Posted on 12/16/2018 7:05:58 AM PST by rellimpank
“Gun deaths in US reach highest level in nearly 40 years, CDC data reveal,” blared Thursday’s headline on CNN.com. A press release from Everytown for Gun Safety noted that “39,773 people were killed by gun violence in 2017 — approximately 1,100 more than were killed by motor vehicle accidents.”
The picture these announcements evoke is of mass shootings and random gun crimes that pose a mortal danger to every American. But that image is not quite accurate. The number of homicides actually declined last year — and is believed to have fallen again this year. Our streets have gotten safer.
So what gives? When gun control advocates cite “gun deaths,” they are not talking just about slayings of people by other people. Sixty percent of these deaths, it turns out, are not homicides but suicides. Most of the people who inflict fatal gunshot wounds harm only themselves.
“The rate of suicide in general increased from 2016 to 2017, and the increase was actually greater for the non-firearm suicide rate than for the firearm suicide rate,” Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck tells me — “suggesting that something that affects suicide but is unrelated to firearms is responsible for the recent suicide increase.”
To lump suicides with homicides is to confuse the gun issue. The causes behind American murders explain very little about American suicides. Murder victims are disproportionately African-American. The suicide rate, by contrast, is three times higher among whites than blacks.
(Excerpt) Read more at madison.com ...
It might not be a valid assumption that if a gun wasn’t available, the individual would just have used another method...but I’d venture to say it will be true much of the time.
“Gun deaths”
I didn’t know guns could die.
Suicidees who don’t have guns sometimes use bridges....
There have been a number of "substitution of method" studies. What they show is that there may be an initial drop in suicides when one method is made more difficult. Then, in a year or two, another method picks up the slack.
In England, one favored method was to place one's head in an oven and turn on the gas, which had quite a bit of carbon monoxide in it.
The authorities got rid of the carbon monoxide, suicides by oven gas went down. In a couple of years other methods (hanging as I recall) went up.
In Australia, with the big gun confiscation/turn-in, suicides by gun went down, but single car fatalities and suicide by hanging went up. Overall, the suicide rate never decreased in Australia. It went up.
You do not need guns for very high suicide rates. Both Japan and South Korea have some of the highest suicide rates in the world, and have very few suicides with guns.
The left creates disaster and blames everything on their enemies. Drug addiction, mental illness, random violence, earthquakes, even the weather. It’s actually kind of brilliant if you think about. It depends on human stupidity, which can never can be under estimated .
It isn’t true in Europe, Japan, Russia and many places where Gibbs are banned. Find are not the suicide cause
One of the left's Orwellian word games. Pure evil.
So how many people are killed by automobiles and trains and such. How many people are killed by drugs and by medical prescriptions? This guy is drawing conclusions from a small sector of the problem.
How many drug overdoses are intentional(suicide)?
Japan has nearly complete gun control along with a substantially larger suicide rate.
Humans are inventive creatures.
Back in 50’s and 60’s, garden hose and an exhaust pipe on the car was the go to way.
How many were killed by other objects? By MALPRACTICE? Many Intractable Pain Patients are chosing Suicide now that the Feds and states have taken pain meds away.
Street Junkies NOT RULE! To H with the sick and crippled. HITLER would approve.
That’s about 3% of the number of abortions
As well as the same % of those dying from homosexual-origin AIDS and related causes
CDC did the same thing with accidental OD’s lumped patients in with Junkies. Then Lied about the number of scripts being written.
There was a time when Steve Chapman was sane, and made sense, although it’s been a long time.
The increase in Suicides is 3.9% due to Intractable Pain patients being cut off pain meds. While Street Junkies are now the preferred creatures to over $8.5 Billion, that does not count the money in things like the Farm Bill or other spending bills that is hidden.
Though I haven’t looked into it in years, in the past, Japan had a higher suicide rate than the US, which used to completely undercut the argument.
If someone wants to kill themselves, they will find a way.
Mark
“Gun deaths in US reach highest level in nearly 40 years,...”
And the 1968 Gun Control Law, which was supposed to stop this, was passed fifty years ago. What Happened!
Strange. The page with Johnson’s remarks on signing the bill into law has disappeared from the Internet.
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