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> "If someone gets into your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone? You can call the police if you want, and they'll get there, and they'll take a picture of your dead body. But they can't get there in time to save your life. The first line of defense is you."

Of course, the flip side of this is "If you're horribly depressed in your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone."

Same thing for "If your teenage son's irresponsible friends are in your house..."



> Of course, the flip side of this is "If you're horribly depressed in your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone."

Not much a flip side. Unless you happen to think that suicides by other means are somehow better.

>> The evidence, however, indicates that denying one particular means to people who are motivated to commit suicide by social, economic, cultural, or other circumstances simply pushes them to some other means.[1]

[1] Same PDF as in the next comment http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_Kate...


Suicides by other means tend to be less immediately deadly.


Why should people not be able to commit suicide in the easiest possible way?


Because, in many cases, it's a situation of treatable mental illness rather than rational decision making.




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