They're far more accessible to all the people out there without access to a gun. Believe it or not, but most people in the world are poor and don't have guns. If they did, the data from countries like the US show the number of suicides would be far higher as the success rate is so high with guns.

I'm struggling to fathom that you don't already know that is a terrible argument. The mental gymnastics otherwise sane people e.g. Santana, or yourself, perform to justify gun deaths is astounding. Like I have said many times, the gun culture is so deeply ingrained in the US psyche that facts don't matter anymore.

People with life long depression like Robin William's will still do it.
The guy who's girlfriend left him is probably going to get over it pretty quickly without ready access to a gun.

I'm not making a case that because gun access increases successful suicides that means we should ban guns.

But it does mean that if you want guns to be around you should accept that increased successful suicides are the expected outcome. Maybe you think the freedom to own guns is worth it, that's fine, that's a values judgement. I personally don't, but if you said to me "I think it's worth it to own guns even if it increases the number of successful suicides" that's not something that can be debunked. That's a value judgement.



This is also a good point. "People who aren't really dedicated to it" aren't necessarily the only group. There's plenty of people who make suicide attempts once and then don't re-attempt, and having a much more successful attempt method will increase the number of deaths in these cases.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on May 9 2020 02:33pm

And if we didn't have guns then we'd probably see most of those gun suicides transferred to another category. It's almost as if the underlying mental health issues & socioeconomic issues are the actual causes and whether you're in a country with easy gun access or some poor 3rd world nation you'll find a way to off your self.

IMO, there are much better arguments against guns, suicides is a pretty weak one. If i were to choose a hill to die on being against guns it'd probably be the fact that many guns used for murders & violent crimes tend to be first purchased legally then with time they end up in the hands of perps. By making guns illegal we could, with time, kill that proliferation. But suicides? meh..

You might see attempts, but not as many successes, as evidenced by the fact that gun suicide attempts make up the majority of successful attempts.

Some would still commit suicide, some would try and fail, and some wouldn't try at all.

My main argument against guns in the very same post you originally quoted was that there's no functional purpose for civilians to own them. It was you who honed in on the supplementary point I made about suicide, but I also don't see it as the defining argument in whether guns should be legal.