zoux posted:

Let's not pretend like suicide by gun isn't orders of magnitude more lethal than other method. If your suicide attempt is a cry for help, but you use a gun, you ain't getting help.

quote:

That isn't true. The language in the 1996 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Bill that "banned gun research" was: "...none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control." There is no ban on research, just on advocacy, because that's what a few CDC researchers were engaged in at the time. The CDC still collects data on and researches gun violence, which is how we get those charts.

There are fundamental limits on restricting the means of access to suicide, which is why Japan and Korea have much higher suicide rates than the United States despite extremely strict gun control.

Dead Reckoning posted:

There are fundamental limits of the effectiveness of restricting the means of access to suicide, which is why Japan and Korea have much higher suicide rates than the United States despite extremely strict gun control.

Badger of Basra posted:

Hillary opposes TPP:

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/10/07/hillary-clinton-opposes-obamas-trans-pacific-trade-deal/

Trabisnikof posted:

Except, until Obama, it was determined that any data collection that could be used for advocacy fell under this rule.

RuanGacho posted:

Advocacy apparently being that a trend line is going up I guess?

Fojar38 posted:

She waited until the deal was completed before saying so, which sounds to me like it's an attempt to curry favor from the left without actually hurting the deal.

Gravel Gravy posted:

Care to elaborate?

Dead Reckoning posted:

Citation needed, since the dataset in the app includes more years of Bush being President than Obama.

quote:

Two years ago this week, President Obama ordered the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to get back to studying “the causes of gun violence.”

The CDC had not touched firearm research since 1996 — when the NRA accused the agency of promoting gun control and Congress threatened to strip the agency’s funding. The CDC’s self-imposed ban dried up a powerful funding source and had a chilling effect felt far beyond the agency: Almost no one wanted to pay for gun violence studies, researchers say. Young academics were warned that joining the field was a good way to kill their careers. And the odd gun study that got published went through linguistic gymnastics to hide any connection to firearms.

The long stalemate continued until shortly after the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., when Obama announced several gun-control proposals, including reversing the CDC research ban. His higher-profile proposals – tightening firearm background checks, reinstating the assault weapons ban – were viewed as impossible to pass into law. Congress wouldn’t bite. But ending the CDC research ban? Done by executive order, it appeared to have the best shot, along with broad support from a scientific community upset that gun violence as a public health problem was being ignored.

“A lot of people thought it would make a big difference,” recalled Jeffrey Swanson, a Duke University psychiatry professor who studies gun violence and mental health.

But today the CDC still avoids gun-violence research, demonstrating what many see as the depth of its fear about returning to one of the country’s most divisive debates. The agency recently was asked by The Washington Post why it was still sitting on the sidelines of firearms studies. It declined to make an official available for an interview but responded with a statement noting it had commissioned an agenda of possible research goals but still lacked the dedicated funding to pursue it.

“It is possible for us to conduct firearm-related research within the context of our efforts to address youth violence, domestic violence, sexual violence, and suicide,” CDC spokeswoman Courtney Lenard wrote, “but our resources are very limited.”

Congress has continued to block dedicated funding. Obama requested $10 million for the CDC’s gun violence research in his last two budgets. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) have introduced bills supporting the funding. Both times the Republican-controlled House of Representatives said no. Maloney recently said she planned to reintroduce her bill this year, but she wasn’t hopeful.

So, the CDC is no closer to initiating gun-violence studies.


(http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-two-years-ago/)

The Iron Rose posted:

I don't see what I could elaborate upon. I appreciate that Hillary weighed this issue based on information available and came to a considered decision after an appropriate period of time. I prefer politicians do this rather than oppose an issue because it wins points with their base or does so based upon ideology.

It's bad when the Republicans do that, and it's also bad when Democrats (and independents!) do so as well. To believe otherwise is hypocrisy.

Which is fine in many cases, I don't necessarily have a problem with hypocrisy or weighing pragmatism over principle, but at least I own up to it. Now, I appreciate Sanders for long supporting something like gay marriage as it speaks well to his principles. And that is valuable as well, I'm not discounting that, but when it comes to who I'll vote for? I'll go for someone who weighs issues on their content and merit and comes to a considered decision rather than someone whose ideology blinds them to potential solutions. Even if I share similar values (which I don't), of if I agree with the policy, or some of the policies produced by adhering to that ideology (which I do).

