The
author's team performed an established economic analysis to estimate
the total costs of gun violence - not just the direct costs of law enf.,
ER visit, and justice/penal system processing, but also lost
productivity and diminished quality of life from long-term disability,
incarceration, and death (affecting not just the victim but their
family, workplace, and community). The article estimates that of the
~30K gun murders each year, on average it costs America $500K each. Add
to that the ~80K cases/year of serious injuries from guns, and the total
price tag is over $200B/year. That is 1/3 the value of Apple's stock,
and more than US medicine spends on obesity each year. It's freaking
huge.
But we're not talking about this because the
NRA
and others make the data so hard to access. And if people do try to
study it (like the CDC and Harvard School of Public Health and Obama's
recent
nominee
for Sgn. General), the gun lobby paints them as gun-control activists
with a political agenda. Conservatives want to cut waste and spending
left and right (social programs, research, etc.), but somehow the
military and guns are exempt?
BTW - the study also found a
correlation between states with weak gun laws and higher gun violence
costs per capita (LA, WY are the worst, while HI and MA are some of the
best - also with stricter gun laws). It's a no-brainer to us, but the
2nd Amendment crowd clings to the myth that more guns make you safer.
They might also argue - what about the economic savings from all the
crimes prevented by conscientious citizens with guns? Well there's just
no data to support that claim, if it's even true (which is doubtful).
You're much more likely to hurt yourself or a loved one than prevent a
crime with your gun.
----
For
a kid who turned 18 this year in Oakland, he or she lived through 111
kids getting killed in that city, not to mention the trauma that caused
for everyone else. At least Alameda County is deploying more mental
health resources for them now - but really this is an issue that no kid
should have to deal with. Especially if they're under 10, children often
can't deal with the difficult emotions generated from experiencing
violence, so their ability to learn is impaired and they may lash out in
negative ways.
----
NPR did a story based on this article and the most persuasive outcome,
to me, was that there needs to be science and data applied to this
stuff. One of the guests was talking about the idea that if you even
ask for data you are anti gun. That there is this all or nothing
approach. Why wouldn't the dates show all the loves being saved if guns
are great? Couldn't we also find that, for example, people with lots
of gun training have better outcomes related to fun violence? It seems
weird to assume data can only be anti gun.
----
Agreed. I guess it's like climate change and cop racism issues - if one
side of the argument is confident in their position, they should have no
problems whatsoever with full data transparency. When you are "trying
to hide something" and suppressing info, that is a tell-tale sign that
your argument has a problem. Actually if those folks really love gun
rights and "freedom", then they should welcome data transparency to help
improve gun use and gun culture in America (like a majority of NRA
members favor better background checks, but NRA leaders don't). Or do
they think that everything is OK? Don't they know that the most
successful (legit) companies and gov'ts in the last 50 years are
obsessed with data to help them succeed and improve?
Bottom
line, the gun industry/lobby's only goal is to sell more product. Gun
ownership in the US (as % of households) is on a huge decline since
WWII, partly driven by urbanization, less interest in hunting, and I
would like to believe social progress. But the # of guns in circulation
may have gone up, so someone is buying them. There are fewer gun owners
now, but they own more guns (and more deadly ones) per capita. Police
departments upgrade their guns more frequently, and lord knows where
their used guns go (I think there are accounts of cartels/gangs using
former US police firearms).
So to accomplish their goal, the gun
lobby has to oppose anything that would potentially hurt sales, and of
course social costs data is a big threat. And when the costs are so
obvious (even without hard data), they pull the freedom and liberty
card. Sure guns are destructive, but the costs are "worth it" because we
have to sacrifice to keep the communists from taking our freedoms. We
have to tolerate the side-effects of guns because I need to protect my
family from the bad guys. And when it's poor/black people shouldering
most of the costs, it's easier to ignore - until incidents like
Columbine and Sandy Hook happen, which affected affluent whites and
jarred the nation.
I use data to put food on
the table, so I'd like to think that I have some sense of "data ethics"
and best practices. When the pro-gun side decides to actually use data
in their arguments, I can honestly say that they are the worst in terms
of ethics and rigor. Total intellectual dishonesty (or maybe ignorance).
I have not read any NRA white papers (if there are any non-laughable
ones), so I am basing my judgment mostly on the sound bites you hear in
the gun debate.
Examples:
- "Chicago has strict gun laws, but they still have plenty of gang violence and murders, so gun laws don't work!"
Because we don't have borders. Thugs just have to buy a gun 30 miles
away in easier places like Indiana, and then drive back to the city to
shoot someone.
- "Since the Brady
Bill/Assault Weapons Ban expired, there have been fewer mass shootings,
so assault weapons in the hands of 'the good guys' is an effective
deterrent." Not enough sample size to assess a trend, and what
defines a "mass shooting"? Public mass shootings are fortunately still
pretty rare (it's much more common for someone to slaughter their family
in a private residence). But Mother Jones and Harvard ran a statistical
analysis to handle rare events, and they concluded that mass shootings
are actually more frequent after the loosening of gun laws. Of course
correlation is not causation, but it invalidates the pro-gun claim.
- "Guns don't kill people; people kill people - address the mental health and anger issues instead." But
guns kill people A LOT more effectively than a knife or bare hands. Yes
there will always be a baseline level of violence and murder intent in
any society, but if you restrict access to the murder tools, people
won't be able to carry them out as effectively. Look at AUS/UK vs. US.
Fairly similar culture, demos, etc., but we have all the guns and
murders. Canada is an exception (many guns, few murders), but there will
always be outliers.
