Gun statistics
26th June 2008
Megan McArdle adds some righteous common sense to the gun debate.
Men like to kill themselves with guns. (This is not culture-specific; women tend to choose poison everywhere, presumably because of some deep fear of disfigurement). Gun suicides tend to be successful. But this does not mean that if you took away the guns, people wouldn’t commit suicide. There are many other near-surefire ways of killing yourself, like jumping off a high bridge, gassing yourself with carbon monoxide, driving your car at high speed into a piling, hanging yourself, etc. Think of it this way: most people who choose to wear high heels are women. That doesn’t mean that if I threw out my Manolos, I would turn into a man.