Something obvious that I hadn’t thought about is that people who fire guns a lot, or are around people who fire guns a lot, are much more likely to suffer hearing loss. And that means that Republicans are much more likely to be hard of hearing than Democrats. I could insert a joke here, but I’ll just say that maybe there should be more education about this issue.

Another things that’s obvious is that guns and suicide have a tight relationship, but I didn’t realize how significant it is.

Most gun deaths in America are suicides, and most suicides in America involve guns. Academics have found gun suicide so pervasive and predictable that it can be used as a reliable measure of gun ownership in an area. While the impulse to kill yourself may be somewhat evenly distributed, guns are not. And firearms make suicide attempts much deadlier.

Overall, fewer than 2 in 20 suicide attempts are fatal — unless they involve a gun, in which case 17 in 20 end in death, according to a recent analysis by Catherine Barber of Harvard University, Philip J. Cook of Duke University and Susan T. Parker, now at Northeastern University.

Now, I know that people own guns for a variety of reasons including that they just like them, but one of the more compelling reasons is for protection. I think some folks can’t imagine not having a gun around just in case they have to deal with a home invasion (including by bears!) because they don’t want to feel they’d be powerless to protect their family. But there’s a law of unintended consequences and it plays out whenever there’s a gun suicide. Very few people buy guns with the thought they they will one day use it to take their own life, and almost no one does it to help a loved one kill themselves sometime in the future.

Of course, we can add simple gun accidents to the list here, because you need a gun to have a gun accident. And if the idea was to protect your family, an accidental fatality resulting from a gun you purchased is a major d’oh.

When it comes strictly to suicides however, I really stared at those numbers. We all know that people try and fail to commit suicide all the time, and often they go on to have rich and fulfilling lives that last decades. And now I see that less than 10 percent of non-gun suicide attempts are successful. Wow. Thank god for that. So many people get through their worst days for the simple reason that they didn’t turn a gun on themselves. And most of them probably did not have a gun as an option.

When a gun is an option, it’s usually game over. And that’s a pretty compelling reason to keep guns away from yourself and your loved ones, because we all have really bad days now and then.