There is no catastrophe so ghastly that we will reform our gun laws

[Paperman299]

I worked with two people that committed suicide. One was completely out of the blue and the other guy we knew had problems.

I don't know the details of his condition, but I know he was on some type of psychotic medication. Because of his meds he was not allowed to drive and rode a bike everywhere. For the most part, he was a good worker and very bright. Some days he would be a little off his meds and would act strangely.
One day he stopped showing up for work and a few weeks later we heard he had shot himself. He was not allowed to drive a car but nothing stopped him from owning a gun

Yeah. Even though I don't think there is even a remote possibility you could stop that guy from getting a gun and killing himself. I do get why it would make everyone feel better if we at least made it illegal for people on suicide watch to have access to a gun, sort of like pretending we are stopping him from driving by taking his license away. Course he could still just pick up some keys and drive, the law can't stop people from doing bad things, it can only make it illegal.

Actually, if we could make a better system for restricting gun access for people with severe depression, there's good evidence suicide rates would go down. Killing yourself tends to be a decision of passion, and making it less convenient cuts down on the people who make that decision.

For instance, the most popular method of suicide in England in the early- and mid-20th century was asphyxiation by way of your own coal gas oven. When Britain phased these out (for reasons much more to do with the environment than with mental health), not only did the number of people killing themselves with coal gas ovens drop, but suicide rates overall fell by a third. One small change, and lives were saved (incidentally)!

 

[P@triot]

[/B]

That's a good one there skull.

The military trains soldiers to shoot people instead of skeet.

And all the other gun owners (non military) who are very much afraid of thugs, rapists, thieves, murderers, etc, they are all out at the range practicing to shoot what......skeet?

You crack me up dude.

Yes, when we shoot skeet, it's because we're very much afraid of thugs, rapists, thieves and murderers. You got us. Here's a cookie, your mommy said you can play outside until dinner.

You dumb bitch. Skeet do not attack people. So when you are on the range skeet shooting and are not concerned that you can't hit anything, why bother having a gun?

Or are you afraid of being attacked by skeet? Instead of rapists, thieves and murderers.

If you had practiced hitting the skeet, maybe when the robber comes to get you, you could hit what you aim at. But I doubt it.

If it ain't skeet you ain't shooting it. Right, you dumb bitch?

Another misogynist liberal showing their true colors. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if [MENTION=35352]zeke[/MENTION] was one of the rapists tormenting women at the cesspool rallies known as Occupy Wall Street.

Listening to this minimum wage loser go off all unhinged day after day is just comical. Like all liberals, he's so angry. He hates freedom. He hates the Constitution. He hates America. He really hates women. Hates his own life.

 

[Skull Pilot]

I worked with two people that committed suicide. One was completely out of the blue and the other guy we knew had problems.

I don't know the details of his condition, but I know he was on some type of psychotic medication. Because of his meds he was not allowed to drive and rode a bike everywhere. For the most part, he was a good worker and very bright. Some days he would be a little off his meds and would act strangely.
One day he stopped showing up for work and a few weeks later we heard he had shot himself. He was not allowed to drive a car but nothing stopped him from owning a gun

Yeah. Even though I don't think there is even a remote possibility you could stop that guy from getting a gun and killing himself. I do get why it would make everyone feel better if we at least made it illegal for people on suicide watch to have access to a gun, sort of like pretending we are stopping him from driving by taking his license away. Course he could still just pick up some keys and drive, the law can't stop people from doing bad things, it can only make it illegal.

Actually, if we could make a better system for restricting gun access for people with severe depression, there's good evidence suicide rates would go down. Killing yourself tends to be a decision of passion, and making it less convenient cuts down on the people who make that decision.

For instance, the most popular method of suicide in England in the early- and mid-20th century was asphyxiation by way of your own coal gas oven. When Britain phased these out (for reasons much more to do with the environment than with mental health), not only did the number of people killing themselves with coal gas ovens drop, but suicide rates overall fell by a third. One small change, and lives were saved (incidentally)!

