BJ Campbell points to geographic evidence that gun deaths are cultural:
I was recently pointed to a pretty amazing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) project hosted by The Oregonian, which uses CDC data and population rate data to determine the gun death rate, gun homicide rate, and gun suicide rate within the country on a county by county basis. [...] Deaths are expressed as rates per 100,000 population, and above average rates are red, while below average rates are blue.
We hear a lot of banter from the “anti-gun” media that these problems are gun problems, and they’ve concocted this “gun deaths” number in order to lump these into the same problem and gloss over the differences. But if the problem were “guns,” then the hot spots on the suicide map and the hot spots on the homicide map would coincide, and would be related to gun ownership rates. There are only a few places where they overlap. Most of the hot zones for suicide have low homicide rates, and most of the hot zones for homicide have low suicide rates.
Poor black folks have a gun homicide problem, while poor white folks have a gun suicide problem.
The break between systemic firearm suicide and sporadic firearm suicide within the south is almost directly foretold by the boundaries between Greater Appalachia and the Deep South.
D party career felons have a gun homicide problem, D party flacks blame law-abiding R party voters.
On some level, every suicide is a tragedy, for someone(s) and in general. Every human should ponder that. And it’s true even when it is the considered choice of someone in pain or who just can’t wear it anymore.
On the other hand I think in all western societies there was a move to decriminalize and largely demoralize it, and that was a good thing. There are some debates around the edges especially when someone else is pulling the plug. Also fine.
So why do so many advocates on the gun restrictive side persist in citing suicide stats as though they are comparable to homicide? If suicide is legal, then the use of a gun to commit it is no problem for the law. There’s plenty of other methods, some cleaner, some messier, many much more difficult and painful. I can’t say I want to spend much time contemplating any of them, but if a man used to guns his whole life and deciding to make his exit wants to use one to do it, I have no grounds to take that choice away from him.
“Why do they want to take away your ability to tell them, in the worst case, to fuck off?”
Like asking, “why don’t you want your daughter to have a good education in her dorm room at college?”
Lots of deliberate naïveté in the cuckservative mind.
And by the way, whoever made those maps is a hack with an agenda. Heat maps are made with linear color intensity. And it would’ve worked out just fine in this case, making the hack a double triple hack.
Graham,
RE: Suicide.
After we brought in C-68 and the related legislation/regulations, (for which, one of the rationales was suicide prevention), statistics showed that Canadian gun control legislation was, in fact, somewhat effective.
The number of gun related suicides did indeed go down. If it is harder to get hold of a gun, it is indeed harder to commit suicide with a gun.
Unfortunately, the overall suicide rate stayed pretty much the same. If you are really serious about suicide, hanging, jumping from heights, poisoning etc, are just as effective as eating a gun. Australian statistics also bear this out.
RLVC,
Was that at me?
Strictly speaking, there are plenty of ways to exit the Brave New World still, so you can still tell them to fuck off. I think the gun method easier for the squeamish like me, but not having tried I’m not even sure of that. I hear it’s easy to screw it up. Pills, maybe. The red bath is the last and undesirable option.
Besides, if progressives are really worth their salt, they’d keep guns legal for a while longer just to let the generational change work its magic- more suicides among their enemies, fewer new people every year and generation to oppose transformation. No man, no problem, as Father Stalin always said.
Actually ending guns too quickly would be counterproductive. Some folks they want to leave.
Instead, I assume either or both of:
1. Linking gun homicide and gun suicide is an easy way to up the numbers if you just say “gun deaths”, and the sheep will largely assume that means murders. Actual problem exaggerated by addition of figures from non-problem, goal of ending guns much closer. This presumes they haven’t decided that gun suicides among white males is better for them, yet, and their goal of ending guns for its own sake is sincere. Which it seems to be. Even if its aim is to secure power against future resistance, it would still be useful to let more suicides by gun take place. If they’ve figured that out and are proceeding anyway, then they must hate guns for real, not just tactically.
2. They take, and expect the sheep to take, a largely medical view of the human condition, and genuinely consider the gun homicide and suicide problems the same. I think there’s a constituency for this.
Paul,
I didn’t mean to imply, if I did, that gun restriction would not reduce gun suicides. If you can’t get the tools, you must find others.
What I was getting at was the frequent conflation of these two uses of guns as though they are the same problem, legally or morally, and the aggregation of the two number sets to make a deceitful point. Or, an honest one, depending on whether one actually does see “gun deaths” as a single problem or as two quite separate problems justifying quite different levels of public interest and action.
As to methods, I have spent only limited time shooting. Despite it being at point blank range, I admit I’d be concerned about screwing up the gun method and ending up a long term resident of the mentally and physically damaged but still breathing ward. One in a million, maybe, but yikes.
Graham,
Sort of.
The way in which the “debate” about gun control is conducted reveals that no cares about guns in the hands of black gangbangers or Mexican cartels.
Quick-witted Jew Ben Shapiro once exploited this fact to thoroughly embarrass slimy Englishman Piers Morgan.
Guns are totally worthless for coordination, provide no protection against propaganda, social media, or freedom of pornography, and they’re not going to stop sub-fertile demographic collapse or U.N.-mandated population replacement.
But they slow things down quite a bit, and they totally forestall outcomes like Uyghurs-in-China.
Uyghurs-in-China is the sort of thing that happens when your government hates you and you aren’t also armed to the teeth.
Graham,
…”I didn’t mean to imply, if I did, that gun restriction would not reduce gun suicides. If you can’t get the tools, you must find others.
What I was getting at was the frequent conflation of these two uses of guns as though they are the same problem, legally or morally, and the aggregation of the two number sets to make a deceitful point.”…
I got your point, which is actually the same as mine. I just threw out an anecdote appropriate to the discussion, and didn’t mean to suggest that i disagreed.
One of my chief objections as a victim of Canada’s gun control laws is exactly your point. Much was made of suicide in the selling of the bill. My chief objection was that; (a)suicide is not illegal, (b) it is a public/mental health issue, and so bringing in criminal legislation with criminal penalties is not a suitable solution.
Even accidental gun deaths are politicized. Time magazine did a cover article some years ago about “Tragic accidental child gun deaths”. You were expected to have your heart strings tugged by the idea of little Jimmy finding dad’s unsecured gun and accidentally shooting his little sister playing cowboy.
This does indeed happen, and is tragic, but it is extremely rare. Dig a little deeper, and you find it is not little Jimmy’s dad’s gun he found, but mom’s current crack dealer boyfriend’s. Also, depending on the State, “children”can be up to 21. So gang-banger accidentally shooting himself or a colleague counts as a “tragic accidental child gun death”.
Paul,
No worries. Misreading on my part.
I always wondered about the accidental gun deaths stories myself. Kids are kids, but on the other hand people genuinely claim they can and do get their kids to understand gun safety. I’m left to assume that this was neglected in those cases in which a genuine child actually secured his proper father’s gun and then fired it, or the kid was too young and the weapon was extremely poorly stored.
Who knows? Maybe I wasn’t a sufficiently inquisitive kid but I didn’t rake through the furniture in my parents’ bedroom.
I also recall the many stories, and it still happens today, when some “good boy” gets killed in a shootout and listed as a dead “child”. Even if he’s an under-18, I’m not sold. But there’s always a weeping mother and/or grandmother and/or aunt to say he was a good boy.