This week, the magazine Mother Jones published an article on the dollar cost of gun violence in America. The article can be viewed here.
The article is detailed, and I will only present the highlights here.
* Reporters at Mother Jones magazine collaborated with economist Ted Miller of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (a non-profit public health and safety think tank) to calculate the yearly dollar cost of gun violence in America.
* Since the year 2000, over 100,000 Americans are shot every year, and over 30,000 Americans die from their shooting injuries. The majority of fatal shootings are due to an act of suicide, not from criminal violence.
* The direct costs of gun violence were calculated as costs due to emergency services, medical care, police investigations, and court and incarceration costs. American tax-payers pay about 87% of these costs. When it was all added up, the total direct costs of gun violence were found to be $8.6 billion per year. The average direct cost of a single homicide is over $440,000 – the majority of which pays for long-term incarceration for the shooter. On average, there are 32 homicides in America every day.
* The indirect costs of gun violence were calculated as lost wages for the person shot, lost productivity and other costs for the employer of the person shot, and costs due to a reduced quality of life for the person shot (calculated based on jury awards for pain and suffering in cases of wrongful injury or death). These indirect costs were found to be $221 billion per year: about $49 billion in lost wages, and $169 billion in reduced quality of life for the person shot.
* The average direct and indirect cost of every shooting death is $6 million; The average cost of every shooting injury requiring hospitalization is over $500,000.
* The costs for gun violence per tax-payer in states with permissive gun laws is greater – in some cases five times greater – than the cost per tax-payer in states with restrictive gun laws. Wyoming residents pay a whopping $1,400 per person for gun violence, even though the state has low levels of crime.
* In sum, America pays $229 billion per year for gun violence. In contrast, the federal government budgeted $141 billion last year for spending on education, the total yearly costs to Americans due to obesity have been estimated at $234 billion, and the total yearly costs due to tobacco smoking have been estimated at $289 billion.
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