Comment by marojejian

The point of the second part is that grandpa locking up his gun reduces his risk of suicide. Anything that adds a "checkpoint" that activates even some small other part of the brain seems to help.

> however take at least as much care for your grandparents, they are apparently at extreme risk, of forming intent and, acting especially grandpa.

What if allowing suicide is taking care of one's grandparents? After all, if I was diagnosed with a awful condition like Alzheimer's, ALS, etc.. I am absolutely going out that way once I start having more bad days than good days.

Suicide tends to be impulsive. Any friction, even brief, can give an opportunity to think twice.

And on the flip side, the US Sec Def recently allowed US soldiers to carry loaded weapons on base (when not in a role that required it, which was previously disallowed). I expect this will increase suicides on US military bases. All for some "rah rah, 2A, mah rights!!!" bullshit political posturing.

The US Veteran's Affairs agency makes a free app to help with insomnia; it has all the usual advice that would apply to anyone - plus advising veterans not to keep a loaded gun by the bed, even if it makes them feel safer going to sleep.

I bet that has as much to do with where and when alcohol is consumed as it does guns.

Yup. It's IIRC about a third where there's reason to think suicide was the intent and many others where it wasn't directly suicide but people who decide dying is better than whatever sentence likely awaits.

Well, thats usually relegated by someone who wants to die but is too scared to do it. So they find people who legally can, usually by waving an empty gun around.

But what I'm seeing is 60% of the people here in the USA are not functionally sustainable economically wise. And that is completely a fixable problem. But given how corrupted our government is, its likely not going to be fixed in the reasonable future (say, 20y).

Live in poverty, no medical, no vacation, scraping by every day on what amounts of hope? I can understand why people want out. HN people are in a massive bubble. Most of us are fine. Average folks? Nope. Rural? Nope. Inner city? Nope. Homeless? Obviously not. Underage LGBTQ people with hateful/christian families? One of the highest suicide rates.

Sure, I would absolutely rather help people through what seems to be insurmountable problems. Most of them aren't. But seriously, this country doesnt give a fuck. I'm pretty sure this country only cares about suicide at all is because it reduces lifetime tax revenue (for, primarily blowing up brown and middle eastern people).

Thankfully, 1FA is still in the USA, mostly. So sites like https://sanctionedsuicide.site, even if theyre indexed to hell and back by Google and Bing.

Id rather help people get past why they think suicide is the answer. But I also understand why someone is just tired and done.

Australian policy on guns (princially unifying existing gun regulation across all of Australia including Queensland, Tasmania, and the Territories) had a significant impact on mass shooting, individual shooting, gun suicides, etc throughout the 30 years following the Port Arthur massacre.

During the period legitimate gun ownership (people with guns) has sharply declined in larger urban areas, remained about the same in "working with guns" population demographics, and total numbers of guns in Australia have increased.

No large scale mass shootings since, no "mass shootings" (four or more dead / injured (?? - I can't recall the low bar threshold)) at all for nearly 30 years, three or four such events total overall rather than the practically one a day numbers in the USofA.

No policy or constitution is perfect, of course, Australia is currently in a period of revising some of that policy.

Policy still matters even if guns exist. After all, murder is still illegal even though murderers exist. Building a bomb is still illegal even though bombs exist.

The tricky part with the US is the already vast supply of firearms circulating. Can't do much about that.

But, I would think, stopping or reducing the sale of guns right now would still have an effect. We already somewhat regularly try to reduce the sale of guns via policy, mostly to people we think are potentially dangerous.

But, I don't know exactly how much that has helped, or will help. What I do know is there is definitely variance in gun violence. Both across nations, but also across states in the US. So, something is behind it.

are you asking me, a numbskull with an associate's degree, to propose public policy*? i think we're allowed to want qualified people to do better in the positions we've elected them to :)

* if so, my policy is that all guns be vaporized overnight. also, my policy would include the end of lobbying entirely, including but not limited to the small arms industry and the NRA along with police guilds and other organizations supporting the small arms race in this country

Yeah when you redefine the term to be "active shooter" I guess, something tells me that the American public still doesn't want to die in a mass shooting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

It's a sick society when you have one for nearly every single day of the year. But hey this is the result of neoliberal economics so why should we get too upset at the societal rot when corporatists are increasing shareholder value?

That account has a -10 karma. It is just a gibberish bot.

You are engaging with a bot with -13 karma:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mondomondo