Don't know why there is so much unhappiness? I suspect it's born from the move away from Christianity into a selfish me me me society. Today there is massive envy and a general lack of work ethic which might contribute aswell. Pure speculation on my part.
As it relates to guns it really doesn't matter. So people use them for suicide. Japan has very high suicide and few guns suggesting that guns don't cause suicide.
Mental health is complicated. When someone commits suicide its tragic. Be it with a gun or a handful of pills. My prescription doesn't make my home more dangerous because people kill themselves with the same mess. The pills in someone elses house dont put me in any danger. That's the point. That's why suicide should not be included.
I understand mental health and suicide are more complicated than can sometimes be expressed in a few words. Most things are.
I also realize we can’t assume, that without guns, nobody who did chose a gun to kill themselves wouldn’t have found another way, but we also can’t assume the opposite, that everyone who used a gun wouldn’t have cooled down and decided against killing themselves at all. Nobody really knows what that number is.
I would say: some people who attempt suicide would be alive if there were no firearm easily available. Same goes with domestic violence, local or family confrontations/disagreements, and most “crimes of passion.”
Intentional homicides via firearm are made easier and more effective in a gun culture. Accidents will happen, because accidents happen with everything. A buddy of mine crushed himself with his truck because he jumped out and forgot to put it in park and it squeezed him between the truck and a wall.
As for your prescriptions, locking those in a safe place doesn’t effect their intended use like it does with firearms. If you lock your guns in a safe, they’re effectiveness goes down considerably in an emergency. If you don’t lock them in a safe, kids or others who shouldn’t have them get access.
I’ve thought a lot about better safety controls, but many of those run counter to other tenets of the pro gun movement. Things like a federal list to facilitate universal background checks, tech controls that would only let the owner fire the gun, or strict limits on what kind of guns we could own and where.
I see these things as possible solutions. Gun proponents see them as a limit on their freedom. What’s true for sure is that the mass shootings are “bad optics” in the pro gun cause. In post analysis we can all see how many of them could have been stopped if the guns simply weren’t available, or were too expensive from the beginning.
People in shooting sports would not lose their ability to play those sports. I understand how fun and rewarding any sport or passion can be, and people should be able to do those things in that context, in a free country.
What they shouldn’t be able to do, IMO, is to ignore the safety measures surrounding a potentially dangerous activity when they come into contact with, or their lives or actions overlap with others.
We outlaw some recreational drugs because their safe use cannot be properly monitored or controlled if necessary by authorities, and the numbers of problems associated are noticeable in our society. I see the same issue with guns.
