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[PTTG??]

Well it'll be interesting when Trump pardons everyone, including himself, and sets off an actual civil war.

[smjjames]

Well it'll be interesting when Trump pardons everyone, including himself, and sets off an actual civil war.

I assume you're referring to this (or similar articles)?

Pardoning himself wouldn't stop impeachment proceedings though, and pardoning yourself is pretty much an admission of guilt and clearly trying to get away with something. Yes, Ford pardoned Nixon, but that was after Nixon resigned. Ford said he did it with good intentions in mind, but whether things would have been better without Nixon being pardoned is one for historians to discuss and for alt history.

Trying to pardon the former campaign and staff members would be problematic and could actually backfire since he'd effectively waive away fifth amendment rights for the topic for those people, and attempting to pardon himself would be right in uncharted waters and most likely unconstitutional.

[Dunamisdeos]

@Reelya,

I did a bunch of quick research. However, that Wikipedia article sort of works against itself by referencing that report.

Here's the conclusion from the report that is referenced.

CONCLUSION
None of the existing data sources, by itself or in combination with others, provides comprehensive, timely, and accurate data needed to answer many important questions pertaining to the role of firearms in violent events. Even some of the most basic descriptive questions cannot be answered with existing data.

Yes, homes with guns have more gun-related deaths. No, it is not claiming that there is a correlation between gun ownership and overall suicide rates.

It even goes on to say:

For example, the existing data do not reveal information pertinent to answering the following questions:

1: Where do youth who shoot themselves or others obtain their guns?

2: In what proportion of intimate-partner homicides committed with a gun does the offender also take his or her own life or the lives of the victim’s children or protectors?

3: Did the number of people shot with assault weapons change after the passage of the 1994 ban on assault weapons?

4: What are the most common circumstances leading to unintentional firearm-related deaths? Are particular types or makes and models of firearms overrepresented in unintentional firearm-related deaths?

5: What proportion of suicide or homicide victims were under the care of a mental health professional? What proportion were intoxicated with alcohol or illicit drugs at the time of death? How do these proportions compare with those for suicides committed by other means?

That is not to say that there is no causation, just that the current available data in no way conclusively points towards gun ownership increasing overall suicide rates in the US. It's also important to note that I was also looking at rates across all demographics, not just teens. THAT SAID, the leading method of suicide in the US (by a huge lead of something like 40%) is firearms. It's the sheer prevalence of firearms in the US as an available method that appears to lead to their common use in suicide.

An even greater drop in suicide rate was seen in the IDF (100+ in 2005, now 15 as of last year) once they gave them priority health care (I read and then lost the dang specific article, now I can't find it on google). Based on these reports though, the greatest reduction seems to be addressing the issue of mental stress and recent heavy traumatic experiences, followed by removing the method of suicide.

TLDR: Ergo, effective mental health care first, followed simultaneously by laws that prevent ownership/access of firearms to at-risk individuals and homes seems to be the best option.

[sluissa]

It's a problem, for sure, but it's a very different problem than interpersonal violence.

Yeah, but then they also have commonalities that are interesting. For exemple, I'm fairly certain a waiting period is a great help against suicide by gun by preventing impulse buy.

There are commonalities for sure, and making guns harder to get ahold of would likely lower suicides and certainly lower suicides by gun. However it strikes me wrong when you lump suicide in with murder as equally bad. Something we'd like to minimize, for sure, but maybe work on the reasons people consider it rather than the methods they commit it by. I'd rather give people a reason to live rather than take away their choice to die.

[Reelya]

Yes, homes with guns have more gun-related deaths. No, it is not claiming that there is a correlation between gun ownership and overall suicide rates.

Sure, but there are other more recent studies that do show such a correlation:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4984734/

Firearm Ownership and Suicide Rates Among US Men and Women, 1981–2013
...
State-level firearm ownership was associated with an increase in both male and female firearm-related suicide rates and with a decrease in nonfirearm-related suicide rates. Higher gun ownership was associated with higher suicide rates by any means among male, but not among female, persons.

