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[wierd]

A lot of that is general fear of the government.

Registration is a form of oversight and control (duh)-- and if the thing being controlled is itself seen as combative of governmental overreach (A misguided position for many reasons, but still widely held), then it becomes nonsensical under those precepts.

Fox guarding the hen-house type thinking.

To get there, the government needs to win back popular opinion.  I don't think I need to suggest reading the news; our government is doing a first-rate job of demonstrating to the entire world that they are untrustworthy.

[redwallzyl]

If we're restricting ourselves to gun homicides, sure, but about two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides, so anything predicated on making people less likely to shoot each other is only solving part of the problem.

If gun suicides are a "problem" — and I don't think they are, I think that if people want to not be alive then I have no right to force them — then I'm thinking the problem would be with suicides, not with guns. The solution would be to address why people are depressed.

No, non one is an island. I doubt the persion who killed themselves family would be very don't of this right to off yourself. That's in inherantly absurd thing coming out of an over obsesson with persional freedsom and ignoring larger implications. Also, citation from NPR program yesterday, gun suicides are much more successful then non gun suicides. That should be for obvious reasons. Therefore reducing gun ownership in the suicidal will reduce successful suicides.

[sluissa]

If we're restricting ourselves to gun homicides, sure, but about two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides, so anything predicated on making people less likely to shoot each other is only solving part of the problem.

If gun suicides are a "problem" — and I don't think they are, I think that if people want to not be alive then I have no right to force them — then I'm thinking the problem would be with suicides, not with guns. The solution would be to address why people are depressed.

No, non one is an island. I doubt the persion who killed themselves family would be very don't of this right to off yourself. That's in inherantly absurd thing coming out of an over obsesson with persional freedsom and ignoring larger implications. Also, citation from NPR program yesterday, gun suicides are much more successful then non gun suicides. That should be for obvious reasons. Therefore reducing gun ownership in the suicidal will reduce successful suicides.

Just because someone failed at a suicide doesn't mean they were any less inclined to actually commit suicide nor does that make the problem that caused the desire to commit suicide go away.

As for the family thing. Fuck that. I'm not stuck on one opinion or another but at periods of my life I've come up with some pretty convincing arguments of how I should resent my parents for ever being selfish enough to bring me into this world against my will. I don't currently feel that way. And I get that there's the other side of that where "You don't know how you'll like life until you've tried it." But unless you've selfishly* decided to build up a family structure of your own with kids and/or a spouse who partially or fully depend on your efforts to keep themselves living, family guilt should not fucking enter into the equation. Everyone has a choice of whether or not they want to quit the game. Although I will say there's room for thought of some sort of "waiting period" where you have time to think it over and a chance for people to talk you out of it.

*All that said, I know that civilization sort of needs a minimum number of people to survive and without a birth rate that is competitive in the long run with the death rate, it won't survive. That's fine. I'm just stating all this on an individual basis for certain circumstances rather than a universal generalization.

[smjjames]

Trump has expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed the Russian consulate in Seattle in a move that he personally made.

In response, the Russian embassy in D.C. is asking the twitterverse what US consulate in Russia they'd choose to close.. I can only assume that they're trying to make the Russian move look as non-political as possible.

[MorleyDev]

The solution would be to address why people are depressed.

You do know that "depression" is often the reason why people are depressed, right? It's not always outside factors that make a person be depressed same way it's not always outside factors that cause you to develop colon cancer. Sometimes the body just goes "fuck you". Having the possibility of having firearms at hand when you're brain is doing that is....not a good idea. It's hard to fail to kill yourself with firearms, whilst even hanging yourself can be surprisingly bloody difficult at times.

Sorry, this idea that "We just need to address why people are depressed" bugs me. It's an illness. And the way depression works as an illness is it makes *anything* seem better than being conscious and thinking, since depression makes being conscious and thinking a painful experience. Sometimes the why is just chemical, and sometimes it's a chemical overreaction triggered by external factors, but there is a real need to create a safe environment for people to allow them to recover, find what medication works to make being conscious bearable again and so-forth.

[wierd]

While the brain is super complicated, throwing your hands up an going "It's fuken magic ok?" is not appropriate.

Many things can cause depression, yes-- Diet, lack of exercise, lack of sunlight, major physical illness or trauma--- all have potential as causal factors for depression.

Usually, it is psycho-trauma that causes it though. Better requirements from employers (Like France's "disconnection" law! Whoo hoo!) and better access to mental health services would go a long way.

