Bradys Get Out There for National Suicide Prevention Week

The Brady Center is back out with one of the more ridiculous arguments I’ve ever heard for gun control, probably in the hopes that it might bring in some much needed cash:

“A Gun in the home makes a suicide three times more likely.”

There are some areas where statistical analysis is useful, but this is not one of those cases. This would be like arguing that having a gun in the home makes it three times more likely you’ll rob a bank. Or perhaps having a bottle of liquor in the home makes it three times more likely that you’ll die from cirrhosis of the liver. Could be high-speed internet links make it 3x more likely you’ll download kiddie porn. All these things may statistically be true, but they are meaningless when applied to individuals.

I am not and have never been suicidal. If you’re not a bank robber, you’re not going to suddenly decide to rob a bank just because there’s a gun around. If you’re not an alcoholic, that statistic is meaningless to you, regardless of the presence of alcohol in your home. You get the picture.

I would say if you have a tendency to be suicidal, you have a loved one with a tendency toward suicidal behavior, or is just generally troubled, you’ll want to take precautions if you own guns. Perhaps gun ownership itself isn’t a wise thing for you in some circumstances. I have no disagreement with that notion.

But for most of us that isn’t the case, and it’s ridiculous, and frankly more than a bit insulting, to suggest otherwise. I am not suicidal. For me that is a meaningless statistic, and it is for most of you too. I’d be willing to bet if you looked up the statistics, and applied some Brady logic, walking across the Golden Gate bridge increases your risk of suicide by an even greater amount!

12 thoughts on “Bradys Get Out There for National Suicide Prevention Week”

  1. There’s also that AWBs, mag bans, pistol bans, private sale bans, waiting periods are extra useless with sucides.

    It’s not like being suicidal is felonious or that one needs more than one shot in such a case.

    But being useless won’t stop the antis, and of course their real goals are mass bans and requiring onerous testing to purchase arms.

  2. We have been down this road before. When it was pointed out the was a much higher % of suicides in Japan than the US. In Japan the majority of suicides were by taking a high dive off a tall building.

    1. They also like throwing themselves in front of bullet trains. I’ve lived along Amtrak’s NE corridor all my life, and I can reassure the gun control folks that a throwing oneself in front of a Metroliner or Acela kills a hell of a lot more surely than a gun does.

  3. Sebastian, don’t you know that guns kill people? It’s sort of like “suicide by cop”, except instead of going out and provoking a cop to shoot them, some people invite a gun into their very own home and let the gun do its magic.

    Tragic, really.

    1. Right on dude..I was about to write in the same thing. See the Doctor Kellerman report and what happened to him and his antigun research.

  4. Since murders have dropped so dramatically over the last 20 years the gun-control movement has had to pad the numbers with suicides to keep the hysteria up about guns. Hence the amazingly stupid phrase “gun violence” or “gun deaths” which lumps in murders, suicides and accidents all together in one total number.

    Of course while the gun-control advocates love this game, especially when comparing “gun deaths” and gun-control laws between individual US States, they keep to their old school rhetoric when comparing the US to other nations. They don’t dare compare suicide rates between the USA and other nations.

    For example I’ve found that Canada has historically had a much higher suicide rate than the USA, though the numbers have been dropping recently. Only 1/4 of Canadian suicides involve a firearm compared to about half of USA suicides. So obviously gun control has no relationship to suicide rates.

    This rhetoric of mixing up suicides with murders is so deceptive, I’ve even seen one Australian publication print a story which took numbers from gun-control advocates without any due diligence, and reported the number of murders in the USA as the same as the number of “gun deaths”.

    (Of course that was not as funny as the time I read an old cover story from the Canadian magazine Macleans, which misquoted the US 2nd Amendment by editing out “of the people”!)

    1. The same “mistake” — editing out “of the people” from the 2nd Amendment — was made by former Brady Campaign vice president Dennis Henigan.

      It became a by-line among pro-gun blogs and websites, who referred to him as “Dennis ‘What People?’ Henigan”.

      (“Mistake” is in quotes because I’m not 100% convinced it was a mistake. They hate that it’s the “right of the People” [as affirmed in Heller], and would re-word that bit if given half a chance.)

  5. There have been times when I didn’t think someone shouldn’t have a gun and I made an effort to prevent it.

    The most memorable was when about two or three weeks after my ex-wife made her first suicide attempt (trying to jump out of the car while I was driving 60 MPH down the freeway) she said she wanted a gun “for protection”. I had been encouraging her to just try shooting a gun for almost 20 years and she adamantly refused all that time. Now she wanted a gun of her own?

    I don’t think so.

  6. In Japan and Europe, trains are popular ways to off yourself. Don’t use the subway, you might get the sudden urge to jump in front of a train.

    Also, people using the internets are about 17x more likely to Google “effective ways to kill yourself”** than people without internet access.

    Now, if your subway station offers free wifi, god help you.

    ** You know you want to now. I am not responsible for the outcome and don’t provide brain bleach.

    1. NYC subway system kills more than twice as many people every year as are plausibly killed by so-called “assault weapons” in all of America.

Comments are closed.