Guns do substitute for some other suicide types, however overall it's still higher with guns. While this is state-level, and not on the household gun ownership level like the other study, it's clear that this increase in state-level suicides because of gun availability is concentrated in gun-owning households by logical necessity.

[Maximum Spin]

As an Upstate New Yorker, I'd like to add that the entry for New York in that chart is highly misleading. Upstate and NYC are like two different worlds in terms of how easy it is to get a gun – very easy in upstate and very very difficult in NYC – and yet... NYC has the higher rate of gun violence.

[Reelya]

I google imaged to get an actual map of crime in New York State however, and this is what I got (search term was "homicide rates by county new york state").

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I don't think this really suggests that rates of crime are higher in the city. Sure, there are probably more crimes in the city than upstate, because 8 million people live in the city, so you hear more news about that, however the per-capita rates of violent crime seem a fair bit lower in the city than upstate.

[Maximum Spin]

I said "gun violence", not "homicides"...

[Lord Shonus]

If you take that data and chart it geographically, you'll find that the death rates are clustered geographically. You'll also find that these "clusters" have a high correlation with economic health.

It is also worth noting that simply categorizing restrictions as "easy, moderate, difficult, or prohibited" is not particularly useful, and is potentially misleading. Connecticut and Hawaii both have, for example, a "difficult" rating for concealed-carry permits. Presumably, they both gained the rating for legally being "may issue" states (meaning that provision exists for the state to issue a permit, but the state is not required to do so), but the laws are very, very different. Hawaii is effectively a "never-issue" state (virtually all permit requests are rejected without consideration - this is a popular method of "we want a ban, but we don't have support for it, so we'll pretend it isn't a ban"). Connecticut is "shall-issue" in practice, because the law (as interpreted by state courts) only allows a permit to be denied if the issuing officer has personal knowledge that won't show up on a background check, and must justify in writing their reasoning for rejection. In practice, the requirements are not much more onerous than those in Ohio (ranked as "easy" in the chart), although it does take longer.

[misko27]

As an Upstate New Yorker, I'd like to add that the entry for New York in that chart is highly misleading. Upstate and NYC are like two different worlds in terms of how easy it is to get a gun – very easy in upstate and very very difficult in NYC – and yet... NYC has the higher rate of gun violence.

Yes; so you can't get a gun in NYC, and yet there is gun violence there. I wonder who is to blame for that? Hmm...

[Frumple]

Mildly interesting trick I'm too tired to hunt up links for, but of similar note there's apparently parts of cali that see a spike in gun violence or deaths or summat when one its neighbouring states (though I forget exactly which one) have gun shows :V

[Maximum Spin]

Yes; so you can't get a gun in NYC, and yet there is gun violence there. I wonder who is to blame for that? Hmm...

Drug cartels, mostly, from what I hear

[Frumple]

Heh. Dunno how similar it is up in new york, but down here in florida the drug runners et al more or less love the non-urban backcountry. Be pretty odd if a lot of the firearms weren't coming from upstate in NYC.

... actually, idle check suggests a good chunk of NYC firearms are probably coming from down south (including florida ), ha. They've apparently nicknamed parts of the road system the "iron pipeline" due to the amount of firearms moving up it.

[McTraveller]

This reminds me of the discussions we used to have in high school about how we should ban all writing implements because they can be used as weapons.

Banning weapons is not, ultimately, the correct solution to weapon-based violence - it is just the relatively easier approach.

The longer-lasting solution is to address why people are so violent in the first place, and try to deal with that.  It's also important to note is that in any population there is going to be some percentage of the populace that is going to have higher-than-average violent tendencies, and society should be looking how to accommodate that in a non-destructive manner.  Maybe it's mental health care, maybe it's just teaching people to be more connected, maybe it's (heaven forbid!) encouraging the return to more traditional family structures where families actually support each other instead of just cohabitate the same dwelling space.

[Maximum Spin]

Heh. Dunno how similar it is up in new york, but down here in florida the drug runners et al more or less love the non-urban backcountry. Be pretty odd if a lot of the firearms weren't coming from upstate in NYC.

Oh, we have a loooot of drugs, but since most of it flows in a northward direction, I doubt it's going to NYC.