Suicidality and the Second Amendment
- Thread starter Idolater
- Start date
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
"Don't overthink it!"
ok doser
lifeguard at the cement pond
I think we should always consider that it's an ongoing experiment subject to catastrophic failure at any time. The past 4 years should be a wake up call to anybody who's paying attention.
ok doser
lifeguard at the cement pond
Went looking for this thread with the latest news of the 14-year-old killing four people. He was captured alive apparently but must have known that it was more likely than not that he would have ended up dead. Similarly with Thomas Matthew Crooks. I believe that both cases were attempts at suicide by cop while making a statement.
In Crooks case, the statement appears to be I'm a worthless loser with psychological issues and a very confused brain. Time will tell with this latest kid.
In Crooks case, the statement appears to be I'm a worthless loser with psychological issues and a very confused brain. Time will tell with this latest kid.
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Ukrainians are the most recent fairly modern people to learn the hard way that war can break out at any moment. You have a right to prepare for war. That means guns. It's a basic human right. The countries (all of em, like literally, except for, maybe, the Czech Republic) which deny you your right to gather up an arsenal in preparation for sudden war, you should look at skeptically. America might catastrophically fail, but war, famine, pestilence, these are the big picture catastrophes, and nobody denies you the right to stockpile medicines and food and water, but guns? Only one country (with maybe one exception) respects your right to prepare for war.
But vote Republican. Democrats spend too much time setting up hoops to jump through to gather up your arsenal.
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
14's a little young to be suicidal maybe (maybe not). But anyway, there was some interaction with this kid and his father and the local police within the past year. Once again, there was a red flag, advanced warning.
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
“ Tamura had a suicide note in his pocket ... ”
Arthur Brain
Well-known member
Do you think Ukrainian citizens being armed would have helped them ward off the Russian invasion?
Right Divider
Body part
Armed people have a much better chance than unarmed people... don't you think?
Arthur Brain
Well-known member
Wouldn't have made a jot of difference against the barrage of artillery the Russians threw at Ukraine, or have you seen the pictures of Mariupol at all?
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Armed populations are MUCH harder to control, you know this, why are you pretending that you don't?
Arthur Brain
Well-known member
It wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference if Ukrainian citizens had arms or not where it came to Russia's invasion. Are you arguing that it would? Otherwise, there's few countries that have armed populations and nothing like the statistics of North America where it comes to gun crime.
Sure it would have.
The Ukrainians could have resisted their tyrannical dictator's orders to force them to go to their deaths.
Their younger and middle-aged generation of men has been decimated by Zelenskyy.
Arthur Brain
Well-known member
Oh, so if the Ukrainian citizens had been armed they could have fought against their own army as well as the actual tyrannical dictator - Putin?
Good to know!
*facepalms*...
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Right Divider
Body part
Artillery destroys things... sure. But the end of any territorial conflict always involves troops with guns. So it certainly helps to have guns.
Yes, Arty. They could have at least resisted.
Or did you miss the videos where young Ukrainian men were forcibly put into vans to be taken to be forcibly conscripted?
First, the actual number is more like 60% rather than 67% but that's not a huge difference. It's statistically significant but only just. I just bring it up for the sake of precision, not to argue against the overall point you've made.
A major root cause of the suicide epidemic is government welfare. Government welfare is designed to tear families to shreds so as to create a dependency on government. This destruction of the family accounts for about two thirds of all suicides (whether they use a gun or not) and something like 20-25% of those destroyed families have government welfare to thank for it.
So if 2/3rds of suicides are from broken homes and 1/4th of those are the result of government welfare, you could save 3500-5000 lives per year (based on an average of ~46,000 suicides per year) by doing nothing at all other than ending government welfare.
Those numbers are actually quite conservative. The real effect would be much greater because of all the secondary positive effects that ending government welfare would have on the entire society, including those who were never on welfare in the first place. In fact, once you start to trace it out, the list of downstream effects gets very long very quickly:
- Taxes & Economy: Fewer people dependent on welfare means a lighter tax burden, more productive work, more entrepreneurship, and more legal economic activity.
- Sexual Behavior & Family Formation: Stable families reduce teen promiscuity, which means fewer teen pregnancies, fewer abortions, and fewer single mothers raising children alone.
- Poverty: With intact households, children are far less likely to grow up poor and the generational poverty cycle shrinks dramatically.
- Drugs & Crime: Lower fatherlessness and childhood trauma equals less addiction, less gang membership, lower crime rates, fewer incarcerations.
- Culture & Stability: Stronger families produce more civic responsibility, healthier communities, and more resilience against social collapse.
Government welfare destabilizes the very structure of society. If you remove the destructive incentives, you don’t just save thousands from suicide, you improve almost every major indicator of social health. It’s not exaggeration to say that strong families are the foundation of national prosperity and freedom, and undermining them with government welfare has been one of the most costly mistakes America has made.