Reply To: THE PUZZLE OF MURDER-BY-GUN STATISTICS

[Unseen]

Gallup’s Mirror wrote:

Of course the study refutes Unseen’s claim that there is NO RELATIONSHIP WHATSOEVER. The study concludes that more guns “strongly and independently predict” more deaths with guns (including more murders with guns, more accidental deaths with guns, more suicides with guns, etc).

Is that what it really says? What does it have to say about how many of those supposedly gun-caused deaths become death by knife, death by pummeling, by strangulation or suffocation? What I’m getting at is that the goal appears to end at causing deaths by gun and not death itself.

A suicidal person in particular has many options. It’s not like “I want to kill myself. Oh, I forgot: I can’t get a gun. Well I guess I’d better mow the lawn instead.” If someone’s going to kill himself, he’ll kill himself even if he just takes his car out on the freeway to 80 mph and then aims for a bridge abutment.