Texas Mayor Kills Teen Daughter, Kills Self

[one_voice]

(July 14) -- Police in Coppell, Texas, say the town's mayor, Jayne Peters, shot and killed her 19-year-old daughter Tuesday evening before turning the gun on herself.

The apparent murder-suicide was discovered Tuesday when authorities went to Peters' home after the mayor did not show up for a city meeting, Fox News reported.

Today, the Dallas County Medical Examiner's office confirmed that Peters had killed herself after killing her daughter, The Associated Press said.

Corinne Peters, the mayor's daughter, had just graduated from Coppell High School. She was to begin her freshman year at the University of Texas at Austin in the fall.

Following the 2008 death of Donald Peters -- the mayor's husband and Corinne Peters' father -- from cancer, the mother and daughter lived alone in Coppell, an affluent suburb of Dallas.

http://www.aolnews.com/surge-desk/article/texas-mayor-kills-teen-daughter-before-committing-suicide/19554490?sms_ss=twitter

[gateley]

1. That's tragic. I can't even imagine the depth of despair one must be feeling

not only to kill oneself, but her child.

[w8liftinglady]

8. her spouse died of CA in 2008...I bet that had something to do with it

[MilesColtrane]

70. According to reports they were both depressed.

No telling just how much the husband's illness resulted in the family's financial problems.

The house was in foreclosure. She was using a city issued credit card to buy groceries and to stay afloat.

[cbdo2007]

41. or the selfishness

The daughter was probably just an innocent happy kid and had nothing to do with whatever tormented the mom.

[xchrom]

2. Recommend

[mnhtnbb]

3. Republican?

[virgogal]

6. Why would this matter?

[mnhtnbb]

37. Republicans tend to have control issues. The decision to kill her daughter

and herself suggests separation/individuation issues--especially on the eve of the daughter
leaving for college.

It would be interesting, to me anyway, to see if these homicide/suicide events that seem to
be happening more frequently (or maybe they're just getting more than local attention)
have any correlation to political views.

We just had one in our area: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/07/14/580347/three-dead-in-murder-suicide.html#storylink=misearch

[nadinbrzezinski]

59. Remember Savage saying that Liberalism is a mental

disease?

Welcome to that club...

I am sure you like the company.

[lame54]

61. I too would like to know

[Rebubula]

40. Really wish...

...that I could UnRec posts like this one.

Look...we all know that republicans suck...but EVERY FREAKING TIME someone pulls a stunt like this, someone comes and and asks if they were Republican. LIKE THAT FREAKING MATTERS!

It is weak sauce to add politics to a very sad story...

[mnhtnbb]

42. Yes, let's just all be sad and not interested in why people feel compelled

to murder/suicide. It's a different beast than suicide alone and if you read my post you
would know I'm curious about correlation between individuals that have separation/individuation
issues with choice of political party.

[Rebubula]

44. Well...

...to me, I read that you are HOPING for a correlation.

People have been killing their families since the beginning of time. The common denominator is the human race and the inherent failings of the human mind.

Again...my main point is that everytime something horrible like this happens (and they happen all the time all around the world) - someone comes in and posits some nebulous idea linking horrible acts to a political slant. You were that someone today...

[lame54]

62. goddamn right it matters...

they are the party of guns

[Schema Thing]

4. I just realized that a friends daughter almost certainly went to school

with Corinne. Yikes.

[Ilsa]

5. Geez. If anyone had known there was a problem, they should

have gotten the guns out of the house. It isn't a perfect solution, but it does take away that immediate, deadly option. How horrible. I don't understand why she killed her daughter. There must have been some other problem going on that the ME isn't talking about.

[kevinbgoode]

7. What? And violate their Second Amendment right

to bear arms to use whenever they might imagine a "threat" to themselves?

[davidinalameda]

11. good to see people are keeping it classy

[MilesColtrane]

72. She borrowed the gun from a friend on the ruse that she needed one to take...

a concealed carry course.

This wasn't an impulsive decision.

[X_Digger]

73. Very very very deliberate. n/t

[MrModerate]

9. Too sad.

Never having been in that head-space myself, I can't grasp why people deciding to end their own lives think they have the right to take others with them.

[wtmusic]

10. Suicide Rates Significantly Higher in States with the Most Gun Owners

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/211982/suicide_rates_significantly_higher.html

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[wtmusic]

14. Facts are facts, pardner.

Now about the bullshit part...do you disagree that this is true? Can you back it up?

No, I didn't think so - the truth is many people are dead because of handguns being accessible at moments of personal crisis.

I know that collides with your worldview, but it should be one of those happy collisions where you learn something. :D

[senseandsensibility]

16. Good response

if I may say so.

