(03-31-2014 12:59 PM)Hambone10 Wrote: (03-31-2014 12:42 PM)john01992 Wrote: In the late 1970s, Seiden set out to test the notion of inevitability in jumping suicides. Obtaining a Police Department list of all would-be jumpers who were thwarted from leaping off the Golden Gate between 1937 and 1971 — an astonishing 515 individuals in all — he painstakingly culled death-certificate records to see how many had subsequently “completed.” His report, “Where Are They Now?” remains a landmark in the study of suicide, for what he found was that just 6 percent of those pulled off the bridge went on to kill themselves. Even allowing for suicides that might have been mislabeled as accidents only raised the total to 10 percent.[/i]
This doesn't prove what you claim it proves or disprove what others say it disproves. It only supports the general consensus that the vast majority of suicide attempts are cries for help and not actual attempts to end one's life. Should someone not have access to a gun, according to the other chart, they seem far more likely to hang or drown themselves (is drowning suffocation? I suspect so) or ingest poison (I suspect an intentional OD of prescription meds is poison)
The alternatives seem to be:
(1) remove guns, the person would not attempt at all
(2) remove guns, the person will try with method X
If you accept (1) then you reduce suicide death rate without guns present. If you reject the logic John has presented above for (1), but accept (2) as the alternative, then you accept that the success rate is reduced by n%, and you substantially reduce the death rate from (assuming near 100% for guns) by 1-n% as I argued above. Given the low percentage of successful suicides from people that had previously attempted suicide, then you will substantially reduce the suicide rate without guns.
In order to argue that the rate would not be affected, you have to argue that only those who are really determined to commit suicide would use a gun, and that if these people had less effective means, they would retry until successful no matter what means were at their disposal. I think that flies in the face of both reason (which would suggest that guns are a first means of choice among someone making a highly impulsive decision, and that somehow the retry rate would somehow be different in a population with access to guns, once they are removed).
(03-31-2014 12:59 PM)Hambone10 Wrote: (03-31-2014 12:43 PM)john01992 Wrote: the rates change. that was from 2011, in the most recent stats the US is at 12.0
No kidding, John. The simple point is that despite stricter gun laws, Canadians commit suicide at approximately the same rate as Americans. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower. We're talking about 1 person per 100,000 population swings here. There are going to be variances.
There isn't even a consistently slightly increased incidence that you could point to to show efficacy.... i.e. if Canada were always 1 person per 200,000 lower than the US. Given the arguably less effective methods they choose, they actually might have a higher ATTEMPT rate since the outcomes are about the same. I won't try and argue that they are... but that point would be just as valid as the author's attempt to describe the fact that people who tried once rarely tried again as proof that people who don't have access to one method simply choose another method.
The similarity of the Canadian and UK numbers vs the US seem to make that point very clearly.... and the 'methods used' by Canadians certainly does.
One thing that I see in the pie charts is that if you simply removed the bulk of the gun suicides from the US chart, the pie charts of the US and Canada would be remarkably similar.
Consider if you were to remove 44 suicides by gun out of the US chart (this would be to normalize the gun rate at 16% to match Canada), here is what would remain:
Code:
Suicide by:
gun == 9/56 == 16%
hanging == 21/56 == 37.5%
Poison == 17/56 == 30.4 %
Other == 8/56 == 14.3 %
This would compare to Canada
Code:
Means Rate/US Rate/Canada
gun 16% 16%
Hanging 37.5% 44%
Poison 30.4% 25%
Other 14.3% 15%
What that comparison does is that it says excluding guns, the means used are very similar between the two countries, which discounts the notion that they would use some other means if access to guns were more limited. Granting the overall suicide rate in the US would drop by 44% to about 5.3/100,000, you'd have to explain why the US would be an outlier among the selected group of comparison. At least in the case of Canada, Justin Bieber would go a long ways toward that explanation, perhaps latitude would explain part of it, but that is purely speculative.
All of this goes to reopen a discussion I'd previously set aside, but it is mainly by way of showing how those charts can be interpreted, and, IMHO, it supports John's two arguments (1) remove access to guns and you'll reduce suicide attempts (and success rate), and (2) if the alternative is less effective, you will indeed reduce the suicide success rate.
![[Image: zc-percentage-total-suicides-by-method-2...007-us.png]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qk3RYyt3xRo/TWFt03wl2uI/AAAAAAAAD20/TF_K-mCMG4k/s1600/zc-percentage-total-suicides-by-method-2000-2003-ca-2007-us.png)