President says ‘epidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apart’ after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago
Suicide is not what first comes to mind when someone talks about gun violence or shootings. Nobody said they don’t count - just that it’s misleading.
It isn’t misleading at all. A gun death is a gun death to anyone who doesn’t have a bias.
Bias? The point is that you’re not as likely to just be randomly shot at the street as those statistics might make it to seem.
For me, it’s not about fear it’s about empathy. Seeing that number I didn’t think “oh no I’m going to get shot.” I thought, “that’s a lot of lives lost and families and friends impacted for the rest of their lives. A lot of permanent loss for the country. How can we have a meaningful impact that number?”
It’s just many of those deaths probably would have occurred anyways wether there is a gun ban or not.
There are lots of ways to commit suicide, guns are just convenient. Now some of those deaths probably wouldn’t have happened because they may be spur of the moment decisions in a dark period, but many still would have.
Not like the deaths of children who find their parents gun in the closet or the deaths of 5+ people in a grocery store with an automatic weapon.
While it’s true that some of the people that kill themselves with a gun would find other ways, the majority wouldn’t. MOST suicides are spur of the moment, and having quick access to a deadly weapon makes those attempts far more successful. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-ownership-associated-with-much-higher-suicide-risk.html
I think in the US a lot of murders probably get classified as suicides, accidents, and self defense to avoid launching an expensive, dangerous investigation, so I would also say that suicides are overreported.
Proof? no, if there were proof our data would simply have to be better than it is. Are there a lot of statistical and geographical tendencies working against this data that are easily pointed out, yes.
The biggest ones: suicides usually occur in places where the body will be discovered and people who commit suicide tend to want to be found.
Homocides tend to be covered up more often or occur in more remote locations; lots of unsolved homocides end up as missing persons, especially in less dense areas. A few are staged as suicides or accidents.
So there’s absolutely a tendency for the data to skew in certain directions. This isn’t even addressing more chaotic problems liks a lack a lack of qualified coroners, incentives to not charge police who just riddle people with bullets, etc.
