Hawaiian Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Ban Sales of Toy Guns to Children

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**Fateweaver**

Yay for nanny states.

**sebster**

VoidAngel wrote:The CDC is arguably not an objective source. What the Center for Disease Control has to do with crime is...a fatuous attempt of prominent liberal politicians to co-opt (politically sympathetic) doctors into helping them distort facts and inflate numbers to serve their own ends (banning guns). Your example of suicides is a perfect illustration. As if the firearm had anything to do with it. A person totally at the end of their rope is going to find a way to end their pain, whether by throwing themselves off a bridge, in front of a speeding bus, or any other method you care to imagine. It's neither accidental nor criminal.

I'm guessing you don't know a lot about how not done a lot of reading about suicide. People don't just reach 'the end of their rope', they reach the depth of a cycle of depression, which they may or may not come out of depending on a range of factors. One very important factor is having the means to kill themselves, and this is why a home with a gun in it is much more likely to result in a suicide. And while suicide might not be an accident or a felony, it is still a tragedy, and an avoidable one.

Your attack on the CDC is really odd. It's a public health agency who only brush across gun control because of their work in producing national causes of death statistics. And when they do produce such data, like with all other stats they produce, they state their assumptions up front - if they'd wanted to hide the suicide numbers they wouldn't seperately list them.

**youbedead**

Wait, the CDC is a liberal plot to ban guns.

**Happygrunt**

This is coming from a kid who grew up around fire arms (16 right now).

My father taught me how to correctly hold, clean and be safe with guns VERY early on. I have a bunch of nerf guns, which he used to show me hand gun and rifle safety. I know my way around a fire arm. He drilled the safety in so much, I treat those nerf guns as an actually fire arm now, because its good practice. Taking away the toys which are fun and safe training tools is a stupid idea that will come back and bite them in the ass latter.

**VoidAngel**

Happygrunt wrote:This is coming from a kid who grew up around fire arms (16 right now).

My father taught me how to correctly hold, clean and be safe with guns VERY early on. I have a bunch of nerf guns, which he used to show me hand gun and rifle safety. I know my way around a fire arm. He drilled the safety in so much, I treat those nerf guns as an actually fire arm now, because its good practice. Taking away the toys which are fun and safe training tools is a stupid idea that will come back and bite them in the ass latter.

I do the VERY same thing with my son. Well said.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

sebster wrote:
I'm guessing you don't know a lot about how not done a lot of reading about suicide. People don't just reach 'the end of their rope', they reach the depth of a cycle of depression, which they may or may not come out of depending on a range of factors. One very important factor is having the means to kill themselves, and this is why a home with a gun in it is much more likely to result in a suicide. And while suicide might not be an accident or a felony, it is still a tragedy, and an avoidable one.

Your attack on the CDC is really odd. It's a public health agency who only brush across gun control because of their work in producing national causes of death statistics. And when they do produce such data, like with all other stats they produce, they state their assumptions up front - if they'd wanted to hide the suicide numbers they wouldn't seperately list them.

You guess wrong. I'm clinically trained and have plenty of experience with suicide and suicidal persons. Suicide is about anguish exceeding one's tolerance for such. Whether you call it "the end of the rope" or "the depth of a cycle of depression" - they are the same. And one verifiable truth is that people ALWAYS have a means to kill themselves. Moreover, given that they have reached that point at which they can stand no more, method becomes irrelevant. Concerns of 'neatness', 'who will find me?', and 'how quick/painless will it be'...evaporate. Your argument applies somewhat, but not strongly, to crimes of passion. Where a gun is present and a spouse walks in on marital-infidelity-in-progress - there's more likely to be a shooting. But...in the same scenario where a baseball bat is present, there's nearly as high a chance of a 'baseball batting'.

As for the CDC - the truth of what I'm saying is well known by those involved with the preservation of 2nd Amendment guarantees. It only sounds like some loony conspiracy theory to people with no stake in self-defense rights. Look into it, you'll see I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat. Honest.