[JoeyT]

36. States with the most gun owners are also generally the most conservative states.

Which means it's harder, in some cases MUCH harder to get help for depression or any other mental illness.
I'll use Alabama as an example, since I'm familiar with it: In much of the state, attempting to get help for depression means about half of the people (and by people I mean doctors and psychiatrists, not just random dumbasses on the street. Half is being generous, too.) you go to are going to tell you that all you need to do is "Get right with Jesus" and everything will be ok. That's the ones that don't tell you that it's time to pull your bootstraps and stop being a wussy or the ones that will tell you that it's a figment of your imagination and you're not really depressed at all. Doesn't take many times of that before a lot of people give up on help. Mississippi is similar, from what I remember. I'm told Texas, Tennessee, and Louisiana are about the same.

A lot of people aren't even willing to TRY to get treatment because they fear becoming social pariahs. Their fear isn't irrational, either. There's a huge culture of something being "wrong" with someone that's depressed, or any other kind of MI. Admit you're taking anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, or other mood stabilizers to your closest friends in really conservative places and watch them vanish or berate you. In many cases even the family will stop associating with the person or attack them outright. Of course the isolation and degradation only makes things worse. This person being a public figure, I'm wondering if that was part of the problem. Fear of being publicly ridiculed as a "crazy" if she tried to get help.

It ain't the guns, it's the stupid attitude about mental illness that goes along with being a conservative. You know the old "You wouldn't ask someone to run a marathon with a broken leg, would you?" thing explaining MI to people that don't get it? The answer for a lot of people is: Yes, yes they would. As long as it wasn't their leg that was broken, they wouldn't care.

It's easy to sit in a state that's less backward and say "Ah HA! This correlation must automatically equal causation!". It's rarely the case, though. It's usually not quite as simple as that. It's also kind of insulting to imply that "Ease of access" is much of a factor in suicides. As if people that commit suicide are just too lazy to bother living. People do all sorts of things, including taking a bottle full of pills, jumping off bridges, cutting their wrists, and dozens of other things. Most of which don't have a waiting period or require a license. Once they've gotten that desperate, ease of access has little to do with it.

By the way, Texas was 10 even per 10,000. Georgia is 9.9 National average is 11.2 The list seems to go from least populated states to most populated. In fact that's a much stronger correlation than the gun laws.

[wtmusic]

47. There is no simple answer to preventing suicide

and I don't mean to be insulting about ease of access. This is not my conclusion, but one of a study by the National Institute of Health which was specifically designed to eliminate other factors and covered all 50 states:

"Household firearm ownership and rates of suicide across the 50 United States.

BACKGROUND: The current investigation explores the association between rates of household firearm ownership and suicide across the 50 states. Prior ecologic research on the relationship between firearm prevalence and suicide has been criticized for using problematic proxy-based, rather than survey-based, estimates of firearm prevalence and for failing to control for potential psychological risk factors for suicide. We address these two criticisms by using recently available state-level survey-based estimates of household firearm ownership, serious mental illness, and alcohol/illicit substance use and dependence. METHODS: Negative binomial regression was used to assess the relationship between household firearm ownership rates and rates of firearm, nonfirearm, and overall suicide for both sexes and for four age groups. Analyses controlled for rates of poverty, urbanization, unemployment, mental illness, and drug and alcohol dependence and abuse. RESULTS: US residents of all ages and both sexes are more likely to die from suicide when they live in areas where more households contain firearms. A positive and significant association exists between levels of household firearm ownership and rates of firearm and overall suicide; rates of nonfirearm suicide were not associated with levels of household firearm ownership. CONCLUSION: Household firearm ownership levels are strongly associated with higher rates of suicide, consistent with the hypothesis that the availability of lethal means increases the rate of completed suicide."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17426563

As you can see the analysis accounted for mental illness, and still found a positive correlation between household firearm ownership and suicide.

There are all kinds of underlying social issues which may increase / decrease the tendency to commit suicide, but from a policy standpoint these are hard to address; we can't mandate that the public be less judgemental. We can, however, reduce access to firearms through legal means and save lives. Although murder rates are often trotted out in this debate, the fact is the suicide rate runs about double the murder rate in Texas (per capita). To me, it's intuitively obvious that someone tempted toward a rash move to suicide would follow through more often with a loaded pistol sitting on the dresser. The above study makes it abundantly clear.

[X_Digger]

48. Actually, it's not an NIH study..

The abstract is published on PubMed, but the study was published in the Journal of Trauma by the same folks who do the same retrospective studies over and over-

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html

Publication: Hepburn, Lisa; Hemenway, David. "Firearm Availability and Homicide: A Review of the Literature." Aggression and Violent Behavior: A Review Journal. 2004; 9:417-40.

