Suicide is Painless...

...not really, but that line is an Obscure Cultural Reference, which all you Old Suckers will recognize immediately. Still, here's a fascinating paper on suicide rates in Canada and their relationship to firearms:

It is time to stop using the term “gun deaths.” The term is being used to distract the reader from understanding what firearms have to do with homicide or suicide. “Gun deaths” is a potpourri of suicides, homicides, and accidents. The supposed link is that these deaths share a common cause: a gun was accessible. But the mere availability of guns doesn’t make ordinary people commit murder, or suicide, or have accidents. This term perpetuates this pernicious myth...

Two of the biggest successes of the gun control movement have been lumping suicides into "gun death" false term and gaining the widespread acceptance of said false terminology as a legitimate term in the media. Suicide rates are fascinating things. There have been numerous studies over the years that the rates are apparently culturally determined and are amazingly resistant to change. An NYT article a few years back (that I have NOT been abole to fiind on the internet) noted that the huge amount of attention paid to suicide prevention over the years had had no apparent effect on the suicide rate in the U.S. In short, a certain percentage of people in a given culture will kill themselves, and we really don't have a clue why.

Why that's important to us in the gun culture is that our enemies routinely tout "reduction in gun deaths" in regard to suicides, the implication being that a lessened availabiliiity of firearms leads to a reduction of suicides. Except that it doesn't...people just kill themselves a different way. Remember, a certain percentage of people in a culture are going to kill themselves regardless. How many times have you heard brainless nits like Sarah Brady talk about, "saving just one life?" Now you know that whenever she says those words, she knows it's a lie from the ground up.