[Phorlan]

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/ma...gunprevalence/

I just found this, without actually looking for it.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with what I see in that study. I'm just interested in what you guys on this forum think.
Why do you think there's such a difference between NH, NY and VT? If you look carefully it seems that on this particular issue Vermont is very similar to some southern states hit the worse by this particular "problem"
So what do y'all think?

[stephenMM]

I think that no state that far north is anything like the Southern states, in any manner. I was up in Boston once and they were rude beyond belief. You never see that down here. And the three months I was in Belfast, Maine w/ a Yankee girlfriend, people would not talk to you, period. When I mentioned it to someone there they said they didn't talk to them as well. It's just Yep or Nope until you've lived there 10 or 20 years.

Just to check, I called my oldest son who is up in Vermont temporarily for work. He said there were guns of course, but mostly for hunting.

Most folks in the South have them in the house for protection, so we're used to them being around. We have quick tempers (all that Skotch Irish blood) so they stay in the house. The old saying is that a Southerner will be polite right up to the point where they kill you. We'll take it for a while....and then we won't.

In all my years in some very large market research companies, I learned you can make statistics tell people exactly what you want them to. It all depends on how the questions were correlated and how they were asked. Never knew anyone who used a gun to kill themselves, it was usually hard livin, cancer, car wrecks or smoking. Only knew one person in my entire life who killed themselves, and that was w/ a rope, which sounds like a lousy way to do it.

[arctichomesteader]

I think I'd want outside verification of anything put out by harvard these days.

But the fact is I suspect most suicides here are linked to drugs and drinking problems, and those problems often stem from two underlying problems: lack of economic opportunity and the frequently gloomy weather which can drag many people down.

[Phorlan]

"I think that no state that far north is anything like the Southern states,"
I'm not talking about the politics, the landscape, the way people socialize and more or even how religious or not religious they are. I'm talking about the propensity to kill themselves with a gun. If you look at the study VT is the only northern state to have the same amount of deaths as some southern states. That's what I meant. Of course VT doesn't look like Alabama, I got that!

[allenk893]

This site is utterly obsessed with the south. Just leave those people alone already.

[eddie gein]

It would seem that in terms of gun suicides...

Vermont would have more of the dynamics of the intermountain west. Lots of "rugged individualists" with a lot of guns around the house. The intermountain west states (along with Alaska) lead the nation in guns per capita and also in gun suicides per capita.

[harry chickpea]

Originally Posted by Phorlan

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/ma...gunprevalence/

I just found this, without actually looking for it.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with what I see in that study. I'm just interested in what you guys on this forum think.
Why do you think there's such a difference between NH, NY and VT? If you look carefully it seems that on this particular issue Vermont is very similar to some southern states hit the worse by this particular "problem"
So what do y'all think?

You OBVIOUSLY did not look at it more than to make an uninformed and inflammatory comment.

Aside from the fact that the two charts attempt (badly) to show correlation - while NOT claiming causation except by inference to those who failed statistics, Vermont isn't even in the top group at issue in the charts. WTH were you thinking??? This is one of the poorest posts I have ever seen you make.

(And for another poster, there are parts of Alabama that do look very much like parts of Vermont. Barn design tends to be different, but the similarities can be striking at times.)

[Matt Marcinkiewicz]

Originally Posted by stephenMM

I think that no state that far north is anything like the Southern states, in any manner. I was up in Boston once and they were rude beyond belief. You never see that down here. And the three months I was in Belfast, Maine w/ a Yankee girlfriend, people would not talk to you, period. When I mentioned it to someone there they said they didn't talk to them as well. It's just Yep or Nope until you've lived there 10 or 20 years.

Just to check, I called my oldest son who is up in Vermont temporarily for work. He said there were guns of course, but mostly for hunting.

Most folks in the South have them in the house for protection, so we're used to them being around. We have quick tempers (all that Skotch Irish blood) so they stay in the house. The old saying is that a Southerner will be polite right up to the point where they kill you. We'll take it for a while....and then we won't.

In all my years in some very large market research companies, I learned you can make statistics tell people exactly what you want them to. It all depends on how the questions were correlated and how they were asked. Never knew anyone who used a gun to kill themselves, it was usually hard livin, cancer, car wrecks or smoking. Only knew one person in my entire life who killed themselves, and that was w/ a rope, which sounds like a lousy way to do it.

Re: 3rd paragraph, I'll take northern rudeness + not being killed over Southern hospitable murder. I'm half-kidding

[sheena12]

Originally Posted by allenk893

This site is utterly obsessed with the south. Just leave those people alone already.

I was thinking the same thing. The site is obsessed with all things Southern. Only I see it from another perspective.

There is an attempt to "Normalize" and "Americanize" the South, and to turn the weirdness of the South that begat Southern Gothic literature into "business as usual".

If you ever spent an eight-month-long winter holed up with an electric blanket, and intermittent, spotty, cell phone service, with stacks of "Yankee" magazines and Stephen King books, suicide may not seem that strange a thought.

Why don't Southerners just brave that 60 degree weather and go to the beach? What's THEIR excuse?

[Summerz88]

I’m from the west, Colorado , I’m staying out of this……



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