HIGHLAND, UT | 1 July 2008 | It took the opponents of firearms ownership less than a week to come up with their next attempt to ban handguns. Last week the Supreme Court struck down the 32-year old D.C. handgun ban in a 5-4 decision. Yesterday, AP “medical writer”, Mike Stobbe revealed a “surprising fact,” that more than half of all gun deaths are suicides. Stobbe points out that “Justice Stephen Breyer used the word [suicide] 14 times in voicing concern about the impact of striking down the handgun ban.” Justice Breyer maintains: “If a resident has a handgun in the home that he can use for self-defense, then he has a handgun in the home that he can use to commit suicide or engage in acts of domestic violence.”

The American Association of Suicidology report some sobering statistics. they report over 32,000 suicides in 2005, the last year for which they have statistics. Over half of these were firearm related suicides. Justice Breyer’s numbers were similar, where he cited government studies revealing 36,000 firearm related deaths, 51% of which were suicides. While these numbers are cause for alarm, assigning blame to the presence of a firearm is illogical and not founded upon principle. Merely banning guns or hazardous materials will not solve the problem causing all the suicides, or other violent murders for that matter. As always in these types of topics, the issue lies much deeper than simply having a material weapon available. Human Life Value and an individuals perspective of that value is the real issue.

Key Points

• Suicide is a reflection of a person’s self-loathing. Refer to the American Association of Suicidology:

A person in acute risk for suicidal behavior most often will show: Warning Signs of Acute Risk:
• Threatening to hurt or kill him or herself, or talking of wanting to hurt or kill him/herself; and/or,
• Looking for ways to kill him/herself by seeking access to firearms, available pills, or other means; and/or,
• Talking or writing about death, dying or suicide, when these actions are out of the ordinary.

• These are all signs of a person whose self-loathing has reached dark depths. If they have reached this point, professional help should be sought after. However, it is suggested that for real success to occur, therapy based upon true principles should be employed and not just the scientific mysticism often employed by the psychology industry of the day.
• Lasting change comes when the individual learns to love his life and recognizes the truth regarding his self-interest. This is not always an easy task. The individual must unlearn all the training, teaching, and educating that sticks him in the consumer, scarcity paradigm and robs him of his self-love and feelings of being a producer.
• Productivity is the standard in this process. Productive members of society generally feel better about themselves and about their fellowman. The more productive success one has, the better he feels.
• Even some who claim to be productive may begin to loath themselves. This is because their productivity is not creating real value for others in the world. Productivity requires an exchange between two consenting individuals. Many otherwise successful individuals become overstressed and lose perspective in the value they create for others when they do not exchange with them.

Conclusion

In seeking for root causes of nearly any activity, it is always good practice to look beyond inanimate objects to the Human Life Value that acts upon that object. Nearly forty thousand individuals kill themselves in America every year. This is indication of a much deeper problem than whether a gun is close within their grasp. Proper education, helping them learn to create value for others, is the best thing to help people learn to create a life they love.

Action Items

1. Create a life that you love.
2. Seek to create value for others and exchange with them. Begin small, if necessary, but make sure it is meaningful.
3. Make a new friend.
4. Find a cause larger than yourself that you are passionate about.
5. Seek professional help if you are too deeply in despair.

MRFC Principles: (2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 13)

Sources

Mike Stobbe (AP), Surprising Fact: Half of Gun Deaths Are Suicides, Yahoo! News, June 30, 2008.

Supreme Court Opinions, District of Columbia v. Heller, June 26, 2008.

American Association of Suicidology, U.S.A. Suicide: 2005 Ofiicial Final Data

American Association of Suicidology, How Do You Remember the Warning Signs of Suicide?