Publication: Hemenway, David; Miller, Matthew. "Firearm Availability and Homicide Rates across 26 High Income Countries." Journal of Trauma. 2000; 49:985-88.

Publication: Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. "Household Firearm Ownership Levels and Homicide Rates across U.S. Regions and States, 1988-1997." American Journal of Public Health. 2002: 92:1988-1993.

Publication: Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. "State-level Homicide Victimization Rates in the U.S. in Relation to Survey Measures of Household Firearm Ownership, 2001-2003." Social Science and Medicine. 2007; 64:656-64.

Publication: Walsh, Sabrina; Hemenway, David. "Intimate Partner Violence: Homicides followed by Suicides in Kentucky." Journal of Kentucky Medical Association. 2005; 103:667-70.

Publication: Lemard, Glendene; Hemenway, David. "Violence in Jamaica: An Analysis of Homicides 1998-2002." Injury Prevention. 2006; 12:15-18.

Publication: Miller, Matt; Hemenway, David. "The Relationship between Firearms and Suicide: A Review of the Literature." Aggression and Violent Behavior: A Review Journal. 1999; 4:59-75.

Publication: Miller, Matt; Hemenway, David. "Gun Prevalence and the Risk of Suicide: A Review." Harvard Health Policy Review. 2001; 2:29-37.

Publication: Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. "Household Firearm Ownership Levels and Suicide across U.S. Regions and States, 1988-1997." Epidemiology. 2002; 13:517-524.

Publication: Miller, Matthew; Lippmann, Steven; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. "Household Firearm Ownership and Rates of Suicide across U.S. States." Journal of Trauma. 2007; 62:1029-35.

Publication: Miller, Matthew; Hemenway, David; Azrael, Deborah. "Firearms and Suicide in the Northeast" Journal of Trauma. 2004; 57:626-632.

Publication: Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. "The Epidemiology of Case Fatality Rates for Suicide in the Northeast." Annals of Emergency Medicine. 2004; 723-30.

The same "study" over and over, with the same flaws every single time, and no "prospective" trials or studies to check the correlation.

[wtmusic]

49. What kind of trials do you suggest?

Give handguns to 1,000 households, and see how many people commit suicide?

And "studies to check the correlation"? Whatever are you talking about? This study is statistically complete and conclusive, and there are no studies which contradict it.

Either you can give me a specific attack on their methods, such as the validity of using negative binomial regression, or you accept their conclusion. Or you're in denial.

[X_Digger]

52. I already have - #29 & #38

Regarding "pro"-spective studies, start with a randomized group of people who have guns and those who don't, then track suicide stats of those folks going forward.

It's very easy, when looking back, to find spurious correlation. That's why good science dictates that retrospective studies are to be followed by cohort trials or prospective studies moving forward.

See the whole vaxxer/MMR "study" that the quote in #38 was pulled from- http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2962

[wtmusic]

53. And it's very easy, when looking forward, to choose a "randomized" group

which isn't random at all. So your criticism is moot - these are risks inherent in all research.

"Hemenway never accounts for the sociological factors that are most likely to affect ownership of guns or their misuse in crime (previous criminal record, neighborhood crime rate, etc) or their use in suicide (family size, rental v ownership of homes, mean income, etc)."

Even by looking at the abstract, it's plainly evident that sociological factors are ruled out. I can't tell from the abstract, but what was the sample size of the study? Either it was sufficient, in your opinion, to rule out family size as a factor (by randomly including all sizes) or you're insinuating the authors of this peer-reviewed study are gaming their sample to only include families of a certain size, only home renters, ad infinitum (income was specifically ruled out). Yes, it's possible that the authors have purchased short positions in companies which manufacture firearms, and are willing to throw away their careers by generating spurious anti-gun data for short-term gain. But highly unlikely.

And who says that rental vs. ownership of homes is more likely to affect suicide than mental illness, you? Euromutt? Next you will be telling me that the families which have rabbits as pets was overlooked as a possible external factor. :eyes:

[X_Digger]

57. Please go get the study (or do some reading on case-control methodology)

When you do a case control study, you take a known group (in this case, suicides) and come up with a sufficiently similar group and then study the variable you're interested in (in this case gun ownership).

If your control group doesn't match your case group sufficiently, then other, not studied, not correlated variables can cause your study to become invalid. A good researcher factors these in (either by narrowing the case to control correlation to include these variables, or you 'weight' the incidence of the study variable based on those other variables- hence the 'binomial regression'.)

