Senior men have higher rates of suicide than average, and firearms were involved in more than three-quarters of those deaths in 2021, according to a CDC report
Guns just add dangerous violence to everything.
In a shooting event, the “good guy” trying to stop a bad guy with a gun can still accidentally hit innocent bystanders with bullets. By adding more bullets flying, they’ve effectively made the situation more dangerous, and now when incompetent cops show up, they’ll think anyone with a gun is the shooter.
In a suicide, you’re not only risking it not working because you didn’t explode enough of your own head, you’re also putting other people in danger, depending on the caliber of bullet and gun used. You could easily have the bullet exit the back of your head and enter your neighbors apartment and harm someone on the other side. You could also live through your attempted suicide and have an even worse life with a totally disfigured face.
Guns make everything worse.
If you need defense in a shooting/violent attack, carry a high-powered flashlight that you can temporarily blind an attacker with, allowing you and others to escape in their confusion and/or get close enough to disarm the assailant.
If you want to off yourself, buy a fucking Exit Bag and get some god damned helium.
Guns have nothing to do with this and you fell victim to partisan click-bait. You got perfectly distracted from the real issue of suicide, it seems.
You are making some bold assumptions that a person that is in that headspace actually gives a fuck about anything else or anyone else.
Art imitates life. I equate it to using a weapon as literary device. If you’re reading a book and the author mentions a gun on the table, that gun will be used.
Think of how many minor traffic accidents or drunk arguments at birthday parties result in deadly consequences because just like our author, if someone has a gun, they may use it.
Good job in taking a serious issue and putting an unnecessary partisan spin on it, CNN. The issue of guns needs to be sidelined when talking about issues as serious as suicide.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/suicide-rate-by-country
Suicide is a problem around the world, guns or not. Focus on the issue, not click-bait titles.
It has been repeatedly and conclusively demonstrated that means reduction (which the pro-gun community won’t allow) and survivability (which guns don’t have) play an extremely important role in suicide prevention.
Guns are absolutely part of the issue. Unfortunately, the pro-gun community prioritises sweeping gun deaths under the rug to maintain their profits and possessions over actually protecting anyone.
If Republicans actually gave a shit about mental health maybe we wouldn’t have so many gun suicides.
So suicide is a republican problem hey.
Get a grip. Stop using every topic to gain political points, it’s disingenuous.
They’re the ones who keep saying “it’s not a gun problem it’s a mental health problem” and then doing fuck all to improve mental health, so yeah.
I don’t really see the problem with elderly people who decide they want to check out. If we allowed medically assisted death, they could die with dignity.
Suicide isnt reported in many places, because it is a social and religious taboo. For example the greek orthodox church still refuses to bury people who killed themselves(and 99% of greeks used to be christian orthodox, though atheism is becoming more popular nowadays).
None think about having to clean up all their blood and brain matter left over. Suicide is so selfish.
That kind of gun-assisted suicide at least, for sure. There’s still deaths of despair that are far from selfish acts, and moreso acts of desperation.
It’s rare to find a lack of empathy, intelligence together with ignorance in one single comment. Well done.
depression cured by drugs is not a cure and ironically often lead to more suicide since it lightens the depression enough to get the person to take action.
90% of people cannot afford and environment change, not that such cures depression. Some people are less treatable, and many depression medications actually heighten suicidal feelings.
Ironically your comment is incredibly selfish (you need to walk in their shoes) and based on nothing but your imagination. Some may take precautions to minimize cleanup.
thank you. its nice to hear or in this case read someone put it out so sanely and clearly. I do not get why other people feel they should tell someone else that they have to continue to exist because they know better than them.
It’s also selfish to force people to suffer due to our personal moral scruples. Allow assisted suicide.
I try not judge these folks too harshly, they must be in incredible pain.
And that’s the whole problem. Medical help is so expensive you need medical help after medical help.
Wall Street is selfish. Taking more profit than you need is selfish.
These people were desperate. Many likely due to rampant American capitalistic selfishness forcing them to subsist on catfood so business crooks can have 2 vacation homes and 5 expensive cars instead of everyone benefitting from market prosperity.
