President says āepidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apartā after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago
President says āepidemic of gun violence is tearing our communities apartā after mass shootings in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Baltimore and Chicago
I think the main reason that some people are against counting suicides and accidental deaths is because it puts the lie to the narrative of the responsible gun owner.
Every time someone shoots themself in the head, or a toddler shoots a sibling, itās because of an irresponsible gun owner. Usually an irresponsible gun owner that considered themself to be a responsible gun owner.
And every gun owner considers themself to be a responsible gun owner.
Everyone is a responsible gun owner until they arenāt. Itās all anecdotal. Just like how every time thereās a news story about a person that went psycho and murdered their family- thereās always an interview with a neighbor that says they were the most mellow person they ever knew.
ALL gun owners think theyāre the responsible one, and the bad one are irresponsible. Itās how theyāre able to rationalize the ideology that guns are good.
Personally, as someone who thinks guns can be dangerous to everyone in anyoneās hands (even the most experienced and safe can have a heart attack or find themselves in some other situation where being safe with their gun might suddenly be lower on the priority list than others around you might like it to be), I donāt like including suicides in that stat because it makes it easier to disqualify.
Itās just the way our minds work. If one has a position they believe in and some conflicting information comes up, unless they want to believe otherwise, theyāll latch on to any angle they can to disqualify it.
Including suicides makes the stat very easy to disqualify. They can be painful but they arenāt scary and donāt seem random when they arenāt close to home, plus that whole line of thought that theyād just find another way if they didnāt have guns.
Though, also personally, I donāt see why accidental gun deaths should be disqualified. If anything, they are worse than deliberate murders and assaults, because that āfind another wayā argument applies to deliberate attacks but doesnāt to accidental shootings. Accidental shootings are 100% āthe only reason anyone died here was because there was a gun presentā.
I donāt like preemptively weakening my position based on what I expect unreasonable people to do. If someone wants to talk about how they think suicides donāt count, Iāll be happy to have a conversation about why they think someone who kills themself with a gun is a responsible gun owner.