On Tuesday, Colton Tooley -- a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin -- came on to our campus with an AK-47 and took his own life on the top floor of the library.
This horrific incident has been misclassified by the media as a school shooting. The perpetrator and victim, a single individual, apparently worked to avoid inflicting physical harm on fellow students. At one point, he even apologized to a student he inadvertently jostled as he made his way up the stairs in Perry-Castaneda Library. Colton reserved the violence for himself.
The University of Texas bore witness not to a shooting, but to an extremely public and immensely painful suicide.
Yet the most stunning aspect of the discourse over Tuesday's tragedy is the lack of any meaningful discussion of suicide. Yet National Suicide Prevention Awareness Week is only a few days past, and UT chose to observe Suicide Prevention Week last week.
We fixate on school shootings because they are rare -- but we fail to give similar attention to suicide because it is so incredibly common on college campuses.
Suicide is a much greater threat to persons of college age than homicide. UT, for example, has seen only two homicides perpetrated over the last thirty years. Contrast that statistic to the six suicides over the last twelve months. Tellingly, even the two murders -- which were perpetrated by a single individual -- ended in suicide. Typically, UT experiences only three or four per year.
Yet the bulk of the discussion centered on whether or not we should arm students to protect against school shootings. This is a complete non-sequitur given the nature of Tuesday's tragedy. "Quick! Shoot him! Before he kills himself!" Is this really our best plan?
In a strange coincidence -- strangely ironic, perhaps -- a talk was scheduled for UT campus the same day on this very topic. The speaker was John Lott, the author of "More Guns, Less Crime."
I suggest modifying Lott's title: "More Guns, More Suicides." Fully half of all firearms deaths in the U.S. are suicides, and 80 to 90 percent of suicide attempts with firearms are successful. Compare this to drug overdose, which is only successful 30 to 40 percent of the time.
Campus gun bans are believed to play some role. Firearms are responsible for far more suicides among college-age non-students than among college-age students -- a fact which is partially attributed to the lack of handguns on college campuses (some of which is admittedly cultural rather than legal). Indeed, social scientists use suicide rates as a proxy for household handgun ownership rates, because the correlation is so very strong.
Instead of pushing for barely trained students to carry guns, let's talk about how we can keep firearms out of the hands of those who are struggling. Let's talk about getting them access to counseling.
I submit that arming oneself is about restoring a feeling of control in an uncontrollable world. We felt out of control on Tuesday, and it was painful. We want that control back. But is arming oneself truly going to give us control, or just the illusion of control?
We can at least admit that more guns could not have saved Colton Tooley's life that day. So let's have an honest conversation about suicide.
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Colton Tooley, UT Shooter, Had History Of Interest In Gun Control Laws
No matter how you spin it, if you were anywhere on the campus of UT on the day of the shooting You were exposed to a potential shooting and possibly a witness to your own MURDER.
Arming campus cops is a better solution.
As far as mental health help, its expensive, it is time consuming, and bluntly, if you're a head case, you should be sent home for health reasons. Happens all the time. UT has a mental health center, mainly grad students. Pretty useless.
Can't stand the heat, go to a lesser school. After your first job or so, nobody cares where you went to school. Neither is your GPA an issue.
--So they can show up after the fact as well?
Would there be suggestions to arm students in case of a sniper on campus.
I am afraid that too many people of color and Gays would get mowed down, if those armed students "carried" while out for a few beers.
Somebody is going to have to clean up what you've left behind. Give it some thought, it will be
your final act.
People sometimes feel various pressures, because of different 'stuff'. One thing that's become apparent over the years, is that politics is apparently prevalent on campus, anymore. And, with students from all over the world, you can probably get a pretty interesting mix of people and views.
Another article tells about how Tooley is involved/interested in the gun control debate. But, that doesn't explain how he came to be wearing a ski mask, and firing a Kalashnikov on a college campus.
What was his aim, in committing this act? Why did he do it? Why did he throw his life away? Was he doing OK in his schoolwork, was he getting along with other people? Did he 'get religion'? Did he have any kind of history, of mental illness, prescription drugs, street drugs? Did he listen to lots of rap music? We'll never know.
As you can see, Mr. Josh Horwitz, grossmont328's statement is supported by data and he did not, as you accuse, Mr. Horwitz, "make it up".
Let me try to explain:
In Jamaica, the suicide rate is substantially less than in Trinidad. Both are Caribbean nations, facing similar problems. However the Trinidadian population is a little more than half South Asian, while the Jamaican population is much more homogenously black. The suicide rate differential between the two countries is explained by a substantially higher rate in the South Asian population. Suicide is part of the South Asian culture, and is not viewed with the same negativity as in Western society. Comparing hanging, shooting, poisoning etc will demonstrate higher numbers for every method in Trinidad.
Where a clear divergence occurs is in the ingestion of specific agricultural poisons. The rural S. A. population in Trinidad uses that method preferentially because it is easily available, and as it is highly effective, impulse suiciders don't get a second chance.
It is much more fair to compare different states within the US to each other. This has already been done, and the evidence of lower suicide rates in gun restricted territories is quite clear.
Part of having an honest discussion about suicide is also acknowledging the fact that on the flip side, less guns does not equal less suicides/crime. Japan has over double the per capita suicide rate of the US, yet civilian ownership of firearms is virtually banned there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
While the author doesn't come out and blatantly demonize guns and gun owners, I get the feeling that there is some anti-gun sentiment in his post.
I submit that suicide is more a cultural, social, and socio-economic problem than it has anything to do with guns.
And what would our suicide rate look like if guns were not so easily accessible, even by people who are clearly suicidal?
You can't hide the social, socio-economic, and cultural factors exacerbating suicide rates by pushing a rather transparent anti-gun agenda, Josh. That's blatantly disingenuous.
Only people with a specific agenda could object to rational questioning.
I have since been active in the area of suicide awareness and prevention. On September 18, I held the first "Get Your Wellness On" - Suicide Awareness & Prevention Fair in Washington Square Park, Manhattan. Well over a 1000 people attended the free programs that included: yoga, QiGong, guided meditation, alternative healing, hula hooping as a fun way to clear the mind and de-stress, music and more. One woman on her way to kill herself by jumping in the river, happened upon us and stopped and... she is alive.
I am proposing Community Love, a scaled down but more frequent version of the fair, and have written to Mayor Bloomberg asking for a meeting to present my idea and hopefully get support.
You too can help.
Esmeralda
Founder
Get Your Wellness On
www.foreverinvictus.com
From out of the heart of the gun-culture, I have to face the reality that we accept a certain facilitation of suicide as an unintended consequence of the RKBA. It is something we say, "yes," to Admitted.
Do you believe we all have the right to life? Do you understand that my right to defend my own life IS AN INTEGRAL PART of my right to life? Though it is painfully unfortunate when a person decides to opt out of his/her right to life, I feel you are very misguided to suggest the answer is that, in a crisis, those of us who CHOOSE LIFE should be (legislatively) debilitated of our own self-defense.