First, I'm feel for you that you lost a loved one in that manner. I share a similar pain because I have lost two family members to suicide, one with a gun and one without. Both succeeded on the first attempt. I suppose I should advocate the banning of personal ownership of shower curtains and shower rods.
From my perspective, the how was not a factor for me. I was more concerned over the why. To this day I have my thoughts on the why but I'll never know for sure, because they didn't talk to me beforehand. They were sudden and unexpected.
But I'm not about to advocate for the restrictions of people's rights because of what my two family members did to themselves. I appreciate the thinking behind that attitude, I simply just disagree with it.
Sometimes, people make their decisions and there's nothing to be done to change it. Despite access to a gun and your efforts, your friend still killed himself. The only thing that's different is that his pain, perceived and/or real, continued longer than he wished it to. I can't speak of how that fits into the scheme of things because I don't want to claim to know what he was thinking and/or feeling.
As you state, you are in the UK. One thing that is most often missing in these discussions are differences in attitudes from culture to culture. You may not live in a gun culture, I do. But our gun culture has deep roots in mistrust in government, sometimes well-founded and sometimes not. It's not going away anytime soon and ignoring the why's of suicide in an effort to restrict people's rights based on the how's of suicide is just wrong to me.
Yes, I know about the nets in those locations. I also know of similar locations that do not. Those nets are there just as much for the people not planning to jump as it is for people who do.
True, a lot of time was spent prolonging an unhappy life or at least trying to postpone the inevitable. However he was pleased to receive the company of friends. To say 'here you go, gun/pills in top drawer, help yourself!' is a betrayal of life, one would be breaking ranks with every sentient being that has life force and believes living is an ideologically sound thing to do. Yet, you are right, with hindsight, it would have been better for my friend if I had just helped him do the deed.
As well as 'failures' there are 'success' stories. At university I had the fortune of sharing a house with a deeply suicidal man, to discover there really weren't the resources at the university to handle that. As well as practical help (hospital, cleaning up blood-stained things) we found another path for him, to sort it out with his folks, funding bodies and his department. He quit university rather than top himself, recovered from his depression and the following year he gave university another go. I did wonder how far a 'cry for help' could go, he broke his leg jumping off the side of the bridge, not the middle, the cutting went a long way too, but not all the way.
Regarding gun culture in the USA, I can see the appeal, and, what would the West be without guns?
However, I also lived in an inner city area in the UK where there were guns and I thought the crime aspect of the area was 'cool' and that it was great to live 'on the edge'. Then I got beaten to a pulp - no gun, just knife - and, after that my perspective changed totally. I was no longer aloof from the shootings, wife beatings and drug related crime that went on.
Sometimes you need direct experience to have illusions challenged. To me US gun culture is a bit like that, it is easy to have illusions about how guns are this or that, we rarely hear the opinions of those that have been shot.
Now if you Americans could just get on with forming militia and driving up to Washington to dispatch that government of yours... Really, if that is what the guns are for, how much more provocation is needed?
Please understand, I wasn't suggesting that you should have helped your friend with his act. If I did seem to suggest that then I apologize, that was not my intent.
Personally, I feel that every human life lost is a tragedy in some way. Some are obvious, some not so much, and some we choose not to see it that way. But to someone, it's likely a tragedy to them.
There are cases where I can understand suicide, people with serious medical conditions that give them a life of pain without hope of relief for example. It's a fine line though and one of serious discussion these days. Especially in the US where we have so many of veterans committing suicide, it's truly heart-breaking.
I often wonder what our West would have been like without the gun, but you might as well ask what Europe would have been like without sword and shield. Sadly, we'll never know.
Keep in mind, I personally see a difference between "gun culture" and "thug culture" as it's usually called. One is not necessarily the same as the other.
I find it doubtful that we as Americans would ever move on DC, if we did there are likely really big problems in the world in general. So far our system of changing the hands of power has worked okay. Bumps in the road here and there, a few mistakes for sure, but as long as the current guy is willing to step down for the next guy (regardless of which political office we're talking about) then I can't really such a thing happening.
From my perspective, the how was not a factor for me. I was more concerned over the why. To this day I have my thoughts on the why but I'll never know for sure, because they didn't talk to me beforehand. They were sudden and unexpected.
But I'm not about to advocate for the restrictions of people's rights because of what my two family members did to themselves. I appreciate the thinking behind that attitude, I simply just disagree with it.
Sometimes, people make their decisions and there's nothing to be done to change it. Despite access to a gun and your efforts, your friend still killed himself. The only thing that's different is that his pain, perceived and/or real, continued longer than he wished it to. I can't speak of how that fits into the scheme of things because I don't want to claim to know what he was thinking and/or feeling.
As you state, you are in the UK. One thing that is most often missing in these discussions are differences in attitudes from culture to culture. You may not live in a gun culture, I do. But our gun culture has deep roots in mistrust in government, sometimes well-founded and sometimes not. It's not going away anytime soon and ignoring the why's of suicide in an effort to restrict people's rights based on the how's of suicide is just wrong to me.
Yes, I know about the nets in those locations. I also know of similar locations that do not. Those nets are there just as much for the people not planning to jump as it is for people who do.