously could have THEN we could discuss if those people who want to commit suicide but are stopped from getting a gun due to the new laws would then not kills themslves.

we should parse the data to more accurately reflect murder from accident from suicide since they have different root causes which lead to different effective solutions

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Exactly. See my New Cuyama comment at https://notsofast2015.wordpress.com/

There is a good reason that the antis confound these results: If they did not, they would not be able to "prove" their point. In short, they are lying. They also use homicide rates instead of murder rates, which tends to exaggerate the perceived problem.

There is no statistically detectable correlation between state's murder + non-negligent manslaughter rates and the strictness of their gun control laws. See http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/brady_effectiveness.pdf and http://armsandthelaw.com/Brady%20Gun%20Grades%20Revisited%20v2.pdf.

There is a small correlation between the strictness of gun laws and suicide rates. But the correlation is quite likely spurious. So if you add homicides and suicides, and call them "gun deaths", the suicide figures let you show a positive correlation between gun laws and "gun deaths". The purpose of adding the two is to deceive and to obscure.

So why is the correlation between suicides and gun laws likely spurious? It took me a while to uncover what is probably really going on. Online, I found a map that color coded suicides by state. There is a "ridge" of high suicide rates that extends down through Idaho, Wyoming, and New Mexico. Those are all states with relatively relaxed gun laws. But Texas has a moderate suicide rate, and favorable gun laws. What is different between the high suicide rate states and Texas?

It turns out that suicide rate is very highly correlated with low population density. This correlation holds across counties in the US, and across states. When you examine suicide rates across states, using both population density and gun laws as the predictors, population density is about 70X as strong a predictor as gun laws. Gun laws sink into statistical insignificance, which is to say that their effect cannot be distinguished from normal random variation.

If you're doing serious statistical analysis, it's best not to start with numbers from propagandists like the Brady Campaign. If you simply use their state gun law rating as your measure of law strictness, you need to be aware that they have supplied you with a crooked ruler: The number of state gun deaths is baked into their strictness rating. So if you use their ruler, and ask the whether gun deaths are correlated with Brady Grades, you are asking whether gun deaths are correlated with gun deaths. You should not be surprised to find that they are, just as income levels are correlated with income levels and religious observance is correlated with religious observance.

Suicide rates by state:

Warp said:

The problem with homicides is that it includes suicides. This makes "homicides" rather misleading.

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I guess the folks that compile these numbers need a dictionary:

suicide - the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily

homicide - the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another; murder

Two VERY different things if you ask me.

Two VERY different things if you ask me.

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They are, indeed, different things.

But homicide is not necessarily unlawful. Homicide includes rapists whose victims decide to distract them by putting two holes in their center of mass, and it includes BGs who are shot by police for good reason.

That's why the FBI Uniform Crime Report lists murders + non-negligent manslaughter, not homicides. Not all homicides are crimes.

stchman said:

I guess the folks that compile these numbers need a dictionary:

suicide - the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily

homicide - the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another; murder

Two VERY different things if you ask me.

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We are very clearly talking about a particular context, and a particular use of the homicide statistic.

Nobody is saying that suicide is not homicide.

Warp said:

Now you need to be specific.

Quantify "making guns harder to get". What guns, harder how?

Quantify and define "with mental disease". What disease(s)? Diagnosed by whom? For how long?

Then we can talk about if it is even appropriate to try and prevent somebody from taking their life, as Sam was talking about...then after that, if we decide yes, we can talk about whether or not the "harder to get" you are speaking of would make those people with "mental disease" (have to specificy which ones and who decides remember) possibly unable to get a firearm when they previously could have THEN we could discuss if those people who want to commit suicide but are stopped from getting a gun due to the new laws would then not kills themslves.

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I don't need to be more any more specific, because I'm not the one presenting the numbers or asking for any more gun control than we have now. How this thread went from homicides statistics to whether or not suicide is ethical shows me, pro-gun folks like to cloud the issue as much as the anti's. The demanding of which guns to prevent only folks with specific mental issues from obtaining tells me that you are now grasping at straws in an attempt to prove some vague point that has little or no importance. There's an old saying that "the numbers don't lie!". This is true they don't, but they are open to interpretation and subjectivity, and as long as they are, folks will want to argue about them.

homicide - the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another; murder

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Sorry, but once again, "unlawful" is not part of the definition. Self defense and police shootings are also "homicides" and included in the number.

buck460XVR said:

I don't need to be more any more specific, because I'm not the one presenting the numbers or asking for any more gun control than we have now.