**sebster**

VoidAngel wrote:You guess wrong. I'm clinically trained and have plenty of experience with suicide and suicidal persons. Suicide is about anguish exceeding one's tolerance for such. Whether you call it "the end of the rope" or "the depth of a cycle of depression" - they are the same. And one verifiable truth is that people ALWAYS have a means to kill themselves. Moreover, given that they have reached that point at which they can stand no more, method becomes irrelevant. Concerns of 'neatness', 'who will find me?', and 'how quick/painless will it be'...evaporate. Your argument applies somewhat, but not strongly, to crimes of passion. Where a gun is present and a spouse walks in on marital-infidelity-in-progress - there's more likely to be a shooting. But...in the same scenario where a baseball bat is present, there's nearly as high a chance of a 'baseball batting'.

Any training you had would have taught you about the importance of triggers that put or keep the thought of suicide in the mind. Any academic study you would have done on the subject would have told you that having a gun in the house is a major risk factor for suicide.

These are basic things that can't be debated. If you haven't read about them before, go and read about them now.

As for the CDC - the truth of what I'm saying is well known by those involved with the preservation of 2nd Amendment guarantees. It only sounds like some loony conspiracy theory to people with no stake in self-defense rights. Look into it, you'll see I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat. Honest.

No, it doesn't make you sound like a conspiracy nut. It makes you sound like just another guy that disregards any source of information that doesn't have your exact set of biases, because it's easier to ignore them than it is to think about the information they're providing and start to form a more considered point of view.

Here's the thing, you don't have to believe guns need to be further restricted or anything like that (I don't believe they should be, either). But whatever opinion you do form needs to be based on the actual facts of gun ownership. And one basic factor is that having guns in the house makes suicide more likely.

It is a thing you need to accept as simply being true.

**VoidAngel**

Look, suicidal people kill themselves. If a gun is handy they do it with a gun. If narcotics are handy, they use those. If a bathtub and a razor blade are to hand...they use those.

It's not a matter of triggers, it's a matter of intolerable anguish. The trigger is the source of the anguish, not the means to kill oneself in a facile way.

If guns disappeared from the face of the Earth overnight, there would not be one less suicide in the following year. People would continue to experience tragedies and stresses that they were not prepared to weather at exactly the same rate.

Having a gun available makes a suicidal person more likely to commit suicide with a gun - not more likely to commit suicide.

**Kilkrazy**

Do you have any epidemiological evidence to support that claim?

**sebster**

VoidAngel wrote:Having a gun available makes a suicidal person more likely to commit suicide with a gun - not more likely to commit suicide.

You keep insisting on this, but it's complete bunk. Nonsense. Piffle. False. Wrong. Incorrect. Garbage.

From the New England Jurnal of Medicine; "There are at least a dozen U.S. case–control studies in the peer-reviewed literature, all of which have found that a gun in the home is associated with an increased risk of suicide. The increase in risk is large, typically 2 to 10 times that in homes without guns, depending on the sample population"
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0805923

From the American Journal of Epidemiology; "After they controlled for a number of potentially confounding factors, the presence of a gun in the home was associated with a nearly fivefold risk of suicide"
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full

From the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention; "a history of firearms licence (current or present) was found to more than double the risk of suicide by any means"
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/7/52

The science is clear.

**VoidAngel**

Epidemiological evidence suggests that having an easy means with which to commit suicide definitely plays a secondary role. But no distinction is made between guns, medicines, and agricultural poisons (for example). That is to say, none increases the risk significantly more than the others.

If you want to talk prevention, then I will accept that it is easier to *prevent* suicide for a person known to be at risk by removing guns (or medicines, or poisons) from the immediate environment. This simply forces the person to use gravity, or traffic, or a rope - unless you can confine and monitor them. This tends to be no more than a delaying tactic in many cases. This is good only where the source of the stressor can be ameliorated during confinement, (you hit the lottery and you're not bankrupt. Your wife decides not to leave you afterall. The test was a false positive, etc.) or the person can be taught to cope or medicated into a lower state of affect. In cases where the stressor remains in full force upon release and the person has the same lack of available tolerance...they simply find an opportunity and do it anyway.

