Thanks, but you kind of missed my point where I was going with that. I never doubted you are consistent across the suicide / homicide axis.
When you say:
"What's more important is that easy access to a gun dramatically raises the chances of a person going through with it and succeeding during a vulnerable moment instead of reconsidering." You're not just saying you'd like less suicides,
which no one disagrees with.
You're also implying preempting deaths is more important than preventing them, which I do disagree with, because preemption is always more coercive than prevention, therefore preemption will tend to be a net negative. For a ridiculous example, why not an eugenics program to remove impulsiveness from the population instead of gun control? Hopefully you find that offensive and likely to have unintended consequences even in an utopian "zap, we magically changed your personality" scenario. Should be helpful example to bring into contrast we likely disagree because of that dislike of weapons of yours - because weapons are designed for killing and you just don't see anything good in killing. I assume even in self-defense you are conflicted about it - which I would agree with actually.
I kind of expected both your answers you see. They mostly confirm my guesses, despite some nuances. You value life enough you find impulsive suicides something that should be preempted, but not highly enough that ponderate euthanasia, (and I have to assume ponderate suicides - despite your comment on experts' decision) should themselves be preempted. I mean, if you hindered / coerced people into not having ease of access to guns, why not hinder them in other ways if the outcome is net positive of keeping them alive longer? Force them to live in specially built safe bubbles perhaps. :) Anyway, the impulsiveness distinction is logically valid, if not really a super clear guideline for public policy as I'm sure you'll agree... and those euthanasia panels must be a really fun line of work, not at all likely to attract sadists...
On the preemption angle is where the larger contradiction comes into contrast and that was the main aspect I was getting at from a politico-moral perspective. The correlations between specific characteristics (you assumed racial, so I'll run with it despite larger taboos - medical insurance would be less controversial...) and crime statistics are common knowledge and factual. Deeper reasons don't really matter, if just like in the gun suicide topic you don't care about why of the suicides, just how - via guns - to advocate gun control. Ergo the correlation is enough - therefore for crime statistically dominated by / via race X, preemption rationales are logical and allow legal discrimination - for the common good of less crime.
Notice I didn't even clarify how profiling would be preemptive - minority report like maybe.
Yet you pretty much noticed / agreed how abusive of individual liberty generic profiling would be unless with specific contexts: airport location, nervousness, surveillance of some kind. Note also no such contextual distinctions were attempted by you for gun ownership...
To turn this away from the ugly topic of subculture crime, an actual example of racial profiling leading to preemptive action was the legal confinement of US citizens of Japanese ancestry during WW2. An ugly thing, but I expect for you making sure guns are not available is much less an infringement on liberty than confinement.
Sure, you might preempt some espionage by the abuse of liberty, just like I'm sure you might preempt some deaths with gun control. But we're being coercive and deciding on behalf of others what they can't do, because we presume to know the future better. Should be obvious I disagree, and in a consistent fashion. We may very well base
prevention measures on the objective facts - for example direct anti-suicide campaigns to focus on gun owners, increase the chances of random control checks based on racial crime statistics, assign counter espionage resources more to a specific population group than other.
But preemption is pretty much always coercive and therefore abusive. I think you don't really consider preemption immoral in a consistent fashion, and very likely you find weapons nasty, hence why with gun control you are ok with just proving guns enable suicides - which to be clear was never in dispute.
Anyway, that's the critical moral difference I see, and I'll let you have the final word I guess - it was a long ant and somewhat incoherent I'm sure. Bottom line:
The decision to risk a presumed higher likelihood of suicide should lie with the individual buying the gun, not with you or me. You should not coerce anyone out of owning weapons, just like I should not coerce anyone to own weapons.