Selfishness is America’s brand, but being driven to put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger isn’t selfishness, it is largely a consequence of other’s selfishness. Our suicide rates are extreme in the supposedly “developed” world because selfish people demand everything and we let them do it at societal expense.
Calling people who suffer from suicidal ideation or committed suicide selfish is exactly like calling kids with down syndrome idiots.
Apparently it is “partisan clickbait” because it talks about a real issue in the USA and that rustles their fucking jimmies apparently.
The real issue is that assisted suicide is basically illegal in the USA…you turned it into a gun issue…
Its a gun issue because most people see that as the “easiest” way of achieving it because they haven’t done even cursory basic research into effective suicide methods.
Just because it is illegal doesn’t mean a gun is the only option.
Guns are used in dumb fits of passion because it is easy and at-hand for a lot of people.
how do you see these alarming suicide rates and think " oh we should give them a better way to kill themselves " instead of " why in the hell is that many people wanting to die???"
Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) is only legal in 11 US states.
At best, it requires a diagnosis for a terminal illness with 6 months left to live.
Individuals with an Alzheimer’s or Dementia diagnosis are precluded from being able to make that choice, even if the diagnosis is recent and they still have most of their faculties.
We could be doing so much more to allow people to go out on their own terms and die a good death. It doesn’t have to be traumatic for family members, whoever discovers the body, or those who will inevitably clean up the aftermath.
I knew someone who made use of a death with dignity law and one of the doctors that he had to see to get the OK legally had to entourage him to take his own life. Something along the lines of “I have to tell you that, instead of a peaceful drug-assisted death, you have the option to forgo eating and drinking until you die.”
The sad part is, some people have done that because in their area there was no legal medical assistance. I read an article a few years ago about a person who decided to go out that way. I can’t imagine how horrible it must be to be clawed by hunger pains for days until death. I’ve experienced hunger for days while waiting on a paycheck, but until death? That’s a whole new level of horror.
Ever see the show Shameless? Very dark comedy throughout, mostly light hearted content. One episode had me balling. One of the main characters is having memory issues. They were sort of working their bucket list that reunited them with a friend that also had memory problems. The friend mentioned their spouse dying. Main character asks how they remembered. They had it written down on a post-it note on the fridge.
If I had to relive my wife dying every day because I forgot, just put me down.
We put dogs down every day because they have incurable diseases or are suffering.
I had to put my dog down a few years ago because she was so old she could no longer get up or control her bladder or bowels, and I felt guilty for letting it get that far. I still remember the look in her eyes when they gave her the pain killers to knock her out, she looked so relieved.
I don’t understand how I get to make that decision for a dog, but a grown human, in most places, can’t make that call for themselves and go out in a peaceful and controlled manner. If I knew I was going to die painfully in a few months or a year, I’d definitely take an overdose or nitrogen asphyxiation over the disease. When dogs have a better way out than people, something is seriously wrong.
I had someone close to me with a terminal illness use a gun to end his suffering. He had a bottle of Oxy on his nightstand and a gun inside his nightstand and the only reason I can think that he decided to go the gun route was so he was sure that it’d be done. It sucks that he didn’t have any other options available that could have provided a more caring and humane way to exit. Instead now his wife has to live with having found him like that in bed, and my daughter has to live with the fact that she never got to say ‘goodbye’.
There unfortunately isn’t going to be a perfect answer here. I think most people would agree that a 17 year old in perfect health but depressed shouldn’t be able to die and I think most people would agree that 95 year old with a week to live in serious pain should be able to.
Where the line is, who gets to decide, and what criteria they use is always going to be something debatable. I generally think it should be decided by medical review boards and the most important criteria should be consent.
So the choice given to a dying old man faced with watching his “retirement” and healthcare costs drain whatever meager remains of the estate he might leave behind is faced with this choice:
A) Spend six figures on the various hoops needed to legally kill yourself. B) Spend 40 cents on a really good 9mm cartridge.
Medically assisted suicide doesn’t work in places without public healthcare. You can NEVER be certain that the decision isn’t driven by financial concerns, and like ALL HEALTHCARE IN THE US, its really only available to at least marginally wealthy people in the first place.