The abstract tells you _some_ of the things they controlled for, by one of the above methods. The full paper gives more detail, but what it lacks are the very things I mentioned.

re the rental v home ownership, it tends to go toward social support structure. A person who's part of a community, rather than a 'loner' commits suicide less frequently- length of time in current residence is another variable often used in these kinds of studies for a similar reason. Just like those with families commit suicide less frequently than those who live alone. They correlated for 'poverty rate' in a particular area, but not the mean income. (e.g. John, a 25yo white carpenter, living in the burbs working for $18/hr who committed suicide was correlated to Jack, a 25yo white manager, living in the burbs, making $75k/yr.)

Sample size is important, yes. This study in particular does have enough N to be statistically significant. But if you don't correlate to, or control for, other variables that tend to increase or decrease the variable that you're interested in, you end up with a conclusion that, while looks good on paper, is skewed up, or skewed down.

They're not 'gaming' anything (I'm being generous and assuming it's not intentional), but they're remaining aggressively ignorant about other factors that would tend to disprove their correlation. It's getting harder and harder to not assume intent, since these same criticisms have been leveled at these same five or six researchers since the late 80's without them responding. (You did notice the names are all the same, didn't you? Hemenway, Azreal, Miller, etc.)

Some of these 'confounding' factors may have a negligible result on the outcome by themselves, but many are geometrically cumulative, rather than additive. (ie, renters may be 1.1 times as likely to commit suicide, and single people may be 1.1 times as likely to commit suicide, but a single person who rents may be 3 times (rather than 2.2) as likely to commit suicide as someone who owns their own home and has a family.)

[Manifestor_of_Light]

66. Churches make it worse. They drive you even more crazy.

I went to two very large churches and needed a job. My hubby and I were doing CD-Roms that we could have used to help them spread their gospel, and help build a much needed community center in their former neighborhood.

We wanted them to pay us SOMETHING for that work, we were willing to help them if they paid us so we could pay our own bills. The greedy preachers didn't want to help us start a non-profit 501 (c)3 (I have a law degree, I could have figured out how to do this). I also spent a week on a business plan, etc. showed them our materials and all that.

They didn't do a damn thing. I had to leave because of the verbal abuse from the pulpit and now I curse Christianity and the horrible things people do in its name, because of several thousand people in these two churches, and the leadership that would NOT pay us to help them spread their gospel.

As a result, they PERMANENTLY lost a couple of former and now actively antagonistic-to-Christianity members.

All they do is tell you to pray hard, or tell you "you don't have enough faith" which is INCREDIBLY INSULTING to a person trying to do the best they can.

Joel Osteen receives more than $10,000 a day in donations and he gets an awful lot of letters and phone calls, requests for things like mental health care help, and food for the hungry, shelter and clothing for the poor, and even health care, but has he established any food ministries, or any other ministries, and he has the largest church in the country???

He lives in a house valued at at LEAST TWO MILLION DOLLARS.

I don't think he has established a single charity that helps out anyone, with a single cryin' dime. He dropped out of Oral Robert University after a short time and is not even a qualified minister.

It looks to me like he's as a complete fraud as Mother Teresa and her millions that were never used for medical care and relief of suffering.

[X_Digger]

13. Another exercise in correlation = causation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

[depakid]

17. That concept has nothing to do with it at all!

This is a matter of relative risk.

One more instance of gun proliferatrrs behaving like climate deniers.

[X_Digger]

20. No, another example of David Hemenway treating guns like bacteria

Miller, Matthew; Lippmann, Steven; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. "Household Firearm Ownership and Rates of Suicide across U.S. States." Journal of Trauma. 2007; 62:1029-35.

(That's the "study" cited in the above article.)

If you go to the library and look it up, you'll see that it suffers from the same problems as other Hemenway "studies"- uses case control, which is completely useless for making predictions, doesn't correlate 'cases' with 'control' well (large disparity in income, rental v home ownership, neighborhood crime rate, etc).

Why is it, do you think, that nobody has taken the next step after a case-control study, which is to track changes in the variables under study to see if the correlation even holds up going forward?

[depakid]

33. Exactly- the disease model provides the most appropriate means for analysis

for what is unmistakably a public health problem -and as with other public health studies, other factors or potential confounders are statistically controlled for.

You and the other deniers here simply don't like the conclusions of the science- and so attack it as eagerly (and with the same, well funded duplicity as Exxon/Mobil or the tobacco companies).

[X_Digger]

38. It's a sociological / criminilogical problem

When you can leave a gun behind by touching a doorknob, then epidemiological methods might apply.

When a fixed number of guns spread out like a gas to evenly distribute themselves in a boyle's law v = nrt/p fashion like an airborne toxin, then these methods might apply.

, other factors or potential confounders are statistically controlled for.