**sebster**

VoidAngel wrote:Epidemiological evidence suggests that having an easy means with which to commit suicide definitely plays a secondary role. But no distinction is made between guns, medicines, and agricultural poisons (for example). That is to say, none increases the risk significantly more than the others.

No, it doesn't. See my post above.

If you want to talk prevention, then I will accept that it is easier to *prevent* suicide for a person known to be at risk by removing guns (or medicines, or poisons) from the immediate environment. This simply forces the person to use gravity, or traffic, or a rope - unless you can confine and monitor them. This tends to be no more than a delaying tactic in many cases.

This denies the well established fact that many suicide attempts are spontaneous, with the time from first instance to attempt being around five minutes. This is especially true in youth suicide attemtps.

What have you actually read on this subject? It really sounds like you're just making stuff up, and I hope that's not true.

**VoidAngel**

*sigh*

NEJM? LEGENDARILY biased and anti-gun. Can't accept that one. For anything else, love it.

"
Reducing access to the means of self-harm is thus
an important prevention strategy and one that
has proved effective. Notable reductions in suicide have occurred, for instance, in countries that
have removed carbon monoxide from domestic
gas and car exhausts or restricted access to concentrated agricultural poisons among people.
Restrictions on the ownership of firearms has
been associated with a decrease of their use for
suicide"
http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/world_report/factsheets/en/selfdirectedviolfacts.pdf

Unlike in the U.S., suicide rates of suicides committed with guns in countries where firearms are uncommon are similarly uncommon (an obvious statistic, since guns are not as available; most suicides with guns would have been attempted through other means).
Research also indicates no association vis-à-vis safe-storage laws of guns that are owned, and gun suicide rates, and studies that attempt to link gun ownership to likely victimology often fail to account for the presence of guns owned by other people leading to a conclusion that safe-storage laws do not appear to affect gun suicide rates or juvenile accidental gun death.[
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence

http://www.haciendapub.com/stolinsky.html

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/specials/switzerland_for_the_record/european_records/Switzerland_s_troubling_record_of_suicide.html?cid=8301804
“We know that people turn to alternatives that are similar,” Ajdacic-Gross said. “If someone thinks of committing suicide using drugs, they are unlikely to resort to a firearm as an option.”

But a suicide who for some reason is prevented from using a gun, may decide instead to hang themselves, which is also a highly efficient method.

Ajdacic-Gross says that between half and two-thirds of people who are unable to access their method of choice, will fall back on another.

“Preventative measures certainly cannot prevent all suicides, but a large number,” he said.

In short - using a gun is more certain and results in more successful attempts. It doesn't increase the chance of an attempt. Even with so called 'impulsive' cases (a notion many clinicians reject, on the basis that the idea almost certainly formed very much prior to the act, and simply lay dormant until an opportunity presented) an alternate method is employed when a gun is not present.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

sebster wrote:

This denies the well established fact that many suicide attempts are spontaneous, with the time from first instance to attempt being around five minutes. This is especially true in youth suicide attemtps.

What have you actually read on this subject? It really sounds like you're just making stuff up, and I hope that's not true.

See my post above about so-called 'spontaneous attempts'.

Making stuff up? No, I have a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology, if you must know. I read everything from peer-reviewed journal articles to political blogs. I have actual, clinical experience with profoundly depressed individuals. Frankly, that informs my opinion a thousandfold more than a research article based on meta-statistical analyses.

**sebster**

VoidAngel wrote:*sigh*

NEJM? LEGENDARILY biased and anti-gun. Can't accept that one. For anything else, love it.

So you dismiss the oldest and most reputable medical journal in the world for no good reason other than more 'bias', and fail to make any comment at all on the other sources I provide.

Instead you attempt to make your case by providing links that are peripherally related to the issue at best. The first notes that reducing access to self harm will help reduce suicide and makes this point by saying a reduction in gun ownership has reduced their use in suicide, but makes no comment on whether suicide as a whole was reduced. The second gives an uncited wikipedia comment, which means it has exactly as much authority as, well, your word or mine. The last option states that people tend towards similar types of suicide methods, but again makes no comment on whether having guns in the house will increase the risk of suicide.

