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knightmoves wrote:

Unome wrote: There has been a rationale put forward that guns make suicide easier, therefore this is a reason to restrict access to guns. This implies that the person making the argument is willing to forcibly prevent people from committing suicide. In my opinion, this is a problematic approach to suicide.

It doesn't imply anything of the sort. Not selling someone a gun, or making it hard for people to buy guns, does not in any sense equate to forcibly preventing someone from suicide, any more than not selling chocolate in schools is the same as hospitalizing kids and placing them on a forced diet.

Enforcing the restriction is very much forcibly preventing someone from committing suicide in their preferred manner (which I'll add before it comes up, is not a manner which infringes on others).

well suicide's not inherently a good thing
kinda like saying restricting concentration camps would be preventing Hitler from using his preferred method of genocide

I had a classmate that said he didn't believe in anti-gun laws. The afterschool teacher made him write, "Guns kill people" 20 times. He replied with, "But I don't write, the pencil does."

DatSciolyBoi wrote:I had a classmate that said he didn't believe in anti-gun laws. The afterschool teacher made him write, "Guns kill people" 20 times. He replied with, "But I don't write, the pencil does."

On the one hand, it's not all that productive for a teacher to force an anti-gun punishment on a student. On the other hand, what a silly rebuttal. False equivalencies everywhere.

JoeyC wrote:well suicide's not inherently a good thing
kinda like saying restricting concentration camps would be preventing Hitler from using his preferred method of genocide

Suicide is someone making their own choice about how to live their life - namely, not living it. That's clearly different from killing other people.

Unome wrote: Enforcing the restriction is very much forcibly preventing someone from committing suicide in their preferred manner (which I'll add before it comes up, is not a manner which infringes on others).

Well, OK, and the fact that certain drugs are controlled means I can't just purchase them and kill myself painlessly, and so on. But perhaps having some drugs only available by prescription offends your ethics too? You must, of course, speak for yourself, but if I were to choose between suicide by gun and suicide by painless drug cocktail, I'd take the drugs every day (well, you know - just the once, actually).

If I take the numbers at face value, it suggests that when handguns need a cooling-off period, some people don't rush out and buy a handgun while in an emotional state, but have a chance to cool off and decide that actually they don't want to kill themselves. I can't see preventing someone from making an emotional mistake as a bad thing.

Unome wrote:Suicide is someone making their own choice about how to live their life - namely, not living it. That's clearly different from killing other people.

If what you're getting at is that suicide is someone's own choice, and something that, unlike killing people, does not affect other people, then I'm afraid I must disagree.
Suicide affects all parties involved, scarring families, spreading guilt, and possibly leading to more suicides and/or mentally instability.
Every choice affects someone else, no matter how insignificant they may seem.

JoeyC wrote:

Unome wrote:Suicide is someone making their own choice about how to live their life - namely, not living it. That's clearly different from killing other people.

If what you're getting at is that suicide is someone's own choice, and something that, unlike killing people, does not affect other people, then I'm afraid I must disagree.
Suicide affects all parties involved, scarring families, spreading guilt, and possibly leading to more suicides and/or mentally instability.
Every choice affects someone else, no matter how insignificant they may seem.

I didn't say it doesn't affect other people, I'm saying the effects on others are not forced on them. You can't forcibly change someone's mind without directly invading them (drugs, etc.) - this is the same argument for censoring offensive content because it may disturb people.

But we do censor bad words

JoeyC wrote:But we do censor bad words

Unome is speaking on legal censorship. Using bad words isn't illegal on this site, it's just against site rules.