• balerion@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is not about terminal illnesses. I too support euthanasia. This is about mental illness. The fact is that if more guns are purchased, more mentally ill people will die.

    As someone who has attempted suicide many times, I have no idea what you’re talking about. The fact is that if you want to end your life reliably and quickly, guns are your best bet by far. As part of being suicidal, I did intensive research into what the best way to kill myself was. The universal conclusion was guns. My other attempts did not work, obviously, and not for lack of trying. It is much, much harder to kill yourself than most people realize. Besides, statistics show that having a gun in the home significantly increases the likelihood of suicide.

    Gas stoves used to be a popular method of suicide. Do you know what happened when they stopped being made? Suicides went down. So yes, the method of suicide IS responsible for suicides. It’s not true that people will just find another method of killing themselves. Suicide is often undertaken on a whim and people who survive attempts often never wind up killing themselves.

    • kool_newt@beehaw.orgOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I’m not sure that creating a society of depressed people and then removing their means of self-harm (that are also useful for other things) is the best way to go about things.

      While suicide can never be ended, we can work to make a world with fewer desperate people, and major parts of that are things like reducing systemic racism (e.g. this post is an example), and ending capitalism.

      • balerion@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        Because when you recommend that people arm themselves, you are talking to us too. Mental illness is much more common than you think, and becoming even more common as late capitalism exacerbates the conditions which produce some forms of mental illness. Moreover, mental illness can hit at any time. Someone who showed no symptoms of mental illness before can snap one day and commit suicide or murder their family. When you recklessly recommend that people buy guns, you are increasing the likelihood that someone will commit suicide or homicide, due to mental illness or otherwise.

          • balerion@beehaw.org
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            My recommendation for people to arm themselves isn’t going to encourage to or dissuade anyone from doing so.

            Then literally why say it?

            they have a right to own them

            Yeah, and maybe they shouldn’t. There’s lots of dangerous shit you have no right to possess. Guns should be in that category. And for the record, I don’t believe the government should be sending armed people to enforce shit either.

            You sound like my mother.

            Smart woman.

              • balerion@beehaw.org
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                You heavily implied that people of color, at least, should purchase firearms.

                What? When the government tells you what your rights are that’s good and normal, but when a random person tells you what your rights are that’s fascism? Nothing about that makes any sense at all.

                  • balerion@beehaw.org
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    0
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    sigh

                    Alright, what WAS I supposed to take from your post if not “minorities should arm themselves”?

                    I will also note that you did not initially deny that you had been making such a recommendation.