That's just it- Hemenway never accounts for the sociological factors that are most likely to affect ownership of guns or their misuse in crime (previous criminal record, neighborhood crime rate, etc) or their use in suicide (family size, rental v ownership of homes, mean income, etc).

Here's a salient quote by Euromutt about why all these case control studies can be problematic-

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=118&topic_id=314920#322065

The problem with the "epidemiological" approach to research is that it relies pretty much exclusively on retrospective studies, i.e. ones that "look back" by examining data already gathered for other purposes. This type of study has its place, e.g. as case control studies in medicine, as they're a comparatively cheap way of seeing whether there's enough substance to a hypothesis to justify further research. But, in the words of research oncologist and medical science blogger David Gorski (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2962 ):

<...> here’s one thing to remember about retrospective studies in general. They often find associations that later turn out not to hold up under study using prospective studies or randomized trials or, alternatively, turn out to be much weaker than the retrospective study showed.

As a result, the findings from any retrospective study should not be accepted as valid until confirmed by prospective studies and/or randomized trials.

Now here's the thing about the "epidemiological" approach to firearms research: the material is all retrospective studies. The entire body of work never goes beyond establishing that there's a hypothesis that merits further research. It's all very cute for someone like Charles Branas to claim his team used "the same approach that epidemiologists have historically used to establish links between such things as smoking and lung cancer," but that conveniently overlooks that a) Doll's retrospective study produced a much stronger association than Branas' (90% of lung cancer patients studied by Doll turned out to be cigarette smokers, as opposed to the 6% of shooting victims studied by Branas who were carrying), and b) Doll's research still had to be validated by subsequent cohort studies. And when it comes to firearms, those validating studies are never done.

Why this reluctance among researchers who take the "epidemiological" approach to do follow-up studies, including of research by others in the same field? The most obvious hypothesis (if anyone can come up with something more plausible, let me know) is that they're quite aware that the associations their retrospective studies have generated will evaporate, or at least be severely weakened, in prospective studies. The associations generated by retrospective studies are the best (hell, the only) evidence they have to support their agenda, so they can't afford to jeopardize it. But avoiding evidence that would undermine your hypothesis reduces your work to pseudoscience, and it's hard to escape the impression that is what the "epidemiological" approach in firearms research is.

That last point is even demonstrated by Kellerman's own studies. In the course of five years, he went from asserting that a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to be used against the owner to 2.7 more likely.

If that doesn't give you pause to consider the validity of the methodology, then your ability to suspend disbelief is a hell of a lot larger than mine.

eta: Kellerman, not Hemenway

[MilesColtrane]

74. Relative risk?

She wasn't a gun owner.

She borrowed the gun to kill herself and her daughter.

[wtmusic]

18. Another poorly-thought-out straw man.

From your link:

"1. A may be the cause of B." Why yes, having handguns around the house might lead to more gun-related suicides.
"2. B may be the cause of A." No, unlikely that more gun-related suicides would encourage people to have guns at home. :silly:
"3. some unknown third factor C may actually be the cause of both A and B." I'm all ears - what might this factor C be? States where good salsa is made have more suicides?
"4. there may be a combination of the above three relationships. For example, B may be the cause of A at the same time as A is the cause of B (contradicting that the only relationship between A and B is that A causes B). This describes a self-reinforcing system." Nope. See #2.
"5. the "relationship" is a coincidence or so complex or indirect that it is more effectively called a coincidence (i.e. two events occurring at the same time that have no direct relationship to each other besides the fact that they are occurring at the same time). A larger sample size helps to reduce the chance of a coincidence, unless there is a systematic error in the experiment." I'd say 50 states and statistics covering hundreds of millions of people is a pretty good sample size, wouldn't you?

Doncha hate it when your own link bites you in the ass? :D

[X_Digger]

22. Have you read the underlying study?

Miller, Matthew; Lippmann, Steven; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. "Household Firearm Ownership and Rates of Suicide across U.S. States." Journal of Trauma. 2007; 62:1029-35.

Please, have a read. You'll have to go to the public library to find it, unless you have a subscription to a service that archives it.

The areas with high gun ownership also have higher levels of crime, lower mean income, more renters v home owners, are more racially diverse, have fewer people per household (alluding to non-nuclear families and the absence of attendant support structures)..

My link didn't bite _me_ in the ass, it bit your assertion square in the cheek.

