10 October, 2009

Murder & Suicide - some facts

This past week Melanie Hain, known to many as the mother who openly carried her Glock 26 to her child's soccer game was a victim of a murder suicide. Many people in the gunblogger community knew her and pleaded with her to get out of her situation. I offer my sympathy and condolences to her children, her family and to my fellow gunbloggers. There are others out there who feel the need to question the ownership of firearms and are using this horrible tragedy to further their bigoted agenda. I wish to counter this by offering up some logic and reason.

The World Health Organization has long noted that removing an easy and favored method of suicide does not significantly alter the overall rate. i.e. Removing guns as a method still leaves someone with hanging, asphyxiation or overdosing on medication.

America, as a first world nation enjoys an average rate of suicide. The latest data I found was 17.6 per 100,000 vs. the Czech Republic's 26.0 per 100,000. And Canada with much stricter gun control laws shows a higher rate of suicide at 19.5 per 100,000.

Japan, where there is no equivalent to the 2nd Amendment and gun related crime is hardly known has a whopping suicide rate of 36.5 per 100,000.

Suicide rates for law enforcement in this country is 18 per 100,000. Only slightly higher than our national average. The notion that somehow police are infallible to crime, and yes suicide is a crime, simply by the appointment to their duties, is wrong. The police are just like you and me, they put their pants on one leg at at time.

Acccording to the National Crime Victimization Survey, the idea that your gun will be taken away from you in a crime is ludicrous. The rate is at most, one percent.

In another blog, a comment was posted about those who live by the sword, die by the sword. The meaning of that is if you visit violence upon someone, you should expect violence in return. Melanie Hain had ample opporutunity to draw her weapon many times throughout her life. It was kept holstered. Did she offer violence to anyone? Only if they did so first.

To the gun control bigots I say this to you, you are on the wrong side of history. You are the social equivalent of the KKK. Where do you think gun control came from? It came from a deeply resentful South that wished to control the newly freed slaves by denying them their civil rights. Do we as gun owners force you to own a gun? No, we do not. Do we wish that there was never another murder by any means? Yes, we do, but we live in an imperfect world and we wish to better our chance to survive a violent conflict. We do this by going armed. Melanie Hain understood this. God rest her soul.

4 comments:

Old NFO said...

Excellent post- you have found the 'dirty little secret' they don't want out...

Yes, the situation with Meleanie Hain is tragic, no question; but it also brings to light the fact that domestic violence knows no bounds...

Unknown said...

I read a lot of gun blogs, and I don't think there were too many examples of people using the Meleanie Hain tragedy to further their bigoted ends. What I read were a number of respectful remarks pointing out that her case, as sad as it is, illustrates a lot of what the gun control crowd have been saying right along.

What you said about the WHO study on suicide has been going around the pro-gun sites lately. Do you guys just copy each other, or what? Same for your closing remarks about the KKK. That's been repeated over and over again, not just lately, but almost word for word. C,mon, can't you be more imaginative than that?

I don't know what WHO study you're all referring to, and I'll bet you don't either, but there have been others which show that the high degree of lethality associated with a gun, makes it much more likely that you'll succeed if you attempt suicide. You've probably read the reports of how the rare survivors of gunshot suicide attempts, for the most part, never attempt it again, indicating that it was a temporary problem for which they were seeking a permanent solution. Lucky were the ones who used razors or pills or a rope, because a much higher percentage of them lived.

So your comments about suicide are bogus. And the reason they are applies equally to domestic violence. Guns are bad news for depressed people, for women, for a lot of people.

Your "social equivalent of the KKK" is just nonsense, as is your idea that we're on the "wrong side of history."

Unknown said...

RIP. This was a tragic event that the antis have the gall to attempt to bend to their argument. I don't even need to defend that point.

Mike W. said...

Most of what I've read and all of what I've written has been respectful.

You mean like the vile bullshit your good buddy Laci the Dog wrote about Hain?....