Classic correlation does not equal causation

 

[Spoonman]

I've got no problem with making it illegal to own or posses a firearm for certain citizens that have been identified as a risk to society based on being a convicted violent felon

Yes, your Contitutional rights can be restricted with ... due process of law. A convicted felon had their rights removed by definition with due process. The problem with this is that a convicted felon trying to buy a gun should have their asses thrown back in jail. But the liberals don't want to do that either. That isn't really their concern, it's about doing everything they can to limit all sales.


Well, that should come back to personal responsibility and due process. Drinking should not be a defense for shooting someone, but I'm not sure how you say their right to a gun is removed when they are drinking. As for mentally handicapped or impaired, again it needs to come back to due process. It needs to be restricted in court, not by the legislature.

Course to me all libs are mentally handicapped so that might not work so well.

Apparently they are also obsessed with shooting people. At least that's what they keep telling us.

Well it's illegal to drive on public road when drunk right? I've got no problem with coming up with laws that make the left feel like they are doing something. Why not a law against using / carrying / owning a gun when you are seriously mentally incapacitated, certifiably insane etc.? Isn't that why mentally unstable people are put in straight jackets? We put these people on the street and let them own guns? I see no reason to defend the right of the certifiably insane to carry weapons.

we have a law that says it is illegal to drive drunk. if you do you pay the price.

we have a law that says it is illegal to kill someone with a gun. if you do, you pay the price.


We don't have laws restricting legal drivers from the types of cars they own, horsepower, capacity, how fast they can go, color, how much the ylook like a race car. so why do we have restrictive laws on legal gun owners?

 

[Paperman299]

Actually, if we could make a better system for restricting gun access for people with severe depression, there's good evidence suicide rates would go down. Killing yourself tends to be a decision of passion, and making it less convenient cuts down on the people who make that decision.

For instance, the most popular method of suicide in England in the early- and mid-20th century was asphyxiation by way of your own coal gas oven. When Britain phased these out (for reasons much more to do with the environment than with mental health), not only did the number of people killing themselves with coal gas ovens drop, but suicide rates overall fell by a third. One small change, and lives were saved (incidentally)!

Classic correlation does not equal causation

Well, here's another example, then.

By the 1980s, the four people who, on average, leapt from [the Ellington Bridge's] stone balustrades each year accounted for half of all jumping suicides in the nation’s capital. The adjacent Taft, by contrast, averaged less than two.

After three people leapt from the Ellington in a single 10-day period in 1985, a consortium of civic groups lobbied for a suicide barrier to be erected on the span. Opponents to the plan, which included the National Trust for Historic Preservation, countered with the same argument that is made whenever a suicide barrier on a bridge or landmark building is proposed: that such barriers don’t really work, that those intent on killing themselves will merely go elsewhere. In the Ellington’s case, opponents had the added ammunition of pointing to the equally lethal Taft standing just yards away: if a barrier were placed on the Ellington, it was not at all hard to see exactly where thwarted jumpers would head.

Except the opponents were wrong. A study conducted five years after the Ellington barrier went up showed that while suicides at the Ellington were eliminated completely, the rate at the Taft barely changed, inching up from 1.7 to 2 deaths per year. What’s more, over the same five-year span, the total number of jumping suicides in Washington had decreased by 50 percent, or the precise percentage the Ellington once accounted for.

 

[Spoonman]

I worked with two people that committed suicide. One was completely out of the blue and the other guy we knew had problems.

I don't know the details of his condition, but I know he was on some type of psychotic medication. Because of his meds he was not allowed to drive and rode a bike everywhere. For the most part, he was a good worker and very bright. Some days he would be a little off his meds and would act strangely.
One day he stopped showing up for work and a few weeks later we heard he had shot himself. He was not allowed to drive a car but nothing stopped him from owning a gun

Yeah. Even though I don't think there is even a remote possibility you could stop that guy from getting a gun and killing himself. I do get why it would make everyone feel better if we at least made it illegal for people on suicide watch to have access to a gun, sort of like pretending we are stopping him from driving by taking his license away. Course he could still just pick up some keys and drive, the law can't stop people from doing bad things, it can only make it illegal.

