The Enormous Burden of Gun Violence in the U.S.

The destruction wrought by gun violence doesn’t end when the shooter is caught, killed or imprisoned. Its after-effects never seem to stop reverberating: the trauma and despair stays with the survivors, and the erosion of safe public spaces and civic institutions is everywhere evident. Parents fear sending their children to school; drivers fear that an angry glance at a stoplight or some inadvertent slight will escalate into fatal road rage; students who witness violence against neighbors, family and friends can’t concentrate in class; the list of situations goes on and on. Last month we witnessed the anniversary of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and the deaths by suicide of two students who survived the massacre but not the despair. It also brought the suicide of Jeremy RIchman, the father of a six year old killed at Sandy Hook in 2012. While the emotional costs are incalculable, other costs are not: in 2017 Health Affairs published a study estimating that the annual costs of firearms-related injuries in Emergency Department and inpatient hospital costs alone tallied $2.8 billion; a 2015 study by Mother Jones covered by Business Insider estimates that taxpayers shoulder $229 billion annually in costs related to gun violence to pay for everything from long term medical and disability expenses to emergency services, mental health and medical treatment, plus legal fees, prison costs and police investigations; and Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, citing the same Mother Jones study, notes that “Gun violence costs more than $700 per American every year, more than the total economic cost of obesity and almost as much as the annual price tag for the entire Medicaid program.”