Ace Rimmer wrote:In truth, I think in the situation we're talking about,
I was originally making a large generalization. I don't know very much about this particular situation. What I said was that there are circumstances that appear superficially similar to the current situation in which a lack of access to a firearm would probably save lives. In this particular situation (or any specific situation), it is impossible to say. I am speaking of aggregate data, not specific examples.
Ace Rimmer wrote:...there was at least some amount of planning as he went to have a chat before he killed himself.
Planning does not preclude bad planning. Having the time to make a plan does not mean that the person making the plan is competent to choose the quickest and most painless methods available. The planner may honestly believe that firearms are quick an painless---I mean, they certainly look that way on TV! You are projecting your superior knowledge onto a class of people who may not have that knowledge.
Ace Rimmer wrote:In this situation, I don't think it's at all out of line to suggest he would have had a reason and taken time himself to find out the best method of 'quick and painless', which was your assertion. Most likely, he was probably going for 'quick and easy'.
This does not contradict anything I said.
Ace Rimmer wrote:My rebuttal wasn't that a crazy person would think sanely. Crazy people do think with some amount of sanity all the time. In fact, who's to say he was crazy? That is, what defines a crazy person?
Again, I said that a person who is willing to kill another probably is not thinking like you or I, and you rebut by claiming that if you were to kill someone, you would do it differently. It is irrelevant. And now you want to argue semantics.
xander