Actually, if we could make a better system for restricting gun access for people with severe depression, there's good evidence suicide rates would go down. Killing yourself tends to be a decision of passion, and making it less convenient cuts down on the people who make that decision.

For instance, the most popular method of suicide in England in the early- and mid-20th century was asphyxiation by way of your own coal gas oven. When Britain phased these out (for reasons much more to do with the environment than with mental health), not only did the number of people killing themselves with coal gas ovens drop, but suicide rates overall fell by a third. One small change, and lives were saved (incidentally)!

we had 3 high school kids kill themselves this year already. all hung themselves. we had one last summer. drug overdose. they didn't care they didn't have a gun

 

[martybegan]

Actually, if we could make a better system for restricting gun access for people with severe depression, there's good evidence suicide rates would go down. Killing yourself tends to be a decision of passion, and making it less convenient cuts down on the people who make that decision.

For instance, the most popular method of suicide in England in the early- and mid-20th century was asphyxiation by way of your own coal gas oven. When Britain phased these out (for reasons much more to do with the environment than with mental health), not only did the number of people killing themselves with coal gas ovens drop, but suicide rates overall fell by a third. One small change, and lives were saved (incidentally)!

Classic correlation does not equal causation

Well, here's another example, then.

By the 1980s, the four people who, on average, leapt from [the Ellington Bridge's] stone balustrades each year accounted for half of all jumping suicides in the nation’s capital. The adjacent Taft, by contrast, averaged less than two.

After three people leapt from the Ellington in a single 10-day period in 1985, a consortium of civic groups lobbied for a suicide barrier to be erected on the span. Opponents to the plan, which included the National Trust for Historic Preservation, countered with the same argument that is made whenever a suicide barrier on a bridge or landmark building is proposed: that such barriers don’t really work, that those intent on killing themselves will merely go elsewhere. In the Ellington’s case, opponents had the added ammunition of pointing to the equally lethal Taft standing just yards away: if a barrier were placed on the Ellington, it was not at all hard to see exactly where thwarted jumpers would head.

Except the opponents were wrong. A study conducted five years after the Ellington barrier went up showed that while suicides at the Ellington were eliminated completely, the rate at the Taft barely changed, inching up from 1.7 to 2 deaths per year. What’s more, over the same five-year span, the total number of jumping suicides in Washington had decreased by 50 percent, or the precise percentage the Ellington once accounted for.

and how does one know these people did not kill themselves some other way?

 

[RKMBrown]

Yes, your Contitutional rights can be restricted with ... due process of law. A convicted felon had their rights removed by definition with due process. The problem with this is that a convicted felon trying to buy a gun should have their asses thrown back in jail. But the liberals don't want to do that either. That isn't really their concern, it's about doing everything they can to limit all sales.


Well, that should come back to personal responsibility and due process. Drinking should not be a defense for shooting someone, but I'm not sure how you say their right to a gun is removed when they are drinking. As for mentally handicapped or impaired, again it needs to come back to due process. It needs to be restricted in court, not by the legislature.



Apparently they are also obsessed with shooting people. At least that's what they keep telling us.

Well it's illegal to drive on public road when drunk right? I've got no problem with coming up with laws that make the left feel like they are doing something. Why not a law against using / carrying / owning a gun when you are seriously mentally incapacitated, certifiably insane etc.? Isn't that why mentally unstable people are put in straight jackets? We put these people on the street and let them own guns? I see no reason to defend the right of the certifiably insane to carry weapons.

