Posted on 04/06/2013 3:51:16 AM PDT by Lowell1775
snip---------------- With few exceptions, states with the highest rates of gun ownership -- for example, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Alabama, and West Virginia -- also tended to have the highest suicide rates. These states were also carried overwhelmingly by George Bush in the 2000 presidential election.
snip-------------------- "In states with a higher percentage of the population that belong to a church, it is plausible that religious views and doctrine about suicide are well-known through sacred texts, theology or sermons, and adherents may be less likely to commit suicide."
snip--------------------- The sociologist said that although policies aimed at seriously regulating firearm ownership would reduce individual suicides, such policies are likely to fail not because they do not work, but because many Americans remain opposed to meaningful gun control, arguing that they have a constitutional right to bear arms. "Even modest efforts to reform gun laws are typically met with vehement opposition. There are also millions of Americans who continue to believe that keeping a gun at home protects them against intruders, even though research shows that when a gun is used in the home, it is often against household members in the commission of homicides or suicides," Kposowa said. "Adding to the widespread misinformation about guns is that powerful pro-gun lobby groups, especially the National Rifle Association, seem to have a stranglehold on legislators and U.S. policy, and a politician who calls for gun control may be targeted for removal from office in a future election by a gun lobby," he added. Although total suicide rates in the U.S. are not much higher than in other Western countries, without changes in gun-ownership policies "the United States is poised to remain a very armed and potentially dangerous nation for its inhabitants for years to come."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
The Obamnation Journalists are pulling out THEIR “big guns.”
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Documentation File on the harmful impact of the Counterculture of Obamanation on America.
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Barry Soetoro, aka B. Hussein Obama, first Inaugural quote: “I want to FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE AMERICA!”
being highly educated does not equate to being highly intelligent. and being highly educated in one area does not mean knowing everything about evry other area. highly educated people tend to be so stupid outside of their area of expertise thay don’t even know they are stupid.
This passage stuck out at me: "...So what is conservatism? Basically it is caution based on a perception that the world is an unpredictable, dangerous and often hostile place. So change is not rejected. It is in fact, as just said, usually desired. But it is approached in a skeptical, step by step way to ensure that its effects are beneficial or at least benign..."
I wrote this a few years back:
This is the weakness of liberalism.
Notice that when Conservatives enter office, there is far less likely to be an attitude of "We are going to completely stop doing things the way our predecessor did them, and we are going to do them our way from now on." It is usually a very measured approach, letting things go the way they did for a period of time before making changes, and those changes are usually incremental, not radical.
This is because conservatives understand that you do not need to re-invent the wheel. The problem with reinventing wheels, policies or anything else is that you often make the same mistakes the first inventor did, unless you take extra care to see why those mistakes occurred.
Liberals do not have the humility to understand this. It is why liberals are all socialists to a greater or lesser degree and believe in big, centralized government.
I use the analogy of a jumbo jet flying through the sky on auto-pilot, with no flight crew present, and a passenger opens the cockpit door and enters.
Conservatives would enter the cockpit, look around and take stock of the situation. They might look at the fuel gauge, look at the attitude and get a general feel of the situation. They probably wouldn't touch anything right away, realizing that there are circumstances where doing something for the sake of doing something can be far more harmful. They might decide to put the headphones on, see if they can communicate with anyone, see if they can hear anything, and so on. They would probably try to find someone who could talk them down, and failing that, might try to figure out if there was anyone onboard with piloting experience.
Liberals would enter the cockpit, look around and scream out "Nobody is flying the plane!" They would jump in the pilot seat, grab the control stick and shout "We have to get this plane on the ground or we're all going to die!" They might dive the plane towards the earth, looking frantically for an airport, making the assumption that of course, you could fly a plane from the sky "just by looking around, there is the airport over there, let's get to it!" without realizing that is one of the most difficult things even for veteran pilots who might have the advantage of at least being familiar with the area and comfortable with trying to pick up landmarks from the air. They would dive the plane, then suddenly realize they don't know how to turn the plane, how to apply rudder or lower the flaps and landing gear (probably wouldn't even realize those were needed) and would simultaneously realize they had no idea how to stabilize the plane in level flight or re-engage the autopilot. The passengers, feeling the gyrations of the aircraft and knowing something was wrong, would begin to panic, and before you know it, there would be a huge flaming hole in the ground.
It is the same thing with a military campaign, an economic crisis, an environmental issue, solving an education or social problem, or just about anything else you can think of.
Liberals see the levers, dials and controls of something powerful and complicated, and instead of figuring out how they work or even if they work, they make the assumption that no matter what, they can control this better than anyone or anything that controlled it before. They don't even think that sometimes putting your hands on the levers of something powerful is much, much more damaging than keeping your bloody damned hands OFF of them.
If it is a military campaign, they get in their armchairs and begin looking at the maps, targets and forces involved, pick up the phones and begin issuing orders and edicts to generals. You end up with the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Desert One and Mogadishu.
On environmental issues you end up with some kind of foreign species of fish that you brought in from South America to control some other kind of issue, and it ends up destroying the native ecosystem, or on a global scale, you destroy the ability to obtain energy for an energy dependent world because you need to save the existence of the Alaskan Spotted Lugwort. They determined through their "science" that DDT made the egg shells of predatory birds thin causing their populations to decrease, and viewing it as a canary in a coal mine, outlawed DDT, thereby condemning tens of millions of people (or over the years, perhaps even hundreds of millions) to misery and death from insect borne diseases such as malaria. Even worse, you end up with liberals trying to deliberately destroy industry and economies, an attempt to plunge the entire western world into a depression, and they base their desire to do this on "Global Warming". To sum up this particular angle and encapsulate the liberal mindset on all these issues, but most importantly environmental ones, remember this quote from a feminist wall mural I see in Cambridge, MA: "INDICATION OF HARM, NOT PROOF OF HARM IS OUR CALL TO ACTION". Look well upon that quote...it sums up liberalism in one compact line.