[wtmusic]

23. If you're not careful, your links are going to bite your ass clean off.

Here's the conclusion to your study, readily available online:

"CONCLUSION: Household firearm ownership levels are strongly associated with higher rates of suicide, consistent with the hypothesis that the availability of lethal means increases the rate of completed suicide."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17426563

:rofl:

[X_Digger]

24. I have the paper copy, thanks.

I ask again, have you read the study? (Not just the abstract.)

eta: If you have the paper, check out the comparison of the 'case participants' versus the 'control' participants, under the section on 'methodology'.

eta2: Hell, from the abstract- "Analyses controlled for rates of poverty, urbanization, unemployment, mental illness, and drug and alcohol dependence and abuse. " -- note, they didn't control for crime rate, family size, etc.

Please, go visit a library and get a paper copy, it's worth a read, if for no other reason than to be able to see what they did and did not take into account.

[wtmusic]

25. Does the paper one come to a different conclusion?

Unlikely that the conclusion of the study is dependent on the format it is presented in.

Correlation does not imply causation. :D

[X_Digger]

29. No, the conclusion is the same, but the paper has the criteria..

.. and the inclusion, or exclusion of criteria can lead to the "C" from the above link re correlation & causation.

ie, I could do a perfectly valid study of criminals in jails and height, with the {unstated} hypothesis that "Taller people commit more crime."

If in my methodology, I control for "poverty, urbanization, unemployment, mental illness, and drug and alcohol dependence and abuse" by using a control group that is NOT in jail, but matches the similar criteria stated above, it would look very pretty, but be worthless.

Why? Because there's a third factor that acts as a "C"- race. The dynamics of our prison population are skewed toward young, african american males because of our inept justice system, our socially irresponsible policies regarding the war on {some} drugs, and our lack of a decent social safety net.

Without controlling for race in the above study, it's meaningless, but looks good on paper, "proving" my hypothesis.

Which is what this study does. It doesn't control for the rate of crime in a control area (which can affect both gun ownership and suicide), it doesn't control for family 'size' (which relates to social support structures), among other things.

There is an abundance of "C"s from which to choose, that were not included.

[TheWraith]

19. That study has been debunked about a thousand times.

Correlation is not causation, and suicide rates are a lot more complex than you give them credit for. Japan has almost no guns, and a suicide rate massively higher than ours. Same goes for England.

[wtmusic]

21. You're proving my point.

The fact that suicide rates are higher in Japan, with fewer guns, does not imply that suicides are independent of handgun ownership. But we'd need a "factor C" (alluded to in post #18) to explain this apparent contradiction. Ah, here it is:

'Suicide has never been criminalized in Japan. Japanese society's attitude toward suicide has been termed "tolerant," and on many occasions a suicide is seen as a morally responsible action.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan

Ya think? :crazy:

[TheWraith]

58. What makes you think that that proves your point in any way?

As I noted, the suicide rate is also vastly higher in England than here, and England has NEVER had a permissive attitude toward suicide.

And there has never been a verifiable scientific study which shows a linkage between gun ownership and suicide. The only way you can produce the studies which DO show that is by manipulating the data, such as by noting that people who own a gun are more likely to use it to commit suicide than they are another means, and calling that a "link." Which in no way proves or even suggests they weren't going to get the job done another way.

Trying to predict the reasons behind suicide is like trying to predict the factors creating violent crime. It's way to complicated to be boiled down into a nutshell.

[blogslut]

50. The National Mental Health Association says different

[wtmusic]

55. .

[rainbow4321]

15. She murders her daughter..yet was worried about their pets

She left detailed notes for the cops on how to care for the dogs.

This story is just so horrific. The girl was supposed to attend UT's freshman orientation today..her going was delayed a few times because, according to what she told her friend, her mom "had to go to the doctor's a few times"...so was this a mental health doctor, by any chance? Was the mom sabotaging her daughter going off to college by delaying her freshman orientation?

[Horse with no Name]

34. I was wondering when I watched this on the news tonight

after I heard that her husband had died of cancer...if the Mom just totally flipped out at the thought of "losing" her daughter to college and if her Mom had been seeing a psychiatrist--why they didn't pick up the clues of her behavior.
Regardless, very sad and very tragic.

[w8liftinglady]

39. because of my work with ptsd sufferers-sometimes,the closest ones

receive the harshest treatment-to prevent pain to the child after mom kills herself and dad has died in action(or of cancer in this case)To us it makes no sense,but to the sufferer,it seems logical and loving.just a thought.

[NNN0LHI]

26. They were both shot in the head which makes me skeptical of this story

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20010539-504083.html

The Coppell city manager alerted police and sent them to Peters' home after the usually prompt mayor failed to appear at a regularly scheduled city council meeting, said CBS affiliate KTVT. When police arrived around 7:45 p.m. they found the bodies of Jayne Peters, 55 and her daughter Corrine Peters, 19. Both women had suffered gunshot wounds to the head.

