Can you believe it - Another suicide at my range.

[KarenTOC]

Why can't people keep it traditional and throw themselves under a train instead of making life difficult for shooters?

The DC Metrorail system has seen a number of instances of suicide-by-train. I don't recall hearing of a single one that wasn't right in the middle of rush hour. Hundreds of witnesses; thousands of inconvenienced commuters. Public suicides are staged for high visibility and maximum impact.

This range rented to a LONE customer. If they stop that and they'll prevent suicides there 99.99%. You'd think they would have changed their policy after the first incident.

That doesn't go far enough! If you really want to make ranges safe, how about this:

> surrender your unopened gunbag to the rangemaster upon arrival
> rangemaster inspects weapon for safety and political correctness
> rangemaster takes you to your lane, and hands you over to your own personal lanemaster.
> lanemaster sets you up in your lane, locking your weapon securely into a vice so that it can't be moved (a good lanemaster will make sure it's aimed at the 10-ring)
> lanemaster monitors your shooting, watching for telltale signs of errant behavior
> you pull the trigger until the gun is empty
> lanemaster reloads your gun for you
> repeat until bored to tears
> lanemaster removes the gun from the vice, packs up your bag, walks you out, and hands your bag to you at the exit.

Voila! Perfect safety. No suicides. No guns flailing about. No negligent discharges (or at least none that don't hit the target). No unsafe handling of any kind. No fun. No point.

Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that not all problems can be solved by making a rule.

 

[10/22plinker]

My outdoor range with no employees has rules posted but no rangemaster to enforce them

The range I go to with my Uncle is like this but I love it because it's hidden behind a giant warehouse thing for porta potty it is on a side road and only members know the combo to get in the front gate... Outdoor range nice people, you share with them they share with you we lent a guy a bipod one time and he let me shoot some handloads out of his .243... I love shooters so kind.

 

[JWarren]

One more issue that will be used to focus on a person's ABILITY to do a thing as opposed to their DESIRE to do a thing.

I swear to god... if we (as a society) keep thinking like this, we will all be sealed in plastic bubbles with feeding tubes at birth....


Bottom line is that there are always going to be messed up people out there.


-- John

 

[Cannonball888]

Quote:
This range rented to a LONE customer. If they stop that and they'll prevent suicides there 99.99%. You'd think they would have changed their policy after the first incident.

Doesn't always work. A couple of months ago at the Shoot Straight range outside of Orlando, a mother shot her son, then herself. Who would've seen that one coming?

I wrote it would prevent most incidents, not all. Most incidents involve a lone person.

 

[Ed Ames]

Voila! Perfect safety.

I can make it safer:

1) No outside guns or ammo.
2) The trigger is actuated electronically from a control room. You push the button and watch the animatronic finger squeeze the trigger.

That way you don't have to worry about lead poisoning.

The scary part is that some people consider would consider that reasonable.

 

[pmeisel]

Someone who wants to commit suicide will find a way to do so. Their choice of tool is largely irrelevant except for those who wish to make an issue of it.

 

[PCGS65]

This happened at a local range here too just last summer. Guy walks in rents a gun...boom.

I can't understand this. Why even rent and put the range at risk for a frivolous lawsuit. Why not just buy a gun? It's not like you'll need the rent $$$ anymore.

 

[Cannonball888]

My argument that ranges should voluntarily adopt a no rental policy to lone customers has nothing to do with bystander safety or preventing suicides in general because as others have stated they'll find another way. It is about it being good for the ranges business interests, and it is good for our image and cause which the commie media is hungry to ruin even further.

 

[JImbothefiveth]

A caring society would either work to remove the sickness...which often means curing degenerative diseases or blocking a great deal of pain...or honor an individual's right to self-determination.

No, a caring society would not honor their suicide wish. A caring society would try and save them. Once they commit suicide, they cannot be cured. So, keep them alive so they can be cured rather than letting them apply a permanent solution to a temporary problem and creating a permanent problem.

Making suicide harder --restricting access to guns, for example-- does nothing but torment an already sick person.

It provids more time to cure them. I

have known a sick person who spent 6 months researching suicide methods, growing more and more frustrated because so many of the "effective" methods had legal barriers.

That's 6 extra months you have to persuade him not to commit suicide. That's 6 extra months his family doesn't have to deal with suicide.