If it is a economic or social issue, they begin to make policy and throw money at it without even considering for a single damned second if what they are doing is really going to produce the expected result. If it doesn't help or makes things worse, they simply throw more money and legislation at the issue, without bothering to dismantle the agencies or defund what they did before that failed miserably. In this, you end up with Rent Control (a liberal invention which destroys the availability of affordable housing), Social Security (a liberal invention, a Ponzi scheme on a grand scale that gave people the false security they didn't have to save for themselves) the Great Society, Welfare, School Busing, declining ability of students and failing schools, disintegration of the family and soon, socialism and Third World Squalor.
And folks, this new President, is steeped up to his oversized jug-handled ears in the arrogance and ignorance of Liberalism. He is a racist, socialist and marxist. He believes it to the core, and he is now the most powerful man in the world.
We have a problem.
Very well said. Jon J. Ray is brilliant, and virtually unknown.
Your aircraft analogy is superb.
I was VERY impressed with that link...thanks again for posting it.
I am sure your will help spread his work around. He deserves much more exposure.
Yes we do. And it is a problem that will only get worse. It is a problem that the Nation, as it was envisioned, will not survive.
The problem is not obama. obama is only the symptom of the problem. He is the evidence that there is a problem. The problem is the people who put the obamas in positions of power. It is a problem that the Founding Fathers understood all too well. That problem is stupid people voting. People who have no "skin" in the game, or issue voting on said issue. To illustrate: Non property owners voting to increase property taxes.
Over the years, the Court decisions and leglative actions have so destroyed the protections and checks and balances the Founding Fathers had given us. One example is the Direct Election of Senators. They Amended the Constitution for this one. In time this gave us the Ted Kennedys, the Robert Byrds, etal. Prior to this, the State Governors appointed their Senators. This ensured that no one individual built a dynasty.
To make a long story short we have degenerated to the point where we have become a Nation of these who work for a living and those who vote for a living. And at this point in time and for the forseeable future , there are more here who vote for a living than those who work for a living. no company, no organization, no Nation can survive after its makeup consists of more takers than contributors. And that, My FRiend, is where we are now.
Well said. If anything fills me with foreboding for the future of this republic, it is not that Obama is President, but that the electorate of this country would elect a man who is a Marxist, a socialist, a racist and a radical, and not just once, but twice.
Amazing, really. In our lifetime.
And, I agree with you on the direct election of senators. It is just another weakening of states rights. Before the 17th amendments, senators were expected to be advocates for their states. After the 17th amendment, they just became beholden to the Federal government.
So the only good studies are the ones that support your preconceptions?
Not at all. The biggest problem with this “study” is it clearly is trying to create a false association with gun ownership by purposely keeping analysis at a general level. Its just a dishonest study. It claims to show things with certainty that can not be derived from the data and then of course this study will be used to push policy.
Yes exactly and for women that is more prevalent yet no one is suggesting people be restricted from purchasing pills, poison or other equally deadly things. Guns are just a convenient target and like most leftist aims it is to separate the responsibility from the individual and move it to the object.
Please do not drag disputes across threads.
So the only good studies are the ones that support your preconceptions?
Its just a dishonest study. It claims to show things with certainty that can not be derived from the data
The same can be said of studies that link drugs and mental problems, but you seem accepting of those.
Well I’ll admit that there is a chicken and egg component. Maybe those who are mentally ill are more likely to abuse drugs? :-)
No smiley required - many researchers believe that (misguided) self-medication by the mentally ill can explain the observed correlation.
I personally believe the evidence is without question that illegal drugs as well as legal drugs contribute to behavior that is considered mental illness this doesn’t mean its all one way or another nor do I necessarily believe that the war on drugs as it currently stands is the best way of dealing with drug abuse nor do I believe blanket legalization solves the problem. I’ve seen people who before they began using were living perfectly normal lives which degenerated to crap as drug use over took their lives and I’m not just talking about illegal drugs. I know people who abuse nerve pills and prescription drugs and of course one of the most popular drugs that is abused is alcohol. I’d like to see a solution where someone could be given a pill to stop the addiction by interfering with the ability of the substance to bind to receptors in the brain or a form of vaccination where the body would treat the substance as a foreign invader and clear it as a part of the immune response. The infant technology is there but we will have to wait a bit longer for it to be realized.
Legalization isn't meant to solve the problem of drug use/abuse - that can only come one soul at a time - but to end the problems created or worsened by drug illegality, notably the hyperinflation of drug profits and channeling of those profits into criminal and terrorist hands.
The key thing I do not want is companies advertising and producing more addictive drugs and further mainstreaming recreational drug use. I’d be happy to apply the same kinds of constraints as those involved with the misuse of prescription drugs and penalties similar to those involving alcohol abuse. I’d like to see on a state by state basis how legalization effects cost. I’m familiar with the Netherlands model and even they still prosecute large scale drug dealing, import and export and merely have a “non-enforcement policy” against what are considered “soft drugs”.
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