> If it is a contributor then people shoot themselves BECAUSE they own the gun.

That is a pretty strict interpretation of the cause of suicide. Of course, nobody kills themselves by sheer virtue of the fact that they own a weapon.

> Owning a gun does not lead you to a suicide risk

That is precisely what those studies suggest. Having a firearm nearby does in fact increase your risk of suicide. Whether or not that is enough to restrict people's rights is a totally separate issue. You argued that guns do not increase suicide risk, which is incorrect.

> There are many guns that are designed for a very specific target and would be incredibly bad to use to kill any living thing.

Fantastic! We should allow those firearms for people to have their fun, and regulate the other types (the ones for killing people) as much as possible.

I don't see a strict interpretation of the cause of suicide in what I said, I see a disagreement in whether guns are contributors.

Having a gun increases the likelihood of you attempting to use it, much like using any other means to do so. If knives were the most common choice, should we consider them risks for everyone because they might commit suicide with them? The fact that so many succeed with guns while failing with others makes it look like a contributor. The studies tell me that people are just more successful with guns. Anything that states that guns are a contributor I would have to disagree with as to how I understand what contributing means.

But I'm glad to see that you agree with me that not all guns are designed to kill living things. Hopefully you agree that such arguments are silly on their face and are designed to cause an emotional reaction. I believe I've shown elsewhere that I have no problems with having reasonable regulations on weapons designed to kill human beings on the battlefield, such as fully automatic weapons.

> If knives were the most common choice, should we consider them risks for everyone because they might commit suicide with them?

Yes.

Your argument is unclear to me. All else equal, it makes perfect sense that having a gun accessible nearby increases your suicide risk. Just as if you had a big bottle of pills nearby, or a big tower that you could just jump off of. Now, the question turns to whether or not those things should or could be regulated in some way to reduce that risk. The answer is no. Death is a side effect of those modalities. Neither pills nor a tower's main purpose is to end human life. However, for the vast majority of guns, the main purpose is to end life.

> But I'm glad to see that you agree with me that not all guns are designed to kill living things.

Could you please provide some examples of guns like this? The only thing I can think of would be some sort of really heavily modified .22LR for target shooting.

Again, having a gun increases the likelihood of succeeding in the attempt. It allows for snap decisions is also true. But I do not agree that it contributes to the act in of itself.

A perfect example of this someone pointed out elsewhere; Japan has an incredibly high suicide rate. It is apparently the leading cause of death of men and women in the younger age brackets. Japan has little to no gun culture. From what I've read, people there are attempting to address the why's of the situation instead of tackling the how's as it would change nothing.

People who talk of restricting people's access to guns because of other people's choices of using those gun on themselves is attempting to tackle the how's of the problem and not discussing the why's. It restricts people's rights without actually solving anything.

I have no problems with restricting access to someone with suicidal thoughts, although that's tough to determine how to go about that fairly. But it's a completely different thing to restrict a person's rights because his neighbor is suicidal.

As for guns designed for things other than killing. The easiest examples are shotguns. There are a number of shotguns specifically designed for clay sports. There's even a difference in designs between a shotgun intended for trap and skeet. In trap the clay flies away from you so the shotgun is designed to sling lead as far and as accurately as possible. In skeet the lead doesn't have to travel far but you often have to be able to swing the gun from left-to-right rather quickly, so it is designed with that in mind. Then there are shotguns designed for you to carry in the field and shoot birds. There is often overlap in these designs and the guns designed for clay sports can of course be used to kill living things. But that's not what they are designed for.

There are many other examples, such as the very one you describe.

If you want to discuss the aspect of something being designed to kill, a better and more accurate discussion is about ammunition. A gun is something designed to sling a projectile at high speeds. You can take any gun and insert blanks to make it useless for just about anything.