I'm not sure if we're disagreeing or not. You're using legally ambiguous terms like "certifiably insane." I'm saying rights can be removed only with due process of law. So I would say rights can be restricted when you are "certified" insane, not certifiable. Are you saying different? I'm not clear.

Automobiles are a privilege, we ceded the right to create roads to the government, with that goes regulating their use. Safety, licenses, all go with that. Guns are a "right." Can free speech be limited because you're gassed?

I am also saying that you have a gun, you have a drink, you made the choice to drink, you are responsible for what you do, drinking is not a defense.

We're agreeing ... just mincing words on the fine points.

Automobiles are not a privilege, they are a product.

We did not cede the right to create roads to government.

We did assign the jobs of constructing and regulating road use of some roads to some of our government employees.

Guns are not a right in the usa, they are a right in sweden where they are assigned after service. If they were a right they would be provided to us. The right to keep and bear (carry) arms is a right the federal government cannot restrict. This is the restriction laid on the federal government by the 2nd amendment.

Certified, certifiable... I don't see much of a difference. It will be easy to find someone that thinks you are insane and is willing to sign a piece of paper certifying as such for a fee.

 

[kaz]

Actually, if we could make a better system for restricting gun access for people with severe depression, there's good evidence suicide rates would go down. Killing yourself tends to be a decision of passion, and making it less convenient cuts down on the people who make that decision.

For instance, the most popular method of suicide in England in the early- and mid-20th century was asphyxiation by way of your own coal gas oven. When Britain phased these out (for reasons much more to do with the environment than with mental health), not only did the number of people killing themselves with coal gas ovens drop, but suicide rates overall fell by a third. One small change, and lives were saved (incidentally)!

Classic correlation does not equal causation

Well, here's another example, then.

By the 1980s, the four people who, on average, leapt from [the Ellington Bridge's] stone balustrades each year accounted for half of all jumping suicides in the nation’s capital. The adjacent Taft, by contrast, averaged less than two.

After three people leapt from the Ellington in a single 10-day period in 1985, a consortium of civic groups lobbied for a suicide barrier to be erected on the span. Opponents to the plan, which included the National Trust for Historic Preservation, countered with the same argument that is made whenever a suicide barrier on a bridge or landmark building is proposed: that such barriers don’t really work, that those intent on killing themselves will merely go elsewhere. In the Ellington’s case, opponents had the added ammunition of pointing to the equally lethal Taft standing just yards away: if a barrier were placed on the Ellington, it was not at all hard to see exactly where thwarted jumpers would head.

Except the opponents were wrong. A study conducted five years after the Ellington barrier went up showed that while suicides at the Ellington were eliminated completely, the rate at the Taft barely changed, inching up from 1.7 to 2 deaths per year. What’s more, over the same five-year span, the total number of jumping suicides in Washington had decreased by 50 percent, or the precise percentage the Ellington once accounted for.

So you think people go to the place then decide whether to jump and they don't decide to jump then pick the place? Why would they have necessarily gone to the Taft? That includes a whole lot of unsubstantiated assumptions.

 

[Paperman299]

Yeah. Even though I don't think there is even a remote possibility you could stop that guy from getting a gun and killing himself. I do get why it would make everyone feel better if we at least made it illegal for people on suicide watch to have access to a gun, sort of like pretending we are stopping him from driving by taking his license away. Course he could still just pick up some keys and drive, the law can't stop people from doing bad things, it can only make it illegal.

Actually, if we could make a better system for restricting gun access for people with severe depression, there's good evidence suicide rates would go down. Killing yourself tends to be a decision of passion, and making it less convenient cuts down on the people who make that decision.

For instance, the most popular method of suicide in England in the early- and mid-20th century was asphyxiation by way of your own coal gas oven. When Britain phased these out (for reasons much more to do with the environment than with mental health), not only did the number of people killing themselves with coal gas ovens drop, but suicide rates overall fell by a third. One small change, and lives were saved (incidentally)!

we had 3 high school kids kill themselves this year already. all hung themselves. we had one last summer. drug overdose. they didn't care they didn't have a gun

I'm sorry to hear that. It's true restricting gun access to people with depression wouldn't stop all suicides. I'm only showing cases where making it less convenient to take your own life has actually alleviated suicide rates.