So, tl;dr: I'd rather a politician who weighs each individual issue on their merits, rather than on blind ideological opposition to free trade and capitalism.

FAUXTON posted:

Uh, they kind of took over a couple decently-sized cities and steamrolled a bunch of other militia groups a while back. The answer is that the Mideast isn't some stone-age hellhole and even IS knows that pickup trucks are going to be more useful than sedans for their war rig needs. If someone is shipping cars in and selling them to ISIS then they have FinCEN to investigate the financial trail so they don't need to ask a loving manufacturer what happened to a vehicle after they sent it to a dealer. Granted, Toyota doesn't make guns so expecting some kind of documentation after release to dealers is somewhat reasonable but I'm gonna call it now and say that any cars they're having shipped in are being bought by straw buyers who are slipping through financial intelligence nets in the countries they inhabit. They ought to be asking the individual dealers and banks for their books.

Trabisnikof posted:

LGD posted:

...that article and the quotes you specifically highlighted don't come anywhere close to supporting your assertion, or even address it.

Trabisnikof posted:

Or she waited until the deal was finalized so that she could oppose the actual deal not a leaked draft?

I seriously am amazed at the arguments that either Clinton should have opposed it without knowing its content or shouldn't oppose it because she won't make a red line about it.

Trabisnikof posted:

My assertion was that the CDC was prevented from research gun violence and collecting data to support those studies. As the article states.

Trabisnikof posted:

Except, until Obama, it was determined that any data collection that could be used for advocacy fell under this rule.

Fojar38 posted:

Maybe but considering that she was one of the founders of the idea of the agreement in the first place I think that she just waited until her opposition wouldn't be excessively damaging to it. Most Democrats were already going to oppose the bill anyway, it's Republicans that Obama needs to win over and he will probably succeed considering fast track.

LGD posted:

No, the claim you were specifically challenged on very much wasn't. This isn't even ambiguous.

Fojar38 posted:

Maybe but considering that she was one of the founders of the idea of the agreement in the first place I think that she just waited until her opposition wouldn't be excessively damaging to it.

zoux posted:

Fewer guns = fewer deaths from suicides. Full stop.

Trabisnikof posted:

QuoProQuid posted:

I can't believe I am typing this sentence, but the Freedom Caucus just endorsed Webster for Speaker of the House.

nachos posted:

These stupid motherfuckers are never going to agree on a speaker are they

BI NOW GAY LATER posted:

For entertainment value, I hope not.

zoux posted:

Let's not pretend like suicide by gun isn't orders of magnitude more lethal than other method. If your suicide attempt is a cry for help, but you use a gun, you ain't getting help.

Popular Thug Drink posted:

It's a violation of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution to try to restrict in any way an American Citizen's right to suicide by firearm. Full Stop.

Dead Reckoning posted:

Can you explain why Japan and South Korea have higher suicides rates than the U.S. then? Means of suicide are often culturally driven, but suicide itself exists across cultures. If you magic-wanded away all guns tomorrow, you'd probably see a dip, but it would trend back up as people moved on to insecticide or exit bags or whatever. More to the point, why focus on guns when more general suicide prevention strategies and mental health treatment are more likely to be effective and agnostic to method?

fknlo posted:

Suicides also shouldn't count in the gun death totals for reasons.

zoux posted:

Clinically depressed suicidal people aren't rational actors who compare shop suicide methods. Suicide attempts are often spontaneous and committed with what's at hand. That's why less than 2 percent of pill attempts are non fatal, most people simply don't have enough pills in their house to lethally overdose. But if there's a gun handy it's a different story. So if they have a firearm available in their house and grab that, they are 85% likely to fatally injure themselves. In fact, that's exactly what happened to my 18 year old cousin last year, who got into a fight with his girlfriend and suddenly in the middle of it went and got his dad's, my uncle's, .22 pistol and killed himself with it. We don't know why he did it, but if there wasn't a gun in the house that day he'd still be alive.