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You are the one that asked the qustion.

buck460XVR said:

But....using JSH1's numbers, anti's could and do claim that making guns harder to get to those with mental disease would greatly decrease suicide deaths also, thus they feel it is highly relevant to gun control. Is it a realistic statement?

It is according to them, and they have the numbers in their favor.

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Answering my follow up questions would help answer your above quoted question.

If you want me to just tell you how it is, then no, that is NOT a realistic statement.

But then you take it a step farther, and you say

buck460XVR said:

It is according to them, and they have the numbers in their favor.

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Wrong! The numbers are not in their favor.

Unless you want to answer all of my follow up questions and show that the numbers are in fact in their favor. I have no idea how that could be done, though...so I have no idea how or why you can possibly say that the numbers are in their favor.

Sadly, even if there were solid data and analyses, acceptable by any informed person, it is very unlikely that such analyses would persuade anyone - see my favorite, though somewhat dated (2003) paper on the topic, More Statistics, Less Persuasion: A Cultural Theory of Gun-Risk Perceptions

Librarian said:

Sadly, even if there were solid data and analyses, acceptable by any informed person, it is very unlikely that such analyses would persuade anyone - see my favorite, though somewhat dated (2003) paper on the topic, More Statistics, Less Persuasion: A Cultural Theory of Gun-Risk Perceptions

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Very true. There are a variety of studies linked in this article but they can all be summed up with the following statement: "If information doesn’t square with someone’s prior beliefs, he discards the beliefs if they’re weak and discards the information if the beliefs are strong."

http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/i-dont-want-to-be-right

it is very unlikely that such analyses would persuade anyone

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I'm working my way through your article. There is a lot to understand, so it's taking me a while.

I'm also trying to reconcile the article with personal experience.

My younger daughter had an interesting conversion. She was afraid of guns, and almost would not let her husband have his hunting rifle in the house. Then, one Sunday, one of her children left to rear patio door ajar as they left for church. When they came home, their computer, camera, checkbook, and spare keys were all missing.

Tuesday night, she heard a noise behind the house, and looked out to see the thieves trying the keys they had stolen on the back door. By that time, the locks had long since been replaced and the door frames reinforced. She went running down the stairs to their teenage daughter's room, while her husband headed for the younger children's rooms.

Next morning, she demanded, and got, my wife's spare 38 Special. She now has one of her own, and enjoys going to the range.

My neighbor's wife is a ex-HS principal, and was much the same. She would not allow her husband to have firearms. One day he approached me and asked if I would take them shooting at the local range. So we went. She had an absolute ball. She found she just loved shooting. She now has her own handgun, and her husband can have whatever he wants. The conversion took about an hour. (She's a very smart, fun lady, by the way.)

I look at situations like that, and am still a little puzzled about how it all happens, and what causes the change. What's neat is that it does happen.

I'll keep on reading.....

Actually, I think anyone's use of the words, "approximately 30,000 firearm homicides", is completely wrong. A homicide is the killing of one person by another person. Therefore the roughly 17 to 18 thousand per year, of that 30,000 figure, that are suicides should not be classified in the same ballpark as the approximate 12,000 per year which are homicides.

The important point here is people running around saying 30,000 die by guns each year is that most folks automatically assume that all 30,000 are murdered. It is misleading on the part of the person that is spewing the number without using clear language or pointing out that 2/3 of their 30,000 figure killed themselves.

JSH1 said:

Suicide by firearm is by far the most successful method (85%) and a method which one has no chance to change one's mind. Once the trigger has been pulled you can't take it back.

Other methods have very low rates. Overdosing is only 2% effective, cutting only 1%. (Those two methods make up 80% of total attempts)

Add it all up and on average only 9% of people that attempt suicide succeed.

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Yet, suicides by firearms only account for 50% of those suicides. All the other methods used add up to 1/2 of those deaths. In Japan, where suicide rates are much greater than in the US, the preferred method is cutting. So if firearms were not available, those suicides would occur by another method. It is not the tool used that accounts for those rates, it is the person going through whatever hell they think their life amounts to and their determination to end it all.