Sean D. Serrentino: Guns are for suicide, and other anti-gun lies

Sean D. Serrentino  does some good work on suicide numbers here.  I would add a couple of other thoughts.   First, there are several studies that show that restricting guns does not reduce suicides.  It just shifts them to other means.   Second, as suicides, especially with a gun, tend to be planned without other people around, you would have to make major, draconian changes to the gun control laws to have a measurable effect on suicides.  Third is that leftists seem to be fine with suicides, as long as they are state approved.  Last, the number of justifiable homicides are from the FBI, which is a notoriously low number, for several reasons.  The actual number is likely about five times higher.  Here is Sean's article:

Let’s take another way for people to use statistics to lie to you.

Murthy has already said that he plans to use his office to work on obesity, not guns. But looking at the instances in which firearm use ends in death, it becomes clear that there’s a health case to be made for gun control, too.
Guns are far more likely to be used in suicides than in killing assailants:

Then he shows you a graph that looks very much like this one I cobbled together in Excel

and goes on to say

According to the CDC, 19,392 people committed suicide with a gun in 2010, the latest year for which data are available. That same year, meanwhile, the FBI recorded only 230 justifiable homicides (the legal term) in which a private citizen used a firearm to kill a felon during the commission of a felony.

OMG! I have a gun, so I’m at risk for suicide?!?!?!?
Oh, wait. I missed something. What did she say again?

But looking at the instances in which firearm use ends in death

Umm, why limit it just to “instances in which firearms use ends in death?” If I have to use a gun against another human, I am legally required to use it only when I reasonably fear death, serious bodily injury, or sexual assault. If I haul out the old XD and point it at someone, I am worried, with good cause, that I’m about to die. That means that if I don’t die, I win. In fact, any result other than the good guys ending up dead is considered a win. Why does Olga demand I kill my assailant? Is she not pleased if the assailant runs away, leaving both of us scared but unharmed? What kind of bloodthirsty ghoul is Olga, anyway?
With that in mind I did some poking about and looked up the various estimates of defensive gun uses (DGUs) and I added them to Olga’s little graph.

Even the lowest number of estimated DGUs is more that five times higher that the number of suicides using a firearm.

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