The September/October issue (not online yet) of Harvard Magazine contains an article on the public health effects of guns, based on a new book by David Hemenway called Private Guns, Public Health. This philosophical insight from the article struck me:
Follow-up interviews with people who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge reveal that few of them tried suicide again. One survivor volunteered this epiphany after jumping: "I realized that all the problems I had in life were solvable -- except one: I'm in midair."