There is a great article in the NY Times today about the link between guns in the home and the increased risk of suicide.
It's not news that studies, including one by the New England Journal of Medicine, have shown that a firearm in the home increases the risk of suicide. I didn't know, however, that the three states (Wyoming, Montana and Alaska) with the highest rates of suicide are also the three states with the highest rates of gun ownership. But those numbers are too broad to identify whether the suicides occurred in homes that also had guns...so let's not go there. One doesn't want to subscribe to "bad science."
The part of the story that caught my attention was about a Wyoming couple whose seventeen-year-old son committed suicide with one of the guns in the house. The father is quoted as saying that he "beats himself up quite a bit" about the fact that he didn't have a gun safe but that, if he had, there would have been two people with the combination, him and his son.
What is the point of conducting background checks on prospective gun purchasers if owners are not held responsible for how the weapon is used once it is in their possession? If a seventeen-year-old is too young to purchase a gun (and I hope to hell he is) then how can a father allow that same kid unrestricted access to his, the father's, guns without some legal liability? How about even the recognition of some moral liability?
There is something seriously wrong with our gun culture when a family like this proudly poses for pictures and allows themselves to be profiled in the NY Times with no apparent sense of shame or culpability. It is apparently, for them, just another tragic situation; whaddaya gonna do? Instead of a tragic situation for which the parents are in some measure responsible.
1 comment:
It seems that the gun is the method of choice, when available, for suicide. Another celebrity, Mindy McCready, chose that method over the weekend as opposed to the overdoses that had not worked for her in the past.
Although your avoidance of "bad science" is laudable, it seems pretty evident that gun suicides would occur more frequently in homes where guns are located.
I think that there are many good reasons to conduct background checks even without the "held-responsible" tag. Warren Buffett's insurance companies are going to benefit greatly if gun ownership acquires another level of liability.
I am not in favor of your "suicide should bring shame" concept. That has been the position of the church for too long.
Suicide is a mystery to me as I am much more likely to kill somebody who just doesn't SHUT UP! or who cuts me off in traffic than to kill myself. One of the latest mysteries is the contagious aspect--it seems that young people tend to commit suicide as a sort of "me too" thing. Sad.
As a gun owner and proponent, I tend to dispute the idea that guns are the cause, while gun opponents see the bad things that happen to be caused by guns, not by people.
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