POLITICS - CNN

[mescalero1]

CNN has a story about suicide being more likely in homes with guns.
These people are not taking this very well.

[O.S.O.K.]

The commie news network AKA Pravda? Why would you say such a thing?

[Premo]

Surprising fact: Half of gun deaths are suicidesBy MIKE STOBBE (AP Medical Writer)
From Associated Press
June 30, 2008 5:09 PM EDT
ATLANTA - The Supreme Court's landmark ruling on gun ownership last week focused on citizens' ability to defend themselves from intruders in their homes. But research shows that surprisingly often, gun owners use the weapons on themselves.

Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation's nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There was nothing unique about that year - gun-related suicides have outnumbered firearm homicides and accidents for 20 of the last 25 years. In 2005, homicides accounted for 40 percent of gun deaths. Accidents accounted for 3 percent. The remaining 2 percent included legal killings, such as when police do the shooting, and cases that involve undetermined intent.

Public-health researchers have concluded that in homes where guns are present, the likelihood that someone in the home will die from suicide or homicide is much greater.

Studies have also shown that homes in which a suicide occurred were three to five times more likely to have a gun present than households that did not experience a suicide, even after accounting for other risk factors.

In a 5-4 decision, the high court on Thursday struck down a handgun ban enacted in the District of Columbia in 1976 and rejected requirements that firearms have trigger locks or be kept disassembled. The ruling left intact the district's licensing restrictions for gun owners.

One public-health study found that suicide and homicide rates in the district dropped after the ban was adopted. The district has allowed shotguns and rifles to be kept in homes if they are registered, kept unloaded and taken apart or equipped with trigger locks.

The American Public Health Association, the American Association of Suicidology and two other groups filed a legal brief supporting the district's ban. The brief challenged arguments that if a gun is not available, suicidal people will just kill themselves using other means.

More than 90 percent of suicide attempts using guns are successful, while the success rate for jumping from high places was 34 percent. The success rate for drug overdose was 2 percent, the brief said, citing studies.

"Other methods are not as lethal," said Jon Vernick, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore.

The high court's majority opinion made no mention of suicide. But in a dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer used the word 14 times in voicing concern about the impact of striking down the handgun ban.

"If a resident has a handgun in the home that he can use for self-defense, then he has a handgun in the home that he can use to commit suicide or engage in acts of domestic violence," Breyer wrote.

Researchers in other fields have raised questions about the public-health findings on guns.

Gary Kleck, a researcher at Florida State University's College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, estimates there are more than 1 million incidents each year in which firearms are used to prevent an actual or threatened criminal attack.

Public-health experts have said the telephone survey methodology Kleck used likely resulted in an overestimate.

Both sides agree there has been a significant decline in the last decade in public-health research into gun violence.

The CDC traditionally was a primary funder of research on guns and gun-related injuries, allocating more than $2.1 million a year to such projects in the mid-1990s.

But the agency cut back research on the subject after Congress in 1996 ordered that none of the CDC's appropriations be used to promote gun control.

Vernick said the Supreme Court decision underscores the need for further study into what will happen to suicide and homicide rates in the district when the handgun ban is lifted.

Today, the CDC budgets less than $900,000 for firearm-related projects, and most of it is spent to track statistics. The agency no longer funds gun-related policy analysis.

[awp101]

The commie news network AKA Pravda?

More like Al-Jezeera West...

[Premo]

The CDC data, cited by the reporter, just highlights how statistics can manipulate any data set. You are also 87% more likely to die in an auto accident if you own a car or 94% more likely to die in a boating accident if you own a boat. Who cares, it is just data that is meaningless in the real world. The AP writer just needed to fill his 500 words for the week. Made up news! CNN just needed to fill a 30 second gap from the Entertainment World News we so thrive on--yuk.

[Ysabel Kid]

IIRC, the suicide rate (# of deaths per 100,000) is higher in Japan than it is here - and they have no firearms to speak of. People just use other means. Dead is dead - this is BS on CNN's part, and yes, they are going to whine, kick and scream for a while as will the rest of the anti-gun leftists...

