OK, be
fair. A surprising number—over fifty percent—are suicides. Some are mishaps /
accidents. Maybe forty-five percent are homicides.
Does it
matter? Only ten thousand people murdered; hey—that’s nothing!
Yeah? Every
September 11th, we all gather and recite three thousand names. Yet
ten times as many people die every year from guns! And does it make a
difference whether it’s you or someone else who pulls the trigger?
It’s a life
lost.
I know a
bit about that. I’ve had a brother scream at me, so concerned was he about my
own planned death. And in my last trip to Chicago, I entered the seedy hotel
where I bunked over, in my journeys from Wisconsin to Puerto Rico.
And discovered
the manager, shaking, and calling 911.
The
housekeeper had discovered the body.
She came
out, a moment later, to smoke a cigarette and watch them collect the body. The
paramedics came out, got the gurney from the back of the ambulance, entered the
hotel. Sixty seconds later, they
came out.
Everything—head
included—covered by a sheet.
They
returned with the gurney to the hotel. And came back with two suitcases,
uncovered.
Took less
than five minutes.
“He killed
himself,” said the housekeeper. “So young, just 33 years old….”
One
down—29, 999 to go?
“It’s
surprisingly hard to kill yourself,” I wrote elsewhere. And I thought at the
time of the decade I spent as a psychiatric nurse. Borderlines would come
whimpering to show us the scratches they had carved on their wrist.
“Oh, let me
get you some hydrogen peroxide to wash that off,” I’d say. “And would you like
a Band-Aid?”
It’s
anatomically almost impossible to slit your wrists deeply enough to hit the
artery….
Tylenol?
Curiously, for most people, nothing happens for the first 24 hours after
ingestion.
“Just take
a seat, Hon, I gotta see to this ingrown toenail….” a friend in the ER used to
say, when the lost girls with their teddy bears arrived, empty Tylenol bottle
in hand.
But a gun?
That’s
serious.
OK—sharp
turn here. In a recent
development, the University of Colorado psychiatrist who had been treating
James Holmes warned the university that he posed a risk.
Did she
warn the city?
And the
university did nothing, since Holmes dropped out.
Did he stop
being a risk?
And does
Colorado have a mental health background check?
It’s
madness beyond words.
Here’s what
I’m gonna do.
I’m gonna
start a petition on Signon.org . I’m gonna ask for thirty thousand signatures.
Then, I’m gonna sit in the coffee shop that has now become my office and read
them. I’ll film it, and put it on YouTube.
Any idea how long it’ll take?