-----------------------------

Its very uncommon for a woman to shoot herself in the head. Hardly ever does that happen.

[w8liftinglady]

27. good point-I hope it is investigated thoroughly

[EFerrari]

28. Now that you point it out, it is strange. n/t

[X_Digger]

30. She left notes, and a key in an envelope on the front door.

She left notes around the house about such things as how to take care of her pet(s?).

This appears to be well planned, though tragic.

[girl gone mad]

43. They were planning to go on a trip..

maybe the notes were related to that? :shrug:

[X_Digger]

45. Putting your house key in an envelope on your door?

The specific content of the notes hasn't been made public, true.

If she was having someone over to look after things, I'd imagine she'd just give the person a key, rather than taping it to her front door. I could reach the same conclusion you do regarding the other notes, but that one just defies alternate explanation to me.

eta: If she didn't have time to give a house sitter a key, then hiding the key and telling the person where it is makes a lot more sense.

eta2: According to some sources, the note on the door "warned" them what they would find, but that's unconfirmed at this point.

[NNN0LHI]

51. And some of the notes were typed and others hand written

Which seams really odd.

Don

[LostinVA]

56. No, the first note told what the cops would find inside

[jberryhill]

32. Are you suggesting that her behavior was not normal?

[Ter]

75. I still smell a CIA (or similar secret group) hit

I always suspect it when a politician dies in this manner.

[JI7]

31. Why didn't she just kill herself ?

[Mariana]

35. Unless she explained it in the notes, we'll never know. nt.

[Xithras]

46. Hard to know, but that may not have been her original plan.

A lot of murder suicides are later discovered to have been unplanned. People get into a fight, and one flies into a rage and kills the other. A few minutes later the murderer calms down a bit, realizes what she just did, and kills herself in grief.

I'm not saying that's what happened here, but it's possible, and it's happened MANY times before.

[rainbow4321]

60. Interesting info in today's paper

1) Both universities that the daughter were "accepted" into put out statements that they have no record of her being accepted or registered

2) The mayor was on the verge of a city manager investigation for her use of city credit card use for clothes/food/other unidentified stuff. She was having massive financial issues, almost losing her house to foreclosure.


The gun she used was borrowed from another local area mayor who had no clue why she asked for it but was led to believe she was going to take gun training classes.


Now the question is, did the daughter think that she was accepted to these schools because her mother told her she was? Was the mom stalling (her attendence had been delayed twice) letting her daughter go to the UT freshman orientation because she (the mom) KNEW the daughter was not really accepted? This all happened the night before the daughter was finally supposed to go to Austin for orientation..at a school that has now publically said that they have NO record of her at all.


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/071710dnmetpetersfinances.1470f997c.html

[HipChick]

63. Her house was on the foreclosure list, but had not made it to auction yet..

I wonder if looking after her cancer stricken husband wiped her out financially..

[rainbow4321]

64. I just wanted to cry when all this new info came out

The daughter's friends remembering how they and she had been together the Sunday before the murder-suicide--they made a late night trip to 7-11 for the free slurpee offer...one friend thought about calling her the night before the murder just to talk but didn't end up calling. Now she wishes she had.


Maybe it is because my own daughter was a UT alumni and I remember so clearly the two of us going down to Austin for orientation and then the actual move and how much fun we had during that time, her starting a new stage of her life.
Then I think of how excited this girl must have been, what was taken away from her. Did her mom have her thinking that she was accepted when, in fact, it wasn't real? There was one report that there were bags and boxes in the house, had the daughter packed in anticipation of leaving for Austin the next day?


Breaks my heart.

[w8liftinglady]

65. I know-sometimes,the innocents pay the highest prices...it's sad...

[NNN0LHI]

54. Police don't sound completely convinced either

http://www.merinews.com/article/coppell-mayor-jayne-peters-suspicious-death-investigation-still-on/15826322.shtml

Coppell Mayor Jayne Peters' suspicious death, investigation still on

Thu, Jul 15, 2010 02:08:05 IST

"At this point all we can really say is the investigation is just not complete," police said. "There are a lot of things we need to look at."

[Ter]

76. The CIA/FBI will take it from here

Investigation complete, nothing suspicious they will say, and close the case.

[X_Digger]

67. It gets worse..

http://cbs11tv.com/local/coppell.mayor.murder.2.1809444.html

CBS 11 has learned Mayor Peters went to an Avis Car Rental location in Lewisville on June 2 and used a city-issued credit car to rent a silver car that she then presented to her daughter as a graduation gift. Earlier this week Corinne had packed the car for what she thought was a trip to Austin for orientation at the University of Texas. Sources tell CBS 11 Peters shot her daughter Monday morning and returned the car before walking back home.

