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Many Americans agree and are stocking up on weapons after the country's worst mass shooting in three years. Gun retailers are reporting surging sales, with customers saying they want to keep handguns and rifles at hand for self-defense in the event of another attack.
"Everyone is reporting up, every store, every salesman, every distributor," said Ray Peters, manager of Range, Guns & Safes, a company that sells firearms and safes in Atlanta with an indoor firing range. "People are more aware of the need to protect themselves."
[...] Gun sales were already on the rise this year. On Black Friday, the popular shopping day on Nov. 27 after the U.S. Thanksgiving Day holiday, a total of 185,345 applicants were processed through the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System, a 5.5 percent increase from the year before.
The Pew Research Center found last December that 57 percent of Americans say they believe owning a gun helps protect people from crime, up from 48 percent in 2012. The rest said owning a gun would put personal safety at risk.
(Score: 1) by J_Darnley on Saturday December 12 2015, @04:49PM
Good. People should be using a very effective means of killing themselves. No half hearted overdose attempt leaving you in need of expensive medical treatment. If I lived in the US I know I would have taken that route already. Instead I must work up the courage to use some slower method. I'm too much of a coward to cut myself so I'll probably go with hanging. After all jumping in front of a bus is a dick move.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @09:08PM
I agree. Why force people to suffer? Why force those that do not want to live to keep on living or risk maiming themselves, making their lives even worse? Let those that want to die do so. Let them do so with dignity. Anything else is barbarism worse than supporting slavery. At least slaves only loathe their conditions and not their existence.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday December 13 2015, @03:42AM
It's just as delusional as thinking you are the Emperor of France.
I've attempted several times. Each time, after I recovered from the depression I concluded that I had no compelling reason to die. The last time I crashed my car into a concrete highway overpass post at 100 MPH. I was not injured in any way but my car as totalled. Now I have to get around on the bus.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @09:20PM
If spontaneous suicides weren't a symptom of mental illness you'd have a point.
The people who kevorkian themselves don't use guns or hang themselves or anything else that would traumatize their family. The people who leave their body to surprise the people who love them are, by definition, not thinking clearly. And unfortunately that's 99% of suicides.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @11:17PM
If you say you want to die, you lose your freedom and have to pay for that privilege if you ever do get better. That is why suicidal people don't talk about it and that is why suicides seem "spontaneous". Ask for help and risk getting handcuffed, led off and tied to a bed, unable to even scratch your own nose. If they ever let you out, then they throw a 5k a day medical bill at you. Asking for help generally makes things worse.
Have you ever thought those people deserved that sight? Until the recent drug craze, psychologists thought of depression as the fault of loved ones not giving support or adding to the victim's suffering.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @12:06AM
Dying from dehydration is best (there are faster, pain-free methods but they risk the person who finds you if you screw something up). Just keep your mouth wet and it fools your body into thinking it's hydrated. I've heard hospitals let elderly people go like this but I've never confirmed that. You'll be hungry for the first 12 hours or so (don't eat anything too), then you'll be fine until around 2.5 days when you'll start passing out. Then just stay in a position where you're constantly losing conscious and you won't be awake to feel anything.
As a bonus or a drawback, it takes some time so it gives people a chance to notice (cry for help?) and you'll have time to change your mind. You can't undo jumping off a building but you can start drinking some re-hydration fluid (salt water and some other things, look it up) and abort your suicide. You'd need to do that before you're constantly passing out. At that stage, it'd be better to get emergency medical treatment. I've done it, obviously failed (lasted 2.6 days), but I don't have any lingering side effects or scars. No one even noticed.
For people who say it's cowardly to kill yourself, go try it sometime. It takes a lot of will power and courage to do it. I bet you couldn't give yourself harmless paper cuts along the length of your arm. Someone killing them-self has to cut a lot deeper. You can be too depressed to kill yourself. Think about the people we'd leave behind? We are. Correct or not, we think the world would be better off without us. Why should we live for them when every day is hell and they do nothing to help us?