 

[kaz]

We did not cede the right to create roads to government

Article I, Section 8, Clause 7: "To establish Post Offices and post Roads".

Guns are not a right in the usa, they are a right in sweden where they are assigned after service. If they were a right they would be provided to us. The right to keep and bear (carry) arms is a right the federal government cannot restrict. This is the restriction laid on the federal government by the 2nd amendment.

Now that's "mincing words." Obviously we agree on that.

Certified, certifiable... I don't see much of a difference. It will be easy to find someone that thinks you are insane and is willing to sign a piece of paper certifying as such for a fee.

The difference is due process

 

[Paperman299]

and how does one know these people did not kill themselves some other way?

It's a fair question. And here's the answer, same article:

But how do you prove that those thwarted from the Ellington, or by any other suicide barrier, don’t simply choose another method entirely? As it turns out, one man found a clever way to do just that. With a somewhat whimsical manner and the trace of a grin constantly working at one corner of his mouth, Richard Seiden has the appearance of someone always in the middle of telling a joke. It’s not what you might expect considering that Seiden, a professor emeritus and clinical psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health, is probably best known for his pioneering work on the study of suicide. Much of that work has focused on the bridge that lies just across San Francisco Bay from campus, the Golden Gate...

...In the late 1970s, Seiden set out to test the notion of inevitability in jumping suicides. Obtaining a Police Department list of all would-be jumpers who were thwarted from leaping off the Golden Gate between 1937 and 1971 — an astonishing 515 individuals in all — he painstakingly culled death-certificate records to see how many had subsequently “completed.” His report, “Where Are They Now?” remains a landmark in the study of suicide, for what he found was that just 6 percent of those pulled off the bridge went on to kill themselves. Even allowing for suicides that might have been mislabeled as accidents only raised the total to 10 percent.

“That’s still a lot higher than the general population, of course,” Seiden, 75, explained to me over lunch in a busy restaurant in downtown San Franciso. “But to me, the more significant fact is that 90 percent of them got past it. They were having an acute temporary crisis, they passed through it and, coming out the other side, they got on with their lives.”

 

[martybegan]

and how does one know these people did not kill themselves some other way?

It's a fair question. And here's the answer, same article:

But how do you prove that those thwarted from the Ellington, or by any other suicide barrier, don’t simply choose another method entirely? As it turns out, one man found a clever way to do just that. With a somewhat whimsical manner and the trace of a grin constantly working at one corner of his mouth, Richard Seiden has the appearance of someone always in the middle of telling a joke. It’s not what you might expect considering that Seiden, a professor emeritus and clinical psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health, is probably best known for his pioneering work on the study of suicide. Much of that work has focused on the bridge that lies just across San Francisco Bay from campus, the Golden Gate...

...In the late 1970s, Seiden set out to test the notion of inevitability in jumping suicides. Obtaining a Police Department list of all would-be jumpers who were thwarted from leaping off the Golden Gate between 1937 and 1971 — an astonishing 515 individuals in all — he painstakingly culled death-certificate records to see how many had subsequently “completed.” His report, “Where Are They Now?” remains a landmark in the study of suicide, for what he found was that just 6 percent of those pulled off the bridge went on to kill themselves. Even allowing for suicides that might have been mislabeled as accidents only raised the total to 10 percent.

“That’s still a lot higher than the general population, of course,” Seiden, 75, explained to me over lunch in a busy restaurant in downtown San Franciso. “But to me, the more significant fact is that 90 percent of them got past it. They were having an acute temporary crisis, they passed through it and, coming out the other side, they got on with their lives.”