[brucew44guns]

I think I have always believed that if life is so dull, so hard to cope with, so boring, and nothing in it for the individual to value his life and want to live his life, then he will commit suicide come hades or high water. I knew of a fellow who simply sat in his car with a hose from the tail pipe into the cab, and gassed himself that way. So if it was possible to destroy every gun in the world, I doubt that these losers would stop killing themselves. The bleeding hearts sure try to imply that guns make suicide easy, just another of their tools to place blame.

[Old Savage]

CNN is always on top of what they want you to think.

[oldmax]

If someone breaks into my house, They are committing suicide !!

[RIHMFIRE]

The commie news network AKA Pravda? Why would you say such a thing?

ya stole my thunder

[Old Ironsights]

My new "Protest" shirt.

To be worn at all anti "We're the Government and we want to Restrict YOU because other people are naughty" rallys.

Like the one the ISRA is hosting in Chicago on July 11th.

I hope it annoys Fr. Phleger.

[J Miller]

Dawgonit Old Ironsights flip that pic and post the front view too.

Joe

[Old Ironsights]

It just has "MPMR" over the left breast. MPMR standing for Malum Prohibitum, Malum Regum - i.e. Evil by Prohibition, Evil by Rule (Government)

[GANJIRO]

I think I have always believed that if life is so dull, so hard to cope with, so boring, and nothing in it for the individual to value his life and want to live his life, then he will commit suicide come hades or high water. I knew of a fellow who simply sat in his car with a hose from the tail pipe into the cab, and gassed himself that way. So if it was possible to destroy every gun in the world, I doubt that these losers would stop killing themselves. The bleeding hearts sure try to imply that guns make suicide easy, just another of their tools to place blame.

I find your labeling all suicide victims as "losers" (highlighted above) highly insensitive and offensive. Each individual victim has different circumstances which needs to be heard before passing blanket judgment.

My young 22 year old niece in Florida who was a very bright cheerful girl with a promising career in culinary arts (not a loser) committed suicide for no explicable reason until it was discovered she started a new medication with one of the side effects being feelings of extreme depression. She was living in an apartment on her own so no support available when these medication induced feelings surfaced. Her grandmother found her 2 days later, she had hung herself.

When I lived on Maui a very nice young man of 21 years very cheerful and always friendly very active in our local congregation one day decided to drive off a sea cliff. He survived the crash but when a Coast Guard inflatable tried to approach to pull him aboard he swam away from them yelling "leave me alone I want to die!". He fought them tooth and nail as they brought him aboard. Later on that day he leaped to his death from a 3rd floor window of the hospital he was recovering at. This too was induced by new prescribed medication. Both these young people had everything to live for and a positive future but these medication put them in the suicidal state of mind. They were not losers in any definition of the word.

As some may recall a little over a year ago a man very dear to my heart took his own life. He had just lost the love of his life of the last 60 years, and at his advanced age and declining physical, and mental health in his own words he stated "I hope I die before I become a burden on anyone". He was decorated WWII combat veteran, a loving father, and husband, he was anything but a "loser". I do not approve of what he did in any way but understand what he was going through when he did. The only message he left was a scripture: “I will follow you to wherever you may depart.” Luke 9:57. We believe he applied this to his wife of so many year whom he missed so dearly, he followed her.
He was not a loser in any way, shape, or form, neither were my niece nor my young protege'.

We shouldn't judge people without knowing all the facts.

[rhead]

I wonder what the suicide rate is among people who watch CNN vs. people who watch Fox News?

[AmBraCol]

I wonder what the suicide rate is among people who watch CNN vs. people who watch Fox News?

Probably not very different. Now, what about between folks who watch CNN, Fox News, MSN, ABC, CBS, NBC vs those who ignore all that stuff and stay away from TV all together?

Ji, you're right. There are many causes behind the taking of one's life and each case is different. One thing that REALLY hacks me off is the current urge to medicate everything - when the side effects are too often worse than the original supposed malady. The current psychiatric use of many medications is something that I find very troublesome. A young man we know is being treated "for depression" - and one of the side effects of the medication they put him on is... you got it - depression. Huh? We pointed it out to his mother, but she blindly obeys whatever the shrink tells her.