So to answer your question, I don't have to explain why cultural mores towards suicide wouldn't actully reduce suicide deaths, because suicide rates in America could remain unchanged. Every person that reached for a gun that wasn't there, and came to their senses later, or tried to hang themselves an failed, or whatever the scenario, they'll have a chance to go get therapy, to go get the help they need.

zoux posted:

Clinically depressed suicidal people aren't rational actors who compare shop suicide methods. Suicide attempts are often spontaneous and committed with what's at hand. That's why less than 2 percent of pill attempts are non fatal, most people simply don't have enough pills in their house to lethally overdose. But if there's a gun handy it's a different story. So if they have a firearm available in their house and grab that, they are 85% likely to fatally injure themselves. In fact, that's exactly what happened to my 18 year old cousin last year, who got into a fight with his girlfriend and suddenly in the middle of it went and got his dad's, my uncle's, .22 pistol and killed himself with it. We don't know why he did it, but if there wasn't a gun in the house that day he'd still be alive.

So to answer your question, I don't have to explain why cultural mores towards suicide wouldn't actully reduce suicide deaths, because suicide rates in America could remain unchanged. Every person that reached for a gun that wasn't there, and came to their senses later, or tried to hang themselves an failed, or whatever the scenario, they'll have a chance to go get therapy, to go get the help they need.

Dead Reckoning posted:

Homicide and suicide have different causes and are prevented in different ways, irrespective of the method of violence.

Khisanth Magus posted:

My cousin also killed herself back in high school after a fight with her boyfriend, using his gun which she had for some reason. No one ever understood why. My brother almost killed said boyfriend when he had the nerve to show up for the funeral.

It is very unlikely she would have been able to successfully kill herself that night if that gun hadn't been handy, and who knows what could have happened if she had made it till the next day.

zoux posted:

Clinically depressed suicidal people aren't rational actors who compare shop suicide methods. Suicide attempts are often spontaneous and committed with what's at hand. That's why less than 2 percent of pill attempts are non fatal, most people simply don't have enough pills in their house to lethally overdose. But if there's a gun handy it's a different story. So if they have a firearm available in their house and grab that, they are 85% likely to fatally injure themselves. In fact, that's exactly what happened to my 18 year old cousin last year, who got into a fight with his girlfriend and suddenly in the middle of it went and got his dad's, my uncle's, .22 pistol and killed himself with it. We don't know why he did it, but if there wasn't a gun in the house that day he'd still be alive.

So to answer your question, I don't have to explain why cultural mores towards suicide wouldn't actully reduce suicide deaths, because suicide rates in America could remain unchanged. Every person that reached for a gun that wasn't there, and came to their senses later, or tried to hang themselves an failed, or whatever the scenario, they'll have a chance to go get therapy, to go get the help they need.

Dead Reckoning posted:

Also, Congress deciding not to earmark funds for CDC studies on gun violence is not the same as the CDC being banned from doing those studies.

Dead Reckoning posted:

I'm sorry for your loss, I really am, but if you want to dictate policy for an entire country, you do need to address the fact that people everywhere in the world find ways to kill themselves, most often with poison or hanging, which are effective (depending on the poison) and readily accessible to most people. While you can look at an individual case and speculate that it may have turned out differently if the gun wasn't there, at the national level, other factors are much stronger drivers of suicide rates than legal access to guns. It's more important to make sure that people don't want to kill themselves in the first place than it is to try to round off all the sharp corners of the world in order to deny them the means.

Dead Reckoning posted:

I'm sorry for your loss, I really am, but if you want to dictate policy for an entire country, you do need to address the fact that people everywhere in the world find ways to kill themselves, most often with poison or hanging, which are effective (depending on the poison) and readily accessible to most people. While you can look at an individual case and speculate that it may have turned out differently if the gun wasn't there, at the national level, other factors are much stronger drivers of suicide rates than legal access to guns. It's more important to make sure that people don't want to kill themselves in the first place than it is to try to round off all the sharp corners of the world in order to deny them the means.

quote:

Restricting access to the means of suicide is an important component of comprehensive strategies for suicide prevention. To improve prevention efforts, better knowledge of national, regional and local suicide patterns is vital, and better understanding of underlying mechanisms is absolutely crucial.