How do you know that they didn't go outside the study area to jump?
If jumpers are such a specific set of suicide attempts, how does any of this apply to gun suicides and the concept of removing guns to reduce the overall# of suicides?

 

[Paperman299]

and how does one know these people did not kill themselves some other way?

It's a fair question. And here's the answer, same article:

But how do you prove that those thwarted from the Ellington, or by any other suicide barrier, don’t simply choose another method entirely? As it turns out, one man found a clever way to do just that. With a somewhat whimsical manner and the trace of a grin constantly working at one corner of his mouth, Richard Seiden has the appearance of someone always in the middle of telling a joke. It’s not what you might expect considering that Seiden, a professor emeritus and clinical psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health, is probably best known for his pioneering work on the study of suicide. Much of that work has focused on the bridge that lies just across San Francisco Bay from campus, the Golden Gate...

...In the late 1970s, Seiden set out to test the notion of inevitability in jumping suicides. Obtaining a Police Department list of all would-be jumpers who were thwarted from leaping off the Golden Gate between 1937 and 1971 — an astonishing 515 individuals in all — he painstakingly culled death-certificate records to see how many had subsequently “completed.” His report, “Where Are They Now?” remains a landmark in the study of suicide, for what he found was that just 6 percent of those pulled off the bridge went on to kill themselves. Even allowing for suicides that might have been mislabeled as accidents only raised the total to 10 percent.

“That’s still a lot higher than the general population, of course,” Seiden, 75, explained to me over lunch in a busy restaurant in downtown San Franciso. “But to me, the more significant fact is that 90 percent of them got past it. They were having an acute temporary crisis, they passed through it and, coming out the other side, they got on with their lives.”

How do you know that they didn't go outside the study area to jump?
If jumpers are such a specific set of suicide attempts, how does any of this apply to gun suicides and the concept of removing guns to reduce the overall# of suicides?

It's possible some may have ended up completing their suicides outside of the San Francisco Police Department's jurisdiction, but 94% of them? That only 6% were found to have eventually finished the act is definitely significant.

To answer your second question:

Put simply, those methods that require forethought or exertion on the actor’s part (taking an overdose of pills, say, or cutting your wrists), and thus most strongly suggest premeditation, happen to be the methods with the least chance of “success.” Conversely, those methods that require the least effort or planning (shooting yourself, jumping from a precipice) happen to be the deadliest. The natural inference, then, is that the person who best fits the classic definition of “being suicidal” might actually be safer than one acting in the heat of the moment — at least 40 times safer in the case of someone opting for an overdose of pills over shooting himself.

As illogical as this might seem, it is a phenomenon confirmed by research. According to statistics collected by the Injury Control Research Center on nearly 4,000 suicides across the United States, those who had killed themselves with firearms — by far the most lethal common method of suicide — had a markedly lower history of depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, previous suicide attempts or drug or alcohol abuse than those who died by the least lethal methods. On the flip side, those who ranked the highest for at-risk factors tended to choose those methods with low “success” rates...

...Even though guns account for less than 1 percent of all American suicide attempts, their extreme fatality rate — anywhere from 85 percent and 92 percent, depending on how the statistics are compiled — means that they account for 54 percent of all completions

 

[RKMBrown]

Actually, if we could make a better system for restricting gun access for people with severe depression, there's good evidence suicide rates would go down. Killing yourself tends to be a decision of passion, and making it less convenient cuts down on the people who make that decision.

For instance, the most popular method of suicide in England in the early- and mid-20th century was asphyxiation by way of your own coal gas oven. When Britain phased these out (for reasons much more to do with the environment than with mental health), not only did the number of people killing themselves with coal gas ovens drop, but suicide rates overall fell by a third. One small change, and lives were saved (incidentally)!

Classic correlation does not equal causation

Well, here's another example, then.

By the 1980s, the four people who, on average, leapt from [the Ellington Bridge's] stone balustrades each year accounted for half of all jumping suicides in the nation’s capital. The adjacent Taft, by contrast, averaged less than two.

