Summations Only

You are correct. I should have used the word murder here. I did use the word murder earlier. I am sorry I chose an incorrect word.I should have said killing does not equal murder.
(I do not like the latex rendering of .
Looks out of place)Thank you for pointing out the flaw.

Why not? Suicide has been shown to be an act of opportunity in a lot of cases. Studies show it is an impulsive act.

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Impulsive acts

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The scientific study of suicide has partly been an effort to erase myths. Perhaps the biggest fallacy is that suicides are typically long-planned deeds. While this can be truepeople who attempt suicide often face a cascade of problemsempirical evidence suggests that they act in a moment of brief but heightened vulnerability.

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One of the things that got me interested in launching the Means Matter campaign was that I had been reading through thousands of thumbnail sketches of suicide deaths, to see if a reporting system we were testing was catching the feel for the case, says Barber. I started noticing that, jeez, this death happened the same day that the kid was arguing with his parents, or that the young man had just broken up with his girlfriend, or that the middle-aged guy had gotten word that the divorce papers had come through. That reactivity surprised me, because I’d always pictured suicide as being a painful, deliberative process, something that was getting worse and worse, escalating until finally you’ve got it all planned out and you do it. It hadn’t occurred to me that it could be a cop arguing with his wife, and in the midst of the argument, pulling out his gun and killing himself.

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This impulsivity was underscored in a 2001 study in Houston of people ages 13 to 34 who had survived a near-lethal suicide attempt. Asked how much time had passed between when they decided to take their lives and when they actually made the attempt, a startling 24 percent said less than 5 minutes; 48 percent said less than 20 minutes; 70 percent said less than one hour; and 86 percent said less than eight hours.

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The episodic nature of suicidal feelings is also borne out in the aftermath: 9 out of 10 people who attempt suicide and survive do not go on to die by suicide later. As Miller puts it, If you save a life in the short run, you likely save a life in the long run.

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SourceThe science does not seem to support your gut feelings. Basically fuck 'em? How nice and caring of you.

What avenues would those be?

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Suicides outnumber homicides in the United States by 3:1. (In 2010 there were 38,364 suicides and 12, 996 homicides.) Lots of studies have investigated the relationship between firearms and homicide but the potential for reverse causality makes this a difficult problem. More homicides in a region, for example, might cause an increase in gun ownership so a positive correlation between guns and homicide doesn’t tell you which is cause and which is effect. Reverse causality is less of a problem for understanding the guns to suicide link because it’s less likely that a rash of suicides would encourage gun ownership.

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In my latest paper, Firearms and Suicides in US States, (written with the excellent Justin Briggs) we examine the easier question, what is the relationship between firearms and suicide? Using a variety of techniques and data we estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in the household gun ownership rate leads to a .5 to .9% increase in suicides.* (n.b. slight change in language from earlier version for clarity.)

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Even if one thinks that suicides don’t cause gun ownership one might imagine that they are correlated due say to a third factor such as social anomie. We have an interesting test of this in the paper. If suicides and gun ownership were being driven by a third factor we would expect gun ownership to be correlated with all suicides not just gun-suicide. What we find, however, is that an increase in gun ownership decrease non-gun suicide. From an economics perspective this makes perfect sense. As gun ownership increases, the cost of gun-suicide falls because guns are easier to access and as the cost of gun-suicide falls there is substitution away from non-gun suicide.

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Put differently, when gun ownership decreases other methods of suicide increase. Substitution among methods is not perfect, however, so when gun ownership decreases we see a big decrease in gun-suicide and a substantial but less than fully compensating increase in non-gun suicide so a net decrease in the number of suicides.

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Our econometric results are consistent with the literature on suicide which finds that suicide is often a rash and impulsive decision—most people who try but fail to commit suicide do not recommit at a later date—as a result, small increases in the cost of suicide can dissuade people long enough so that they never do commit suicide.

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The results in the paper appear to be robust but the data on gun ownership is frustratingly sparse due to political considerations.

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SourceThe author is no liberal. Alex Tabarrok teaches at George Mason University, a famously libertarian-inclined economics department. He’s a fellow at the libertarian Mercatus Institute and one of the lead authors of Marginal Revolution, one of the web’s most famous libertarian-inclined blogs.