[w8liftinglady]

68. well...what the hell?It defies most suicide/murder I've seen done by moms...jeez.

[X_Digger]

69. Defies most murder / suicides, period. n/t

[Manifestor_of_Light]

71. The daughter was going to leave and be independent.

I have known of many controlling families where the child was supposed to go to a school-related function out of town -- All-State Choir, or a camp or something where the child was rewarded for being outstanding in a sport or extracurricular activity.

The child was not allowed to go? Why? Because the child would be away from home and be subject to "corrupting influences". The child being away from total control of the parent is unacceptable.

This would not necessarily be a xtian afraid of the outside world corrupting their child -- it could just be an unhealthy enmeshed family with NO boundaries between the parents and kids.

I have a friend who grew up in Waco and went to music camp at Baylor at the same time I did, one year. We both played second violin, and were stand partners back in Siberia (the last stand, where you lose your hearing from sitting in front of the timpani or the piano).

Her mom wouldn't let her live in the dorm for ten days, though, being a fundamentalist xtian, and just "knew" that her little girl would be corrupted by living in the dorm with kids from other parts of the state!!!!

Same thing happened to me when I was little. There was no religion involved, it was just Mom being a control freak. She'd sit at her sewing machine and sew and tell me what a bum my father was (who was living with us -- they were married and living together for 53 years).

When I was little my mom didn't want me to play with the neighbor kids. They "were not good enough for me". However, she provided no alternative, like Girl Scouts, where there was adult supervision so I would not be picked on by the other kids. I went to a Girl Scout meeting once and loved it, because it was the first time I had not been picked on in a group of kids. I begged and pleaded with her and it did no good, because "your sister was in Brownies and none of the other mothers would do any of the work". Well, that was her problem, and not mine.

:grr: :banghead:

Mom was a jailer. I remember the terror. She would charge down the sidewalk, shrieking at me, with a bamboo switch in her hand, screaming my name, and I would be hiding between the houses, laughing at her for looking like a complete nutcase. My Dad also went lumbering down the sidewalk like a papa bear with a switch in his hand as well, sometimes. I was tiny and could run faster than they could. I looked like a cartoon where the kid's rear end is in front of his upper body, and the legs look like a circle going around.


She would scold me later for "RUNNING OFF" as she put it. That was sneaking out the screen door without making any noise, is what that was. And then she couldn't understand why the other kids picked on me, I was isolated and didn't have any friends until I was older, in junior high and high school, and was in orchestra, which was a time consuming activity which I loved.


That might be part of this dynamic, along with the lying about the daughter going to college. Truly tragic in many ways.

[rainbow4321]

77. I also wonder if the mother kept from her their financial woes

and just let the daughter think that she would be able to go off to college. The peer pressure in certain Dallas area suburbs is really hard on kids when it comes to tell their peers where they are going to go after graduation.

In a city like Coppell, a kid having to tell friends that he/she is going to a community college is, in the kid's mind, the worst thing ever.
I'm a non wealthy person living in a city (not far from Coppell, actually) similiar to Coppell's population makeup and one of my daughter's friends is going thru that. He is hearing all his friends going off to universities and he is kinda still leading his friends on with "not sure where I will go yet" even though, according to my daughter, he knows that the community school is where he will be going in the Fall. It will be the same school my daughter is attending.

So if the mom was really keeping their money problems from the daughter, she may have "taken over" the college application process from the daughter and just kept telling her what (fake) progress was being made. I sent my first daughter off to UT Austin 4 yrs ago and SHE did all the necessary admission paperwork, etc..she just gave me updates and let me know if I needed to sign or submit anything. In this case, the mother may have taken over that role and just told her daughter she was accepted.
All to keep the daughter from having to face telling her friends "I can't go away to school".

My second daughter is enrolled in our community college and was OK with that decision, even though her older sister went off to UT. Younger one has no idea what she wants to do in life so she knew it made more sense to go to the community school. Plus she's already admitted to me and others that she is not ready "to grow up yet". Fine with me, she can stay home here even if she decides to transfer to a university after this school. I'm very OK with a $400/semester college bill right now after 4 yrs of university bill/loans, etc...

Fortunately, she had no problems telling her group of friends where she was going, it helped that several of her friends were also heading there. I noticed that a larger group of kids did enroll there in her graduating class, unlike back when my first was headed to college..back then a much smaller graduates enrolled in our community school. Sign of the financial times, I guess.

I know that financially, I don't think I could have had another go around with 4 yrs of helping another daughter make it thru school. I'll be the first to admit to that....even though the oldest did more than her part (working 2 summers jobs each year), it was hard as hell.