Posted by detroitpistons on January 20, 2010, at 20:29:14
In reply to Re: DON'T BUY A GUN!!!, posted by bleauberry on January 20, 2010, at 19:15:40
I'm glad that the gentleman had a gun and that it helped to save his life. I recently read a story about a guy who was charged by a really big grizzly bear. Can't remember the location, but it was a more remote area, maybe Alaska. Anyways, the guy had a very large caliber handgun and it stopped the bear at the last second. If I lived in a place with a lot of grizzlies, I'd carry a hand canon too.
I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other about gun rights. I'm pretty much in the middle, I guess. I just think it's a bad idea for people who have suicidal tendencies to own a gun. Actually, let me take that a step further and say definitively, as more or less fact, that PEOPLE WHO HAVE SUICIDAL TENDENCIES SHOULD NOT POSSESS A GUN!! PERIOD.
Now, am I saying that we should pass laws to try to prevent this type of thing? No, not necessarily. That is a huge can of worms. Should the Virginia Tech shooter have had the ability to buy guns? Probably not, but I don't know if there's any easy way to have prevented that without getting into a lot of privacy rights and constitutional issues.
Bottom line - I just wish that my friend didn't have a gun on that evening, because this seemed like a snap decision. He was actually having a great day with his wife. Things were getting better for him. Then he got drunk and that was the end. Nobody has any explanation. This was completely unpredictable.
I believe that my friend would still be alive today had that gun not been there. I bet he would have gone to bed. Maybe he would have swallowed a bunch of pills, but guess what? His wife probably would have gotten him to the hospital in time to save him and then everybody would have known the severity of his problems and he and his wife would have taken steps towards making a proper recovery and learning more about the illness and how to deal with it in the future.
Things could have gone a different direction, for the better. That's not wishful thinking. My mom tried to kill herself with pills 10 years ago and my Dad found her and she survived. It was a "cry for help." Guess what? She's still alive today, except that she learned a lot from that whole ordeal in terms of recognizing signs/ symptoms, what to do in a crisis, etc, etc, and she was then properly treated. I really doubt she's going to try it again because of everything that she went through and learned from that 1st attempt. If she had a gun in her hand that day instead of that bottle of pills, she'd be dead.
With all due respect, by your rationale, people like my mother would have killed themselves anyways, right? Can you see how that logic is flawed? My friend could still be alive today and he could be recovering. He could have gotten better. The gun being present assured his death. What he really needed was a "cry for help" because he was too embarrassed or proud to really seek help on his own.
There is nothing anybody can say to change my mind about this. Had there been no gun in that house on that night, my friend would be alive today, and he may very well have gone on to live out the rest of his life.
So I'm going to say this again...If you are a member of this board with a history of depression, with or without a history of suicide attempts, then DON'T BUY A MOTHERF***ING GUN!! Seems like common sense to me.
> I just saw a story on the news where a guy saved his life with a gun yesterday.
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> His car went off the road into water. As the car was sinking, he pulled out his gun to shoot the window so he could get out.
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> So in an ironic kind of way, while a gun was used to end one person's life, it saved the life of another.
>
>
poster:detroitpistons
thread:933660
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100113/msgs/934500.html