Gun Violence Statistics and Studies

ECONOMIC COSTS OF GUN VIOLENCE

Medical costs of gun violence put a terrible burden on health service providers and governments. When indirect costs of gun violence - loss of productivity, mental health treatment and rehabilitation, legal and judicial costs - are figured in, gun violence costs the US at least $100 billion annually.¹

Medical Costs

The average costs for treating gunshot wounds are:

- $22,400 each for unintentional shootings
- $18,400 each for gun-assault injuries

- $ 5,400 each for suicides.²

Over the course of the lives of gunshot victims in the United States in 1997, medical treatment alone will amount to $1.9 billion.³

Over the course of one year, the medical and productivity costs of intentional firearm injury (murder and suicide) reach $34 billion.⁴

Other Indirect Costs
Along with direct medical costs, gun violence involves loss of productivity, mental health care, emergency transport, and insurance administration. A 1997 study estimated direct and indirect medical costs at:

- $2.8 million per firearms fatality
- $249,000 per hospitalization for gunshot wounds
- $ 73,000 per emergency room visit and release for gunshot wounds.⁵

With the cost of health skyrocketing, these costs are far higher today.

The Los Angeles Times found in a shooting of a teenage victim who survived as a paraplegic that medical care, disability payments, rehabilitation, police and trial costs amounted to $1,091,768.⁶ The Washington Post ⁷ and U.S. News and World Report ⁸ have both found total costs in similar cases to exceed $1 million.

Costs only for young people under the age of 24 have reached $41 billion.⁹

Who Pays?
Most victims of gun violence are uninsured and the public pays.

- Of an estimated $2.3 billion in medical costs in 1994, U. S. taxpayers paid roughly 50 percent.¹⁰

Endnotes:
1.    Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, Gun Violence: The Real Costs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, 11.
2.    Ibid, 65.
3.    Ibid.
4.    Phaedra S. Corso, James A Mercy, Thomas R. Simon, Eric A. Finkelstein, Ted Miller, “Medical Costs and Productivity Losses Due to Interpersonal and Self-Directed Violence in the United States,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 32 (2007): 474-482.
4.    Ted R. Miller and Mark A. Cohen, "Costs of Gunshot and Cut/Stab Wounds in the United States, With Some Canadian Comparisons", 29, Accident Analysis and Prevention 329 (1997), 329-41.
5.    Bob Sipchen, "Putting a Price Tag on Violence", Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1994, A22.
6.    Allan Lengel, "The Price of Urban Violence: Bullet Shatters a Teen; Taxpayers Get the Bill", Washington Post, December 28, 1997, B1.
7.    Susan Headden, "Guns, Money & Medicine", U.S. News & World Report, July 1, 1996, 30.
8.    Miller and Cohen.
10.  Philip Cook, Bruce Lawrence, Jens Ludwig, Ted Miller, "The Medical Costs of Gunshot Injuries in the United States," JAMA 282:5 (1999):447.