"Universal Background Checks" may Increase Firearms Suicide

Gun Watch ^ | 18 November, 2016 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

While firearm studies by medical journals have been notoriously anti-Second Amendment, this interesting bit comes from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Michael Bloomberg gave the school 300 million dollars specifically to target "gun violence" and other issues.  Bloomberg's fanatical advocacy of political gun control has tainted "research" that comes from the school.  When the researchers found that gun control laws could have unintended consequences, they did not advocate for repeal of those laws. From foxnews.com:

The research team looked at what happens when people want to temporarily remove firearms from their home because they fear someone in the house might be considering a suicide attempt. In some states, they found, gun control laws may actually hamper the ability to easily transfer a gun temporarily to reduce suicide risk.

What's needed, according to Jon S. Vernick of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore and colleagues, are laws that allow for temporary storage of guns by federally licensed firearm dealers, law enforcement officers, family members and friends.

The research was published this week in an issue of JAMA Internal Medicine focusing on firearm violence.

Other researchers are arguing that voluntary cooperation may work better than the heavy hand of legislation.

In a separate paper in the same issue, public health researchers from Boston argue that in order to reduce gun suicides, health care professionals need to work with, and not against, gun shop owners, firearm instructors and gun rights stakeholders. Rather than squaring off against one another, they say, these groups should "jointly devise strategies to put time and distance between a suicidal person and a firearm."

The thinly disguised attempt to create "universal gun registration", otherwise known as "universal background checks" never seemed likely to reduce suicide rates.  That it might work against efforts to reduce suicides by firearm should have been widely anticipated.

Most people who commit suicide with guns are older white males that have owned the guns for decades.

Suicides are approximately two thirds of all fatalities that are associated with guns.  It is likely that more suicides with guns will result from Universal background checks than unjustified homicides will be prevented.  Universal Background checks have not been shown to reduce the criminal use of guns.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.

Link to Gun Watch

[marktwain]

"Universal Background Checks" may increase firearms suicides, but it is unlikely that they increase overall suicides.

[wrench]

Many single car fatal accidents are, in fact, suicides, but they are rarely reported as such.

[moovova]

“Most people who commit suicide with guns are older white males...”

I thought the Left was in a hurry to get rid of us old white guys. After all... we just elected the meanest, vilest, most racist, misogynistic, white, elderly sexual predator known to mankind.

[wrench]

“After all... we just elected the meanest, vilest, most racist, misogynistic, white, elderly sexual predator known to mankind.”

Bill Clinton got elected?

[libertylover]

Michael Bloomberg gave the school 300 million dollars specifically to target "gun violence"

Waste of a good 300 million dollars. I mean, giving it to a school?

[marktwain]

If you want to create a lot of fake research in support of infringing on the Second Amendment, it does the job.

[ssfromla]

I’m here to tell you that if someone wants to commit suicide they’ll do it in any way they seem fit. It’s not always a gun. But you guys/gals know that. They’re pushing their anti gun views on us agan as usual and from the usual places.

[bgill]

Anyone who is serious about suicide will find a way with whatever he can get his hands on. We’d need to ban everything including padded cells.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Universal firearm registration has been the Liberal’s wet dream since 1963. before that they “ONLY” wanted to register handguns.
Then in 1976, they finally admitted their plan(we already knew about it) that registration was just a step on the road to confiscation.

So now they have found a BACK DOOR to gun registration, Universal Background checks.

[The KG9 Kid]

I’ve mentioned before here that I typically loathe indoor shooting ranges that have a gun rental policy that doesn’t prohibit range rentals to customers that don’t already have their own firearms on hand.

When I lived in Los Angeles, I visited a local indoor range with a pal of mine and noticed on arrival that their parking lot was full of police cars taking all the parking sports. We thought that it must be some kind of police qualification day at the range but walked in anyway with our gear. As soon as we entered, the familiar range owner saw us and mouthed ‘No, we’re closed’ right before we noticed the police milling around and the homicide investigators examine the spot in the sound-lock chamber separating the retail floor and the shooting range where someone just killed themselves.

Later learned from the owner that a perfectly normal person walked in, happily went through all the steps to rent a big revolver and ammo, asked intelligent questions about firearms, and then cheerfully walked into the sound chamber, loaded up, and put the gun in their mouth and pulled the trigger. The person who rented the gun saw the whole thing from five feet away. Not a single indicator something was wrong with the person.

The range put a policy in place that new shooters looking to rent firearms are either escorted by a friend, range staff, or that they already have brought their own functionally working firearm before they can rent a firearm for range use.