OK, people who are at abnormally high risk of suicide shouldn't be permitted to own guns.

[Jackpine Radical]

That would include marine engineers & architects, physicians, and dentists, all of whose suicide rates are nearly double that of the general population.

http://www.businessinsider.com/most-suicidal-occupations-2011-10?op=1

[Downwinder]

1. and anyone with cancer. Kevorkian's primary customers.

MS was #2.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Anyone with a known family history of cancer, MS, depression, childhood abuse, etc.

We could take a page from the anti-choice people & cast a net of exclusion so wide that nobody could pass as qualified to own a firearm.

[KoKo]

6. agree that's a huge downside and unworkable...n/t

[ileus]

3. and all males...

[Jackpine Radical]

4. I'm deeply embarrassed to have overlooked that one. Thanks.

Actually, if we started singling out those groups most prone to violence of all kinds, particularly gun violence, males would be at the top again.

[DrDan]

21. that actually makes a lot of sense

[KoKo]

5. I agree and WHO is to decide who is mentally unqualified...its not like one has

"medical papers" to present when buying a gun. That would be invasion of Medical Privacy.

It wouldn't work. And, neither would ARMING our Bases...when you might have more than ONE person with difficulties wanting to get into a shoot out.

Don't think those are workable solutions to the problems we face. And, I am against any "Assault Weapon" gun...however it's classfied if it's a repeater and "rounds of ammo" are ready and available to any and everyone who has some reason for all that "fire power."

I'm not against Shot Guns or Hunting (although I don't think hunting serves any purpose here in US these days except for those with sport tradition or those rural who need to eat it) and I'm not against those who feel they need a hand gun for whatever protection they feel they need...but Massive Kill Weapons should definitely be highly restricted if not banned, imho.

[NutmegYankee]

8. RE: hunting

It really helps to control the deer population on the East Coast. With the heavy urbanization, the deer now venture into many neighborhoods and cause a lot of destruction to plants and small trees. Defending a garden can get pretty epic out here. And the sad part is a bad winter can lead to starvation and then disease.

And yes, they are very tasty too.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. I huntd deer & upland birds most of my life.

I fully understand and sympathize with both the nutritional and game population-control arguments. I was just trying to point out the absurdity of thinking that gun violence can be meaningfully reduced by trying to keep the guns out of the hands of, for example, the "mentally ill."

[X_Digger]

11. I think it stems from an understandable (though flawed) concept.

When someone commits a horrible act like this, they think, "I could never do something like that." They imagine, "It must take a mentally ill person to do such a thing."

They then reverse it, and think, "If we keep guns from the "mentally ill", such incidents wouldn't happen!"

In reality, mentally ill people are more likely to be the *victims* of violent crime than the perpetrator, and are basically no more likely to commit violent crime than non-"mentally ill" persons.

It's a double confluence of "all squirrels are mammals but not all mammals are squirrels."- not all people who commit such horrible acts are diagnostically "mentally ill, and not all "mentally ill" people are a danger to themselves or others.

[Jackpine Radical]

13. All Republicans are squirrels

but not all squirrels are Republicans.

[loyalsister]

22. There are also times when people actually sympathize with murderers

If someone opened fire at the US stock exchange, many people would find it comprehensible. Shootings that are rooted in conflict are sometimes understandable.
And, when it is more difficult to understand people are labeled mentally ill. I actually think what drives some of these things is pretty ordinary. Flawed reasoning, anger, rage, casting blame. Who hasn't? For most people yelling is enough. For others fist fights and still others may use the most effective weapon.
The idea of actually using a gun is is a common, even mild, expression of anger. "I could just shoot you."

The expectation of violence and gun use is accepted as a fairly natural result of the anger.

I think it has a lot more to do with a permissive, mentality that accepts and justifies violence when it comes to how anger might be expressed. There is flawed reasoning we can follow and some we can't. It seems to me that it is possible that if we could follow such reasoning it could be as understandable as the killing of a cheating spouse.

[KoKo]

12. I understand the deer population control...and I was clear that if you hunt to eat

and for "some sport" to cull deer...it's okay with me. But Assault Weapons and Repeater Fire Arms with rounds of Ammo...aren't needed for home or sport use...imho.

and I don't get into that Gungeoun NRA Stuff. It's my personal opinion.

[Jackpine Radical]

14. I absolutely agree about people not needing "assault weapons."

Unfortunately, that boils down to 2 things: Semi-auto firing capability (which I don't particularly object to; my deer rifle is a semi-auto), and large-capacity magazines, which I most distinctly DO object to. My deer rifle holds 4 in the magazine, which is plenty for any reasonable hunting scenario. Shotguns are limited to 3 rounds for waterfowl, and you don't need more than that for upland game either.

Despite the fantasies of the RW gun nuts, the idea that a bunch of overweight Teabaggers in the woods in their cammies, carrying AR-15's, are capable of armed rebellion against the Socialist Gubmint is total lunacy.

My Favorite Wingnut is armed to the teeth with "tactical" shotguns (i.e. sawed-off autoloaders), pistols, assault rifles, etc., with which he proposes to guard his stockpile of canned food from roving gangs of socialist home invaders After the Crash. He also has a plan for when he runs out of his canned supplies. He's gonna use his guns to overpower his neighbors & take away their stockpiles.

[NutmegYankee]

20. I was just providing a counterpoint...

to the statement "I don't think hunting serves any purpose here in US these days".

I'm not sure why you stated "Gungeoun NRA Stuff". I just talked about the problem with the massive deer population. When I talked about defending a garden can be epic, I was talking about building fences 8 feet high with wire at the top to prevent deer from hopping in.

[NutmegYankee]

7. Shit. I'm a Marine Engineer.

Mechanical engineer by degree, but I work in shipbuilding. To be honest, I haven't heard of many suicides at all.

[The Straight Story]

10. Hmmm how many a year use a gun in suicide and what percent of the population is that

From the CDC: Number of deaths: 19,392
Total US population: 313.9 Million
Gun Owners: ~45-50 Million

So how big of a problem is it based on percentages?

[Jackpine Radical]

15. OK, now how many gun deaths per year in the US,

and what percentage of them are committed by males?

[The Straight Story]

17. That question would be

What percent of males commit such crimes out of all males (and overall gun crime represents less than one percent of all gun owners).

[Jackpine Radical]

18. All of which gets us back to the point I was originally trying to make,

which was about the ludicrousness of the NRA & others proposing that a solution to gun violence is to ban the "mentally ill" from ownership.

Statistically speaking, it's all about base rates of problems in the general population and in the population being singled out for exclusion from ownership. Both numbers are too low for the exclusion to make any sense whatsoever.

[The Straight Story]

19. I'm with ya

It's like the rw trying to fix the 'problem of muslims' (see fox/rush/et al) - they focus on the few and project that on to the many and convince people if we don't act now we are all gonna die.

[Skip Intro]

16. The state shall decide for this "free" adult, then, on arbitrary values of the state's choosing,

how much of my freedom I get to use? No. No way.