The laws designed to make it harder for him to commit suicide did nothing but force him to do a great deal of unhealthy research and basically made a sick person even sicker.

He was suicidal. How can you get any sicker? That's like saying that doctors shouldn't treat stab wounds because the victim will lose more blood until they stop the bleeding.

 

[Ed Ames]

Why not just buy a gun?

It's a waste of money that could be used by the family. It's also a physical reminder that the family will have to deal with. It's a mistake to believe that suicidal people are nothing but selfish or unable to consider the future. At least some of them are very concerned about their family and the future -- they just don't want to be alive any more.

Edited to respond to JImbo....

A caring society can do both.

At the end of the day it goes like this: A patient comes into the hospital with late stage breast cancer. With chemo, radiation, and massive surgery she may survive...but she will be in constant misery for 6 months to get that may...and her quality of life after 6 months will not be what you or I would enjoy. Does society have a right to force her to receive that treatment? Or does she have a right to say no? Why should someone with cancer have the right to refuse further treatment if someone with another disease which, if left untreated, will have equal or LOWER mortality (suicidal intent) does not?

As for "how can you get sicker" ... I guess that depends on why you are suicidal. If you take someone who has a degenerative disease that will exist whether or not they are happy, and add a layer of guilt and angst, you have made a sick person sicker.

 

[Zane]

I can say, with almost 100% certainty, that if my range had the "no rental to singels" rule, I would not own any guns.

Less than 2 years ago I was with the Brady's. I grew up in an anti-family. The only reason you'd need a gun was to commit a crime and people were safer without them. Cops were the only ones professional enough to handle them.

One afternoon, at the age of 30, I decided that since guns were dangerous, I should probably have a familiarity with them so that, if needed, I could handle one safely. So I walked into a gun store/range. I got a safety lecture and some brief instruction. I came back every other week for about 3 months, before I decided to buy a firearm. I just bought my 5th in about 15 month yesterday.

I have no gun owning friends and only 2 people that I work with own guns. So, I look at this issue slightly differently. I had to make my way into this sport on my own.

Interestingly enough, my younger brother was doing the same thing, 1000 miles away (although his roommate is a gun owner).

While I understand wanting to prevent suicides from happening in the range, there are potential downside to preventing the curious from trying the sport.

 

[ArmedBear]

One more issue that will be used to focus on a person's ABILITY to do a thing as opposed to their DESIRE to do a thing.

True enough.

Isn't is most disturbing that so many people seem to WANT to kill themselves, enough to find creative ways to actually pull it off?

Why not just buy a gun?

Since the real estate crash, Americans have become much more careful about spending money on things they don't really need...

a caring society

There's no such THING as a "caring society" or an "uncaring" one either. That's not how the world works.

The world is made up of individual people, making individual choices. If someone really wants to commit suicide, he or she will have more power to make and follow through on that choice than any other individual, or several individuals, have to stop it.

That said, a basic grasp of reality can help individuals in a position to do so, make the right choices, help another person, etc. That's what needs to happen: if I want to help prevent a suicide, and I'm faced with that situation, I need to figure out what I can do -- and fast.

As long as the word "society" even comes up, it indicates that someone does not have that grasp on reality.

Then, there is such thing as respect for others. Where does that stop? I'm not sure. Would you tie up a neighbor who wants to go BASE jumping? Shoot him in the leg if he wants to climb a very dangerous route where other rock climbers have died?

I'm not advocating helping someone to commit suicide, and I would try to stop it. But there is a certain amount of autonomy that a free society must give the individual, EVEN IF it means that he/she COULD commit suicide, right?

(And there is such thing as a free society, since social order and individual liberty are very closely intertwined, whether we like it or not.)

 

[Ed Ames]

It's called co-opting. You take a term from the opponent's lexicon and apply it in a way that serves your end.

My end is to make controlling what others do simply because you dislike it morally repugnant to the majority. I personally very much dislike suicide for a number of reasons, but I recognize that my dislike, even my reasoned arguments against it, do not give me the right to take the choice away from anyone else. To persuade others to share that point of view I must make it accessible to them.

This is no different than the RKBA effort...when Brady et al called on restrictions for safety we had to co-opt safety as our issue.

 

[Justin]

This discussion is outside of the scope of THR. It would make for a good discussion at APS, though.