Op-Ed: Suicidal Logic

by C.D. Michel

Some gun control advocates commit intellectual suicide.

One of the longest lasting and saddest lies endlessly echoed by gun control advocates is the 30,000 annual deaths from “gun violence” sound bite. "We can't begin to address 30,000 gun deaths...that are happening every year [without radical gun control]" was how comedian and fake news anchor Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, tried to sarcastically frame the gun control debate.

Stewart, like others who tout the figure as proof of the need for more laws, failed to mention that 18,000 (60%) of those deaths were suicides. Most of the rest are gang or drug related.

Granted, suicide by firearm is a violent act. But it is not “gun violence” as people understand the phrase. And suicide is not preventable with gun control laws, nor by the laws that make suicide itself illegal.

Firearms are one of many common means for committing suicide. The presence or absence of a gun doesn't change the probability of a successful suicide attempt (once we remove intentionally unsuccessful "plea for attention" attempts), and no gun control law prevents seriously depressed individuals from finding ways to end their lives. In criminological and psychological parlance, people who choose to kill themselves do so via “substitution of means.” That is, when one method of death (for example, a gun) is not available, they simply chose another means (for example, pills). Since there are an abundant number of ways to kill yourself (substituted means), people are never for want of a method.

When the math is done, the rate of suicide – the percentage of people in the population who want to die and do – remains the same, even when one or another of the various means for committing suicide is unavailable.

...In the same Daily Show episode where Jon Stewart said "We can't begin to address 30,000 gun deaths...that are happening every year" while ignoring that 18,000 of those deaths were from suicide, he bemoaned the lack of an "assault weapons ban," limits on ammunition magazine capacity, and other schemes that would allegedly "slow the epidemic spread" of suicide-heavy "gun violence." Yet the majority of gun deaths, the 18,000 suicides, are not committed with the sporting rifles mislabeled "assault weapons." Nor do many successful firearm suicides require a ten-round magazine (one bullet tends to suffice).

So for the "epidemic" over which Stewart is alarmed, none of his prescriptions would make a difference. "We are a nation of over-reactors," Stewart said. No Jon, on this one, it's just you.

Click here to read the entire op-ed.