[OopsCriticality]

> Sure, we'll see a decrease in gun related suicides... but the suicides will still occur, just with an alternate method.

Suicide attempts by any method might be practically constant; alternate methods of suicide tend to be less successful however, so the rate of completed suicides would likely go down.

[Alupis]

> alternate methods of suicide tend to be less successful however, so the rate of completed suicides would likely go down

I don't see how that could be measured as a success. You still have mass amounts of people attempting to end their life every year.

Essentially we're all busy trying to treat the obvious symptoms, but we're ignoring the real cause of our problems.

Reducing legal gun ownership merely shifts the problem to another metric, but does not solve it.

Solve our suicide problem in the United States, and we've solved our gun problem (among others). (this hinges on the fact that there is some level of annual deaths that society considers reasonable and acceptable, as-is with any activity)

[knowaveragejoe]

FWIW, the ratio of people:firearms in this country has a clear link to firearms crime(homicides included) and suicides, as established here: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and...

Legal firearm ownership isn't the real issue, yes. The problem that we just have so god damn many firearms and we continue to crank them out en masse whilst stoking fears of a tyrannical government instilling martial law and rounding people up into concentration camps(and by extension, our firearms are the only thing stopping this from happening). A sizable portion of the population all but worships firearms.

The fact that we are basically overflowing with firearms plays a huge part. Guns routinely go missing from gun stores. One of the rifles used by the Beltway snipers was amongst around 150 guns that went missing from one store in WA. Where do you think the black market guns(that bad guys will get their hands on anyways) come from in the first place? They were produced under legitimate pretenses that they were going to sell.