[Trekkin]

While the brain is super complicated, throwing your hands up an going "It's fuken magic ok?" is not appropriate.

There's a difference between acknowledging the frequency with which a mental disorder is idiopathic and declaring it "magic." MorleyDev is right: sometimes people will become depressed for causes that we cannot identify with confidence, let alone anticipate. (For one thing, brain chemistry is notoriously susceptible to GxE interactions, and it's not like we can measure all of the relevant transmitters directly.) There are things we can do to try to treat it anyway, but it's not realistic to expect to deal with depression and depression-induced suicide purely prophylactically, although I absolutely agree there are cases we could catch and are missing.

[redwallzyl]

Just because someone failed at a suicide doesn't mean they were any less inclined to actually commit suicide nor does that make the problem that caused the desire to commit suicide go away.

I does make them not dead though. Which is the whole idea.

As for the family thing. Fuck that. I'm not stuck on one opinion or another but at periods of my life I've come up with some pretty convincing arguments of how I should resent my parents for ever being selfish enough to bring me into this world against my will. I don't currently feel that way. And I get that there's the other side of that where "You don't know how you'll like life until you've tried it." But unless you've selfishly* decided to build up a family structure of your own with kids and/or a spouse who partially or fully depend on your efforts to keep themselves living, family guilt should not fucking enter into the equation. Everyone has a choice of whether or not they want to quit the game. Although I will say there's room for thought of some sort of "waiting period" where you have time to think it over and a chance for people to talk you out of it.

*All that said, I know that civilization sort of needs a minimum number of people to survive and without a birth rate that is competitive in the long run with the death rate, it won't survive. That's fine. I'm just stating all this on an individual basis for certain circumstances rather than a universal generalization.

What an absolutely fucked up thing to say. I can absolutely not respect that opinion.

[misko27]

The solution would be to address why people are depressed.

You do know that "depression" is often the reason why people are depressed, right?

Is this a non-ironic version of that "You are just mad because you are angry" meme?

It's not always outside factors that make a person be depressed same way it's not always outside factors that cause you to develop colon cancer. Sometimes the body just goes "fuck you". Having the possibility of having firearms at hand when you're brain is doing that is....not a good idea. It's hard to fail to kill yourself with firearms,

My buddy lostallhope.com tells me that the success rate is something between 73% and 92%, although individual methods of firearm suicide can be as low as 50%. Happy coinflipping.

It's an illness.

Yeah well so is lead poisoning but I don't think you'd have us throw up our hands at that, now would you?

And the way depression works as an illness is it makes *anything* seem better than being conscious and thinking, since depression makes being conscious and thinking a painful experience.

Tell us something we don't know! Preaching to the choir man.

Sometimes the why is just chemical, and sometimes it's a chemical overreaction triggered by external factors, but there is a real need to create a safe environment for people to allow them to recover, find what medication works to make being conscious bearable again and so-forth.

The real argument against this is the massively differing rates in suicide between countries. Environmental factors, social factors, the availability of treatment etc. are clearly a big deal.

If we're restricting ourselves to gun homicides, sure, but about two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides, so anything predicated on making people less likely to shoot each other is only solving part of the problem.

If gun suicides are a "problem" — and I don't think they are, I think that if people want to not be alive then I have no right to force them — then I'm thinking the problem would be with suicides, not with guns. The solution would be to address why people are depressed.

No, non one is an island. I doubt the persion who killed themselves family would be very don't of this right to off yourself. That's in inherantly absurd thing coming out of an over obsesson with persional freedsom and ignoring larger implications. Also, citation from NPR program yesterday, gun suicides are much more successful then non gun suicides. That should be for obvious reasons. Therefore reducing gun ownership in the suicidal will reduce successful suicides.

Man, now this is a completely different can of worms, and boy would you look at that, I apparently love worms.

I doubt the person who killed themselves family would be very don't of this right to off yourself.

Well why the fuck should their personal happiness take precedence over mine when the issue is my own damn life? Where the hell were they when this would-be suicide was thinking of ending it all? Why should this suicidal person be there for them when clearly they can't even be there for themselves? No one chooses to be born into a family; why don't they have the right to tell their family to piss off? And if they are allowed to tell their family to piss off, what's the damn point of stopping suicide? There, you get into the hypocrisy that you are allowed to never speak to any member of your family again and disappear forever, but if you kill yourself that's somehow different. You can't have your filial piety pie and eat it too: either you're saying you are obligated to your family to do shit for them for no reason other than having been involuntarily born and raised by them (ain't no one asked your opinion about your conception), or suicide should be fine.

