Allegory wrote:
Stugein wrote:
I'm of the opinion that it takes far more resolve (or despair as the case may be) to kill oneself than to kill another.
So then you agree with me? I don't think you intended to say what you did, but that is what you are literally saying.
I completely intended what I said. I think the point parallel's yours to an extent. Being such a dramatically higher act of desperation, suicide is easier to counteract with trivial obstacles than homicide. Your railing, your catch net. When someone moves toward an act of suicide, because the resolve required to commit such an act is so much greater, it takes less to shake that resolve and overt the disaster. With murder, however, the final act of taking another's life is met with less inner personal resistance. As such, minor obstacles can be less likely to deter one who has reached that much lower threshold of determination. Your suicide cases are running into an obstacle at the point of action and it is enough to give them second thoughts, to make them crumble under the weight of the resolve they had to muster to do the deed. Murder, being so much easier, isn't quite so conveniently dissuaded in the moment.
Allegory wrote:
Stugein wrote:
While we can speculate that there might fewer successful homicides by some trivial amount.
We can speculate all we want, but there is, in the case of suicide at least, statistical evidence to show that making it more difficult to carry out the act and increasing the delay between decision and action are effective at decreasing the success rates of suicides. Even the simplest acts like placing a gun in a locked drawer reduces the chance for successful suicide over a gun in an unlocked drawer.
See above. It's the difference between in-the-moment versus intervention far ahead of the act. In both cases early prevention would be beneficial. Recognizing warning signs, danger factors and high-risk scenarios can give authorities and social workers leads on where to apply intervention strategies. However, once it comes down to The Act and the perpetrator is in the moment, suicide and homicide are two completely different beasts. A deterrence to one isn't necessarily effective against the other. A person in crisis, in despair may have time to have second thoughts, to rethink their decisions, to decide to get help before committing suicide, because something slowed them down "in the moment". Murder however, in most cases, is born of desperation, greed, passion or anger. Unlike suicide (being a solo act) more factors and risks are inherently involved already. The victim can struggle, there is panic, there are fight or flight instincts happening. In violent desperation or rage, simple physical obstacles don't necessarily deter as much as with suicide. That waist high railing on the bridge may give a lone, in crisis jumper a moment to think and to back out, but it won't prevent the two parties in a fight from throwing one another over it in the heat of the moment. What I'm saying is that rather than barring methods of injury, we'd be better served by studying, recognizing and hopefully preventing more people from reaching those points of desperation in the first place.
Allegory wrote:
Stugein wrote:
I still believe that addressing the social and interpersonal problems inherent in a violent society will benefit us all far more than simply applying our effort to barring one tool for harm.
Which problems specifically would those be? Where is your evidence for causation? What is your plan of action?
Opinion and observation don't automatically denote the maintenance of a solution. I don't like veal parmigiana, but i'm also not possessed of the level of culinary expertise required to even begin to suggest how to make it more palatable to me. ;) Observational evidence. Do I have a plan of action? No. If I did I'd be trying to implement it rather than waxing philosophical on a message board. But I don't. I don't think there is an easy answer. I wish there was. What are the problems? As far as intentional homicides by firearm go, I believe that an increase in population density in urban areas contributes more than we realize. I believe that low accountability for parents in childhood development is a factor. I believe that lack of funding of urban rejuvenation and redevelopment programs contributes as well. I certainly don't think that restricting guns will lower violent crime any more than I would think that restricting matches would stop arson. In fact the contrary has been found to be more demonstrable; that there is little to no evidence that stricter gun control leads to a reduction in crime (National Academy of Sciences study, 2004). I believe that not only do we need better visibility into the acquisition of firearms illegally (black market, stolen, etc.), but that we also need to look into the root causes that push people towards violence. The 'why' to me, being more important than the 'how'.
