Dave Workman:Suicide should not be classified as ‘gun violence’

Dave does a good job here.   In Washington, it is legal to commit suicide, as long as it is approved of by the state.

Yesterday’s daring intervention by a Washington State Patrol trooper in an attempted suicide on the East Channel Bridge at Mercer Island and I-90 is yet another reminder that people intent on taking their own lives will find a way, and when they use firearms that should not be classified as “gun violence.”

Lumping suicides together with murder victims to inflate a “victims-of-gun-violence” figure is not simply disingenuous, it is fraud, and it occurs on a national scale. Every time a national gun control advocacy group complains about “30,000 annual gun violence deaths,” they are perpetuating a canard, and they know it.

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 Had yesterday’s suicide been successful, would the gun control crowd call that “bridge violence?” It is a legitimate question. According to the state Department of Health, less than half (49 percent) of the 947 suicides in 2010 involved firearms. Twenty-two percent were accomplished with poisons and 19 percent via suffocation (typically suicide by hanging). Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death for Washington residents of all ages, and the second leading cause among people ages 15-24, the Health Department said. Don’t forget, Washington is one of a handful of states that allow assisted suicide.

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