That's in inherantly absurd thing

I deny this premise!

coming out of an over obsesson with persional freedsom and ignoring larger implications.

A) If you don't have the right to end your own life, do you have any rights whatsoever? What point is choice if you can't even choose to not play the game? "You can choose any option you like, except the option to pick no options." B) What implications? That if we let people take their own live they'd start killing themselves? Well I have bad news: they're already killing themselves, and the ones who were converted to not-killing-themselvesness are only there out of guilt! Amazing. We've somehow managed to make their life worse, and they already wanted to kill themselves!

Parents act like their kids owe them for giving them life. When the kid questions that life, asserting that their parent has a right to them is absurd, since the only reason a parent does have rights over them is precisely that which they resent.

No I'm not bitter about anything, why do you ask?

[Trekkin]

Well I have bad news: they're already killing themselves, and the ones who were converted to not-killing-themselvesness are only there out of guilt! Amazing. We've somehow managed to make their life worse, and they already wanted to kill themselves!

This is not true. They are also there because they feel better, or killing themselves was too much trouble, or for any of several other reasons.

However we feel about euthanasia (and I'm personally in favor of making it accessible), we need to acknowledge the people who try to kill themselves, fail, and subsequently wish they had not tried, and come up with some process for ensuring as far as is feasible that people who elect to die wouldn't have regretted it later. Cooling-off periods are one way of doing that, as is psychological evaluation -- but when someone can simply grab a gun and avoid the entire process, any attempts to modulate that process are moot, at least in that particular case.

[MorleyDev]

Depression = the mental illness
Depressed = state of mind

Oh I'm quite familiar with that website. Now compare it to the non-firearm methods. Last time I was on it, only one that competed in effectiveness vs ease-of-access is jumping in front of a train. Killing yourself is physically difficult at the best of times, or at least always a risky proposition, since a half-finished job can be worse than a finished one.

The thing with the euthanasia argument is that it requires a person to be of sane mind for it to be a reasonable decision. By definition, someone suffering from a mental illness is not of sane mind. Medication and therapy can actually stop a person from being stuck in that depressed state of mind for at least most of the time, even if it's dipped into occasionally or it takes time to find that medication/therapy combination that works.

As for "so is lead poisoning". Yes. And governments regulate and have safety standards about the lead content of your drinking water for that very reason. Seriously, that's the "imagine if they were talking about 'Truck Control' because the killer used a truck" argument (an argument that has been made in earnest, ignorant of how...they do have Truck Control. It's called a driving license).

By all means, there needs to be more access to support and more openness and encouragement for people suffering to pursue that support. Having better access to doctors always helps with illnesses.

[wierd]

As somebody working in long-term adult care, having to deal with people not getting appropriately placed who are in senior living centers that should not be (Talking young-ish people in their 30s and 40s) that either failed at suicide (we have one in our care, but specifics are illegal for me to share, so dont ask), or permanently fried their brains with drug abuse (two more in our care), I can't stress enough how important proper access to mental health services are, BEFORE something unfixable happens.

Trust me, you do NOT want to end up like those poor people. To me, that is more than enough to put off any thoughts of suicide that are not guaranteed 100% fatal.

[bloop_bleep]

What if the suicidal person has children, hmm? Should they just forget about their own children's feelings and state of the mind and kill themselves anyway, because apparently  it's their 5-year old kid's fault that they are suicidal? Why is running away and abandoning your child not okay, but you think killing yourself when you have children is?

And no, kids don't owe their parents because their parents gave them life, they owe them because their parents spent a fuckton of time, effort, and money just so they could have a decent life, while getting nothing in return. The kids could at least do them the favor of not causing massive psychological trauma.

[smjjames]

And yet, Republicans want to DECREASE mental healthcare while talking up a storm about it.

[MorleyDev]

Trying to guilt people into not killing themselves is also a non-starter of a tactic for most incidents. People with depression often already feel guilty about everything anyway, so the thought that everyone'd be better without them in the long-run tends to override.

Hence why access to proper mental health treatment is definitely needed, since it can help with stabilising and even raising the default mood. Can confirm, medication can reduce the incidents and intensity of feeling-guilt-over-everything-that-ever-happened.

But whilst carrying out treatment you need to ensure a safe environment for the patient. Giving them medication and therapy and then sending them home to an environment with clear and present risks, like a firearm, is just an irresponsible act.