The suicide component of the gun debate

[freshwest]

31. I used to have a saying 'There's a reason I don't keep a gun in the house.' That was it.

I changed my mind, but I still don't keep a gun in the house. The facts of life for many people are they are not going to be able to change things to the way they want, and their health is not going to improve. They don't want to go and beg (and they would be forced to beg and get nothing for it) for help from the medical profession to either get better or die in less pain than they are in. They want a choice that they are not being offered.

But many of suicides are not that way - they are the most extreme form of temper tantrum. Sometimes to hurt their spouse or forced to admit they failed in some way. We need as a society, although it's unlikely we will, address the values that people have about themselves, their lives, their families.

Many of the suicides are due to financial or job loss, which is a grevious harm to a person's sense of identity, belonging and value. Yet we see homeless people or others who accepted that their lives are no longer what they thought they should be and they want to live. We see those who have committed crimes that some of us would rather be dead than to have done, and they want to live. We sometimes have expectations of how our lives must be lived, and cannot meet them. Rather than just enjoying being alive.

Some people that commit suicide are not loved by anyone, least of all themselves; others are loved but carry their own private hell they find unbearable. I can understand the thrust of this question. Because death by gun is a reliable method, quick and painless if a head shot.

In particular, men seem to be more driven with rigid thinking patterns they learned growing up and less shock at the thought of leaving a bloody, obscene mess for another person to clean up. They also hang themselves which is very disturbing to those who find them. I recall a man who was angry at his wife. His revenge was to hang himself in the back yard of their home on a tree in front of their small children while she was at work and telling them it was her fault.

The children were unable to grasp what was happening, unable to stop him but one ran to neighbors for help but he'd died by that time. With that memory in their minds for a lifetime. If he'd owned a gun, he could have gone faster; maybe he would have killed the children as well to hurt his wife.

Those statistics show how effective guns are at ending life, and they should always be regarded as what they are, instruments of death. A reverence for life doesn't invite that into one's environment.