Your articles are barely related to the question, whereas each of my cites was directly on the issue at hand, and each came down strongly in favour of the argument that having a gun in the house increases the chance of suicide.

Please read them, and learn something. It won't hurt you.

In short - using a gun is more certain and results in more successful attempts. It doesn't increase the chance of an attempt. Even with so called 'impulsive' cases (a notion many clinicians reject, on the basis that the idea almost certainly formed very much prior to the act, and simply lay dormant until an opportunity presented) an alternate method is employed when a gun is not present.

No, it increases the number of suicides by a factor of at least double. That difference can't be explained away with 'more likely to be successful' - that's a nonsense that you've made up.

Accept it. You're wrong. It's okay. It happens. Pissing about with nonsense cites to marginally related studies (and an uncited wiki quote?!) won't change it. Ignoring the sources I gave you won't change it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

VoidAngel wrote:See my post above about so-called 'spontaneous attempts'.

Making stuff up? No, I have a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology, if you must know. I read everything from peer-reviewed journal articles to political blogs. I have actual, clinical experience with profoundly depressed individuals. Frankly, that informs my opinion a thousandfold more than a research article based on meta-statistical analyses.

And you used an uncited wiki sentence as evidence...

**Happygrunt**

Guys, make sure the medical flame debate dosen't go to 11.

**VoidAngel**

sebster wrote:
VoidAngel wrote:*sigh*

NEJM? LEGENDARILY biased and anti-gun. Can't accept that one. For anything else, love it.

So you dismiss the oldest and most reputable medical journal in the world for no good reason other than more 'bias', and fail to make any comment at all on the other sources I provide.

>>>Here's the probolem - there is a systematic bias IN many of the pedestrian journals, and while I said I respect the NEJM, it's a known offender. I will spell it out for you: academicians tend toward the liberal. Liberals tend to be anti-gun. That liberal doctors should be less apt to be highly polorized on this issue is an unrealistic expectation.

Instead you attempt to make your case by providing links that are peripherally related to the issue at best.

>>>>No, I provided articles that presented a balanced view, you cherry picked.

The first notes that reducing access to self harm will help reduce suicide and makes this point by saying a reduction in gun ownership has reduced their use in suicide, but makes no comment on whether suicide as a whole was reduced.

>>>>>>>>Right, because there's no effect. No of the articles I posted or any of the others I read through (except yours) found an effect where the chance of suicide was amplified by the presence of a gun. Those that do find such an effect explain it by the so-called "impulse suicide" - which does not exist. So...who's making stuff up?

The second gives an uncited wikipedia comment, which means it has exactly as much authority as, well, your word or mine. The last option states that people tend towards similar types of suicide methods, but again makes no comment on whether having guns in the house will increase the risk of suicide.

>>>>>>For the first, standard tactic. It's Wikipedia, it's worthless. Sure, for a thesis - but with millions reading it every day, BS doesn't last. To the second point, see above. There's no comment because there's no increase in risk when you remove biased sources, and correctly reject the notion that people "just up an obliterate themselves on a whim" because they're a bit down and gun happens to be there. It ridiculous.

In short - using a gun is more certain and results in more successful attempts. It doesn't increase the chance of an attempt. Even with so called 'impulsive' cases (a notion many clinicians reject, on the basis that the idea almost certainly formed very much prior to the act, and simply lay dormant until an opportunity presented) an alternate method is employed when a gun is not present.

No, it increases the number of suicides by a factor of at least double. That difference can't be explained away with 'more likely to be successful' - that's a nonsense that you've made up.

>>>>>>Incorrect. You obviously can read, so I have to conclude that you're tired, dense, or being deceptive. Gun are among THE MOST lethal means of comitting suicide, and there's no "back out" mechanism - you can't stop halfway and maybe survive the attempt. Pull trigger - done, 89% percent of the time. Hanging you can sometimes back out of. You can step away from a ledge or ingest too little poison. Guns are more lethal. It's obvious, logical, and factual. Not something I "made up".

