Does a Fatal Shooting Really Cost More than $5 Million?
... From medical bills to incarceration costs to lost income, gun violence can keep exacting financial pain long after the victims have been buried or the bullet wounds have healed. That’s the main takeaway of “The cost of a bullet,” an impressive and important new series from the Providence Journal. In it, reporters W. Zachary Malinowski and Amanda Milkovits attempt to quantify just how much a typical gun incident costs Rhode Island...
... But even if you subtract quality of life costs and focus only on numbers for which someone might one day receive a bill, the cost of a bullet is still substantial. On Monday, Malinowski profiled a local man named Ray Duggan who was shot and paralyzed nine years ago; his injuries have cost taxpayers around $2.5 million. In the third part of the series, which ran today, Milkovits reported on how much an average shooting costs the criminal justice system. When a 12-year-old girl was shot to death in June, the investigation cost the police at least $29,600 in overtime pay. The ten-day trial cost at least $13,140. The shooter, who pleaded guilty, has been held in a correctional intake center since July, at a cost of $119.39 per day; once he moves to state prison, he will cost Rhode Island $62,730 per year.
This is fascinating stuff, and I recommend that you read the whole thing. The next step would be to try and determine roughly how much money tougher gun control legislation would save the state and the nation. If the emotional argument for gun control doesn’t sway legislators, maybe a financial one would.
Read More: http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/10/15/gun_violence_ted_r_miller_does_a_fatal_shooting_really_cost_more_than_5.html?wpisrc=burger_bar