In legalize, the term homicide is means the deliberate taking of anothers life.. .i.e. murder.There are accidents.. and they would go under the category of 'involuntary manslaughter'

I wish advocates of the 2nd Amendment would be as enthusiastic about the 4th Amendment against search and seizure (NSA domestic spying); 5th Amendment guaranteeing due process; 8th Amendment barring cruel and unusual punishment (Manning Episode), 6th Amendment, assuring trial by jury (drone assassination program).But, like the cartoon implies, the rights and liberties gun owners use to support gun ownership and play with guns seem be just an empty facade.

???If this was supposed to be analogous to differing gun laws, it fails badly. A guy who can't buy a gun in his own state because of the background check can buy it in another state, then bring that gun back into his own state. In your analogy the trip to Illinois confers on him no right to ride without a helmet in his own state, but he can still tote that gun he bought in some nearby state.A better analogy might be alcohol. Back before the national 21-year old drinking age the states used to all set their own drinking ages. In the 1960's 18-year olds in New Jersey (where the drinking age was 21) could drive into New York, buy alcohol, then bring it back. Of course, while the analogy works, it doesn't support your position.--Percy

While it appears I was incorrect that suicide is legally classed as homicide, homicide is not equivalent to murder in legalese. Involuntary manslaughter is a type of homicide. Killing someone by accident isn't equivalent to manslaughter, either. For it to be manslaughter it has to be done as part of a criminal act, or be criminally negligent. Self-defence, or blameless accidents, are classed as justifiable homicides.

Let's say you know that for a fact. Which you don't. But let's say you do. If law makers were able to work out all those issues so that it was effective, would you be in favor of it? I don't know what you mean by that. If you mean, like you posted earlier, that they provide better care for the mentally ill then I agree. But that doesn't help because we are already talking about people who have had mental health care.Also, just providing more care doesn't mean they will get the care. You can't force them to in many cases. So there's that to contend with also.- Oni

Some data.

Criminologist: 'More Youngsters Killed in Bicycle Accidents' Than with GunsCriminologist: 'More Youngsters Killed in Bicycle Accidents' Than with Guns

I can't find a source for his figures. Looking it up myself, the figures I found show that there are ~700 bicycle deaths annually, as opposed to ~30,000 gun deaths.I agree with the author of the article that helmet laws are a good idea. I wonder if he would agree with me that maybe we should try to keep crazy people away from guns. This article demonstrates the virtues of traffic safety laws. Imagine if we exercised the same caution when it comes to gun-wielding lunatics.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

What a surprise.All quotes from the article. (Bolding mine)So not the number of youngsters killed by guns, just the subset who happen to get killed by guns at school, against the total number killed in cycling accidents.And the number killed in school is: One wonders just how much of that decline is due to anti-gun measures installed in schools.
Oddly, the article doesn't address that question.

It truly amazes me how right wingers lose all ability for critical thinking when it comes to anything that threatens their dogma. There are quite a few intelligent people like Coyote that throw out the ability to look at data and evidence subjectively when neither conforms to their political beliefs.There is not much difference between creationists and right wingers. For the creos religion trumps facts and evidence, for rightwingers political dogma trumps facts and evidence.The fact that an intelligent or reasonable intelligent person would uncritically post a link to an article on Breitbart is amazing in itself.This is the stable of pathological liars like James O'Keefe. Breitbart, himself, was known for his lies and racebaiting. He is someone that should not be discussed in polite company. If there was a hell he would be rotting there.Now to the article. Lets look at the original USA Today opinion piece by James Alan Fox, the criminologist.Moms, mayors offer misguided message on guns: ColumnBreitbart is posting a very inflammatory headline. The whole premise of the piece is not summed up in the headline.Breitbart is banking on the fact that most of their fans can't or won't read past the headline.The opinion piece nor the breitbart article says much about gun control.

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Posting armed guards at school doors, running children though lockdown drills, and surrounding classrooms with cameras and metal detectors

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Sure sounds like what the NRA is advocating.
I guess I do not see how Coyote thinks either the article or opinion piece is supportive to rightwingers.Now I have to sanitize my computer because I actually clicked on the link to Breitbart

Okay, you're right. How about weed. A guy can drive over to Colorado, buy some weed, and then bring it back to his state where its still illegal. My position is that we do not need to sound the alarms and get the Feds involved, but instead should leave this up to the States.Do you think we should have the Feds crack down on Colorado to protect all those people in the neighboring states from having weed illegally brought in?