It is interesting, however, that the industrialized "first world" countries have higher suicide rates than the "third world" countries do. I guess it's because in 'third world' countries most folks are too busy trying to survive to think about killing themselves...

[ole pizen slinger]

What did people do before we had all these new fangled medications--live with it?
OPS

[Old Ironsights]

What did people do before we had all these new fangled medications--live with it?
OPS

By in large they were locked in the attic... or basement. They were "Crazy Aunt Martha" that had to be sent away to Arkaham - or worse.

Or, like "Big Jim" Sullivan of Sullivan Act infamy, they laid down on railroad tracks... lept off the Tallahatchee Bridge, etc.

The number of people alive and functional today because of medication far outnumbers the people who died because of bad reactions/bad diagnosis/bad prescriptions.

[bogus bill]

Unfortuntly I have known probley 6 or 8 people to have commited suicide. The one that hit me the hardest was a batchlor uncle. He was in the 82nd glidders and came home some messed up with 2 purple hearts a buch of bronze and the silver star.
He had open heart sugery when it was new in the early 70s, and had a stroke on the operateing table and it left him severly depressed. He spent a winter with me, then the day he was suppose to come out and spend the next winter with me he committed suicide by sitting behind his truck in his garage. He owned many guns.
Here is a old snapshot I found he had while in combat.

[Charles]

Over the years, it has been my lot to officiate at the funeral services of about a half dozen folks who took their own lives. Only two of them were by firearms. The others used medication and one hung himself. If an individual is determined to kill him or herself, the absence or presence of a firearm is irrelevant.

It has also fallen to me to work with the families after the services, and I can tell you suicide leaves the families with a heavy duty load of emotional and moral issues to deal with.

I don't consider folks who take their lives to be loosers. They are folks who have run out of options when life has become an unbearable burden. You and I might construct a longer list of options, but we are not in their shoes. It is easy to have the solution when you don't have the problem.

In some of the cases the decision to take their own lives was something I could understand and made some sort of sense from their perspective. In the other cases, it was a perminate solution to a temporary situation.

However these things fall, suicide is the result of great emotional or physical pain and leave behind more pain for the survivors. In all cases, all involved deserve our greatest compassion and not our diricision.

[sw41mag]

I wonder what the suicide rate is among people who watch CNN vs. people who watch Fox News?

I don't know but watching those idiots on Fox makes me want to jump out out of a window. Talk about slanted and biased reporting, sheesh.

[4t5]

Maybne they should take other polls....Do people who have houses expierence more house fires than people who don't?...Would less people fall off ladders if they didn't have them?
If you don't feed your children, would they not be as fat?

[greasy dan]

I read all the posts on this, because my baby brother was one of those statistics... nearly 30-years ago. He took the long-term solution to the short-term problem. He was young and clouded by the drugs he was using. Newspapers from as far away as NY called the house... I was the house spokesperson, because local LEOs were involved. They were Not the problem... my brother's clouded judgement was. Yes, he left a note.
Time cures all our problems, one way or another.
At the risk of alienating a few here, I can now make lite of the CNN situation. What kind of drugs make people suicidal... and how can we get them to certain Politicians..??
Forgive me Lord... a sinner.

[Kismet]

Obviously not scientific in any way, but I often get calls for untimely/suspicious deaths in our county. I have gotten plenty of suicide calls, but none that I can remember were from guns. And that from NH where our gun laws can only be described as liberal (or is that conservative).

Notwithstanding the fact that statistics can be manipulated, the fact that guns are often used for suicides is not insignificant. At the least gun owners need to be responsible in the storage of their guns so that others (including otherwise responsible teens) do not necessarily have free access to the stash of firearms.

Michael in NH

[donw]

ain't it wonderful to live in a country where some of the loonies around advocate live birth abortion as a "right" and in the next breath say we should not have the right to own firearms...