[discostu]

To me the only thing this shows is that suicidal children that have access to guns are more likely to succeed. Notice they only mention the successes (nothing about attempts) and they don't give you how many involve the gun. Looks like simple physical math to me. As anyone in the medical profession can tell you it's actually very difficult to make the human body stop being alive. Most of the methods that are available (short of guns) are either very slow to accomplish the task or very difficult to wield against yourself. Because of this the vast majority of suicide attempts fail, handguns are very quick to kill and not that hard to point at yourself the success rate with guns is sure to be higher. This is borne out in my circle of friends during those highly emotional teenaged/ young adult years, I know people with a suicide attempt total of about 30 (2 people account for a lot of this and really screw up the stat), only 3 attempts were successful 2 of those used guns (the third was in prison and couldn't get a gun). That right there gives the 2-1 ratio the article talks about, and completely ignores (much like the article) the one friend who tried a lot, never succeeded but also never used any of the guns in the house (step-father was a cop, mother was an enthusiast, no shortage of firearms in that house). Like all arguements to convince the most important part in these "statistics" is what they don't say.

[butter pecan fan]

To me the only thing this shows is that suicidal children that have access to guns are more likely to succeed. Notice they only mention the successes (nothing about attempts) and they don't give you how many involve the gun. Looks like simple physical math to me.

A highly intelligent reply. The more I think about it, the more that's what I'm thinking, too.