Accept it. You're wrong. It's okay. It happens. Ignoring the sources I gave you won't change it.

>>>Right back atcha.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

VoidAngel wrote:See my post above about so-called 'spontaneous attempts'.

Making stuff up? No, I have a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology, if you must know. I read everything from peer-reviewed journal articles to political blogs. I have actual, clinical experience with profoundly depressed individuals. Frankly, that informs my opinion a thousandfold more than a research article based on meta-statistical analyses.

And you used an uncited wiki sentence as evidence...

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought this was a gaming forum conversation with a random internet denizen - not a thesis defense. Hey, go on your merry way - I've no need to change your mind.

**Frazzled**

**Monster Rain**

VoidAngel wrote:Oh, I'm sorry, I thought this was a gaming forum conversation with a random internet denizen - not a thesis defense. Hey, go on your merry way - I've no need to change your mind.

That made me lol.

How did the banning of toy guns end up as an epidemiological discussion about firearms deaths?

The Hawaiian law is moronic and I fully believe that if all guns were banned there would be 75% less death and 97% more ice cream and rainbows.

**VoidAngel**

Sorry Monster, that's not right. Violent crime goes up when guns are banned. True in Britain, Wales, Australia...and counting. Why? Criminals ignore bans, and laws that say, "don't murder people." 'Cause...they're criminals. Ignoring laws is kinda their thing.
Restrictive gun laws just disarm the people that need to defend themselves against criminals the most. And, living and working in high crime areas...I see too many instances of the law-abiding being laid waste by the evil and useless because they couldn't get or carry an effective means of defense. That's why I bother to continue this thread for so long. Self-defense and suicide are things I have too much unwanted experience with.

You suggest an interesting area of research though. I think someone needs to look into the correlational data for systematic variation in the frequency of atmospheric light defraction, high-caloric load dairy treats, and mortality rates.

**Fateweaver**

I think we should ban all guns so that I can turn on the evening news and read "Death by spoons".

That'd make my evening.

**FITZZ**

Fateweaver wrote:I think we should ban all guns so that I can turn on the evening news and read "Death by spoons".

That'd make my evening.

No,because then some one would form the" Citizens for Spoon safety" and you'd have to eat your soup with a fork....No wait...forks are pointy and possibly dangerous...better just suck your soup through a straw.

**Monster Rain**

I could kill someone with a straw.

**Happygrunt**

FITZZ wrote:
Fateweaver wrote:I think we should ban all guns so that I can turn on the evening news and read "Death by spoons".

That'd make my evening.

No,because then some one would form the" Citizens for Spoon safety" and you'd have to eat your soup with a fork....No wait...forks are pointy and possibly dangerous...better just suck your soup through a straw.

Cant do that, what if your bending down and miss, and come up with Straw in eye syndrome?

**Fateweaver**

Spoon in eye?

Could scoop it out like an apple core.

**Monster Rain**

You could always flip it around and jab the pointier end into a temple or carotid artery or windpipe.

**FITZZ**

Meh,Give me a paper clip, a rubber band and a handful of tooth picks and I'll take out any attacker.

**Happygrunt**

FITZZ wrote:Meh,Give me a paper clip, a rubber band and a handful of tooth picks and I'll take out any attacker.

Give me a used tissue and I will take on the Israeli army.

**Monster Rain**

I don't get it.

**whatwhat**

Neither did I. Did you mean a pork roast perhaps? If you did I will get the joke but also wish death upon you and your family.

**VoidAngel**

I think he was saying he such an incredible badass that he could be victorious against the most effective and hardened fighting force in the world, with the least-scary-imaginable weapon. Nothing to require his death over.

**FITZZ**

VoidAngel wrote:I think he was saying he such an incredible badass that he could be victorious against the most effective and hardened fighting force in the world, with the least-scary-imaginable weapon. Nothing to require his death over.

See how dangerous and controversial used tissue has become...clearly it should be banned.