After three people leapt from the Ellington in a single 10-day period in 1985, a consortium of civic groups lobbied for a suicide barrier to be erected on the span. Opponents to the plan, which included the National Trust for Historic Preservation, countered with the same argument that is made whenever a suicide barrier on a bridge or landmark building is proposed: that such barriers don’t really work, that those intent on killing themselves will merely go elsewhere. In the Ellington’s case, opponents had the added ammunition of pointing to the equally lethal Taft standing just yards away: if a barrier were placed on the Ellington, it was not at all hard to see exactly where thwarted jumpers would head.

Except the opponents were wrong. A study conducted five years after the Ellington barrier went up showed that while suicides at the Ellington were eliminated completely, the rate at the Taft barely changed, inching up from 1.7 to 2 deaths per year. What’s more, over the same five-year span, the total number of jumping suicides in Washington had decreased by 50 percent, or the precise percentage the Ellington once accounted for.

ROFL.... no offense but your ideas about what amounts to statistical proof are really funny.

But yes we should put up barriers to make it harder for people to kill themselves. Maybe ban tubs and knives since a lot of suicides are people cutting their veins in a tub.

 

[RKMBrown]

We did not cede the right to create roads to government

Article I, Section 8, Clause 7: "To establish Post Offices and post Roads".

Guns are not a right in the usa, they are a right in sweden where they are assigned after service. If they were a right they would be provided to us. The right to keep and bear (carry) arms is a right the federal government cannot restrict. This is the restriction laid on the federal government by the 2nd amendment.

Now that's "mincing words." Obviously we agree on that.

Certified, certifiable... I don't see much of a difference. It will be easy to find someone that thinks you are insane and is willing to sign a piece of paper certifying as such for a fee.

The difference is due process

You mean like the due process Obama used to free those terrorists, or the due process he used to kill those Americans with drones, or the due process those swat guys used to throw a grenade in a baby carriage the other day, ....

There are two types of due process. 1) The right to due process when you are accused of a crime. 2) The right of the government to kill, take your rights, take your property, take your liberties.

For due process #1 there is a basis for that. So you don't have to worry about being convicted of a crime without a subjectively fair trail. But if they decide to skip the courts they can and go right to punishment, see due process #2.

For due process #2, due process is what the government says due process is. Thus due process for taking your rights away, even your life, is merely an arbitrary decision of some government employee.

 

[Paperman299]

To be clear, I'm not saying "Guns cause suicides! Melt them all down and use the slag to make memorial statues!" I'm just saying there's strong evidence that making suicide less convenient cuts down on people making that call. Most of us, I think, already want guns out of the hands of mentally ill people, in case they irrationally turn those guns on others. I'm making the case that if we also stop clinically depressed people from getting guns easily, less of them will get those guns and turn them on themselves.

 

[rightwinger]

To be clear, I'm not saying "Guns cause suicides! Melt them all down and use the slag to make memorial statues!" I'm just saying there's strong evidence that making suicide less convenient cuts down on people making that call. Most of us, I think, already want guns out of the hands of mentally ill people, in case they irrationally turn those guns on others. I'm making the case that if we also stop clinically depressed people from getting guns easily, less of them will get those guns and turn them on themselves.

If you live with someone who is clinically depressed...hide the guns, hide the pills and hide the knives

 

[Nosmo King]

California has the background checks in place they are pushing. this latest guy passed 3 of them, while undergoing psychiatric evaluation, while being investigated by the police.

Just as lowering the speed limit did not put a stop to all highway deaths, just as inspecting fruits and vegetables did not eradicate salmonella from out food supply, just as curbing hazardous emissions from smoke stacks did not eliminate all air pollution, back ground checks will not prevent every mad man from obtaining a gun.

