The other day Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large – who did not respond to my e-mail, and he should have out of professional courtesy – unleashed a rant against firearms by camouflaging it as a lament for an Afghanistan war vet who committed suicide with a pistol.
Large uses suicide as a reason to demand that something be done about “easily accessible guns.”
“It makes news,” he wrote, “when people use a gun to protect their home, but that doesn’t happen often. It’s more likely someone in the home will die when a gun is present…”
We fail to prevent thousands of deaths a year by not removing the most lethal means for committing suicide — easily accessible guns. Somehow, we have to find a legal way to do that."-Jerry Large, Seattle Times
Actually, lots of people use firearms to successfully defend their homes. Research conducted by experts in the field, including Prof. Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University and author of Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. John Lott, author of More Guns = Less Crime and a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park, has also found a correlation between gun ownership and lower crime rates.
We have discussed the use of firearms in self-defense repeatedly in this column, here and here, and again here, and here, for example. We just did a three-part series on self-defense, here, here and here (remember to take 'The Quiz!')
While it is sad that a soldier took his own life, Large seems to give no notice at all to the millions of war veterans over the past 65 years who did no such thing. Many of them were just like my father, who owned several guns, for hunting, recreational shooting and personal protection.
The 2002 study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that in states where guns were most prevalent, suicide rates were higher. Suicide rates were lower in states where guns were less common.-Jerry Large
But this isn’t about suicide prevention and Large knows it. His own words make that perfectly clear. The suicide of Orrin Gorman McClellan is a convenient smokescreen. If this were really about suicide, Jerry would be writing about former Gov. Booth Gardner’s effort to legalize assisted suicide, whose advocates sanitize it as “death with dignity.” He would be writing about the mental health of people who advocate assisted suicide; he certainly could have chatted that up with Gardner during last year’s Sound Mental Health gala dinner, which he and the ex-governor both attended.
Large suggests that “while counseling and other treatments are vitally important in the prevention of suicide, the number of deaths could be lowered significantly by making guns less available.” He offers no hard evidence to back that up, other than a statistic that more attempted suicides by gun are successful than attempts by other means. People who are determined to take their own lives are going to do it; that much I have learned from experience.
I have seen suicide victims, some of them rather up close and personal. Two of them jumped off the cliff at Snoqualmie Falls (I helped carry both out). A couple of them over-dosed on pills (one who had been in a hot car in the woods for a few days off I-90 several years ago was in particularly rank condition), and a couple of them used firearms. They were all equally dead and all equally determined to be that way. The availability of firearms had nothing to do with their ultimate goal.
I'm not saying guns are the villains. No, we are the villains for tolerating them."-Jerry Large
Guns were far more accessible 25 and 50 years ago than they are today, so why do anti-gunners like Large invariably contend they are easily accessible today? He mentions last week’s Supreme Court ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago – the Second Amendment Foundation’s case against the Chicago handgun ban – and seems cheered by the contention that the ruling leaves a door open for restrictions. Maybe he believes that Chicago’s new handgun control ordinance is reasonable regulation. This column would remind him of the editorial in the Yuma Sun that observed, “A right that is so restricted that it cannot be easily exercised is no right at all.”
Sorry, Jerry, your arguments don’t pass the smell test. Despite the fact that you want to shift the responsibility for suicide from the individual to firearms, and people who own them – evident in your column’s headline “Bearing the blame for suicides” – the taking of one’s own life is a private matter with singular responsibility, and it is flimsy mask for covering one’s personal hoplophobia against firearms.
For more info: Second Amendment Foundation. Assault on Weapons: The Campaign to Eliminate Your Guns.
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Comments
Jerry Large is using a tactic I call "The california one is the majority rule". That is where the acts of one person out of roughly 35 million Clifornians will cause a legislator to introduce legislation penalizing everyone else for that one person's act. We see it with gun laws every day in this state. Most vets face the idea of suicide due to what they see, what they may have to do in war, or betrayal at home by loved ones (dear john letters). but the vast majority of us got past it and lead good lives. One poor soul did not. As vets we mourn him as much as if he died on the battlefield. As a former suicide counselor we knew a true suicide was not even going to call us. they did not want a reason to live and the method of death was their personal choice. Guns are only one option. if someone choses death by rope is Jerry going to outlaw ropes? How about kitchen knives or God forbide someone finds a way to do it with toilet paper and Jerry is around. It will be a toilat paperless -
world if jerry has his way. I am not belittling this vets death by what I say but we can carry things to an extreme and Jerry Large seems to want to do this. Nothing is ever good enough for people like him becuase they will always be outlawing something. Suicides have been with us since the caveman and we all know it. It is an unfortunate part of human nature. The man chose to limit his time on earth for whatever reason and hopefully he is at peace now but Jerry you have no right to chose his method. he had the freedom of choice and while we all have "hope" and keep going for another day he decided he had none and you defiled him by using him to push your own agenda. Shame on you.
Japan has VERY restrictive laws concerning firearms and yet they have a VERY high rate of suicide. A little studying at Wikipedia (List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate) shows that there seems to be no rhyme nor reason for suicide rates. Jerry Large is just another example of why the mainstream press is becoming more irrelevant by the day.
What bs my wife suicided with her FEG Browning, I not screaming for more useless gun laws because suicide has nothing to do with guns it's a mental illness. Possibly her Browning made it easier but I'd rather that than hanging herself or cutting herself up.
Bruce Walker
Olney, Md.......
My dad killed himself with a .38 revolver a few years ago. He was depressed over his divorce, his finances, and his poor health. I wish he would have talked to me more about what was bothering him. I didn't know how bad he was doing until I had to call the Sheriff's Office to break into his apartment.
Depression killed my dad. The gun was a tool to finish the job, which could have just as easily been one of his many bottles of pills, his car, a kitchen knife, or a radio in the bathtub. I don't blame the gun.
I still own many guns, and his .38 sits in the safe among them, unfired since the day it was returned to me by the Sheriff's Office.
anti-gun bigotry? Dude, you definitely are a functional illiterate. May be you should look up the word in a dictionary before using it. I guess you're just another retarded tea-bagger.
Well, Dave, what a cogent, well-thought out and relevant comment. But you left out the "racist" and "Nazi" aspersions. Come on, man, pay attention!
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