But no one can deny that speed limits save lives, food inspections make our food supply safer and limiting emissions made our air measurably cleaner. Couldn't the gun community concede that back ground checks could help REDUCE the number of mass shootings at the hands of the insane? Every measure taken cannot be seen strictly through the lens of 'infringement' or 'ineffectiveness'. If indeed the gun is a benign object used by the insane to wreak havoc, shouldn't we take greater precautions to keep guns out of the hands of the irresponsible and the insane?

It's not about strictly seeing this through the lenses of infringement and ineffectiveness. It's about cost-benefit analysis.

Cost: First the obvious: Doctor-patient privelage (or at least the illusion of it that's left to us by Obamacare) is gone. Bye bye

More importantly. . .

Once the precedent is set that the "mentally ill" are disallowed from exercising their 2nd Amendment rights, it not only implies a precedent for that particular amendment, but also a precedent that one's mental state becomes a potential criteria by which constitutional rights can be summarily denied. Let that sink in. Mental state (or some bureaucrat's determination of one's mental state!) becomes a potential criteria by which constitutional rights can be summarily denied.

Mentally ill, insane, unstable. . . these are pretty subjective terms and open to a lot of interpretation. On top of that, the psychological field as a whole isn't a static thing. Knowledge of the human brain and psyche is still growing and new psychological terms are still being coined. We'd be making the concession that some person or some governing body would necessarily be in charge of deciding which conditions were enough reason to deny someone a constitutional right, and in charge of defining these conditions for legal purposes.

The entire idea of the Bill of Rights is to protect specific rights from the intrusions of our own government. The cost of what you suggest is the setting of a precedent that the government from which we protect these rights can define psychological conditions based on which to deny us those very rights.

Like it or not, what you're describing is way, -way- bigger than guns.

Benefit: Less diagnosed crazies would be able to acquire their guns legally. This wouldn't actually stop the P2P gun sales and trades, it would just necessitate taking out of the light of day those transactions made by people who couldn't or wouldn't fit the bill for a background check. Those crazies who currently get their guns through legal P2P trades and sales would still mostly get their guns, just the transactions wouldn't be legal. But some of those transactions wouldn't happen! !

So, in theory, if this were in effect since Kip Kinkle, you'd be able to stop -some- of the mass shootings perpetrated by crazies who were both diagnosed -and- acquired their firearms legally and personally. Without those guns, I'm certain that not all of them would have found some alternative method of murdering lots of people. As long as you force someone whose boiling over with homicidal urges to use melee weapons or engineer explosives, they'll probably abandon those violent desires and go join the Peace Corps.

But hey, if we can save a couple dozen people by shitting all over the Constitution, go for it. I don't need my rights. Warm fuzzy fuzzy child worship for the win! Lock me up if you have to, just keep those little cuties safe and cozy!

So the gun is benign. No more dangerous than a paper weight or a home made pipe bomb or a baking dish. It's the operator of these implements that poses the real danger to public health and safety.

But we cannot even make an inroad to prevent the mentally frazzled from obtaining the tools they use to create tragedy. We are essentially saddled with a suicide pact due to the second amendment. We cannot infringe upon the rights of the mentally disturbed, but we can forget about the rights of the victims to pursue happiness, to live life, to enjoy liberty.

The gun lovers are calling the tune. More guns. Guns for everyone. Guns for the crazies without a second thought.

Is it any wonder why then the gun lovers go through all sorts of rhetorical gymnastics to rationalize, excuse and ignore the problem with gun violence? There just are no solutions coming from the gun lovers. It's time we start to ignore them in the name of public safety. Constitution be damned. It's not meant to tie us to an anchor of gun metal and cast us overboard in a sea of blood and violence.

 

[kaz]

So the gun is benign. No more dangerous than a paper weight or a home made pipe bomb or a baking dish. It's the operator of these implements that poses the real danger to public health and safety.

But we cannot even make an inroad to prevent the mentally frazzled from obtaining the tools they use to create tragedy. We are essentially saddled with a suicide pact due to the second amendment.

Begging the question