01-08-2013, 01:25 AM
stokesrj Wrote:There is a pattern here, long rap sheet, recently released from prison. I wonder what percentage of shootings are accounted for, if you exclude repeat offenders, out of jail because a liberal judge let them loose. I've seen it written that it is upwards of 80% but, no verifiable data cited.
The long answer, older data from the 90's, but still consistent with today's trends:
Quote:...Economic analysis
The actual economic cost of medical care for gun violence is approximately $1.5-billion per year32 - about 0.16% of Americas $900-billion annual health care costs. To exaggerate the costs of gun violence, the advocates of gun prohibition routinely include estimates of lost lifetime earnings - assuming that gangsters, drug dealers, and rapists would be as socially productive as teachers, factory workers, and other good Americans - to generate inflated claims of $20-billion or more in costs.32 One recent study went so far as to claim the costs of work time lost while workers gossip about gun violence.33
What evidence is there that the average homicide decedent can be fairly compared to the average worker, that average wages should be attributed to homicide victims? What fraction of homicide victims are actually innocent children who strayed into gunfire? Far from being pillars of society, more than two-thirds of gun homicide victims are involved with drug trafficking or have evidence of ante-mortem illicit drug use.34,35 In one study, 67% of 1990 homicide victims had a criminal record, averaging 4 arrests for 11 offenses.35 Such active criminals cost society not only untold human suffering, but also an average economic toll of $400,000 per criminal per year before apprehension and $25,000 per criminal per year while in prison.36 It is not a slander on the few truly innocent - and highly sensationalized - victims to note that the overwhelming predominance of homicide victims are as predatory and socially aberrant as the perpetrators of homicide. Cost-benefit analysis is necessarily a bit hardhearted, and, though repugnant for physicians to consider monetary savings alone, the advocates of gun prohibition routinely force us to address the costs of gun violence. So, we are forced to notice that, in cutting their violent careers short, the gun deaths of those predators and criminals may actually represent an economic savings to society on the order of $4.5 billion annually - three times the declared costs of guns.
Those annual cost savings are only a small fraction of the total economic savings from guns, because the $4.5 billion does not include the additional financial savings from the innocent lives saved, injuries prevented, medical costs averted, and property protected by guns. If we applied the prohibitionists methods33 to compute the savings by guns, we would find that the annual savings approach $1/2 trillion, about 10% of the US Gross Domestic Product. [emphasis original] We perform this exercise only to demonstrate that all such virtual reality estimates of indirect costs and savings are inflated and to condemn them all as meaningless.
Whether by human or economic measure, we conclude that guns offer a substantial net benefit to our society. Some quality of life benefits, such as the feeling of security and self-determination that accompany protective gun ownership, are not easily quantified. There is no competent research that suggests making good citizens access to guns more difficult (whether by bureaucratic paperwork, exorbitant taxation, zoning laws, contrived application of environmental or consumer product safety statutes, reframing the debate as a public health issue, or outright bans - the current tactics of the anti-self-defense lobby37) will reduce violence. No matter what tactics are used by the anti-self-defense lobby to incrementally achieve citizen disarmament, it is only good citizens who comply with gun laws, so it is only good citizens who are disarmed by gun laws. As evidenced by jurisdictions with the most draconian gun laws (e.g. New York City, Washington, DC, etc.), disarming these good citizens before violence is reduced causes more harm than good. Disarming these good citizens costs more - not fewer - lives....
32 Max W and Rice DP. Shooting in the dark: estimating the cost of firearm injuries. Health Affairs. 1993; 12(4): 171-85.
33 Nieto M, Dunstan R, and Koehler GA. Firearm-related violence in california: incidence and economic costs. Sacramento CA: California Research Bureau, California State Library. October 1994.
34 McGonigal MD, Cole J, Schwab W, Kauder DR, Rotondo MF, and Angood PB. Urban firearms deaths: a five-year perspective. J Trauma. 1993; 35(4): 532-36.
35 Hutson HR, Anglin D, and Pratss MJ. Adolescents and children injured or killed in drive-by shootings in Los Angeles. N Engl J Med. 1994; 330: 324-27.
36 Zedlewski EW. Making confinement decisions - research in brief. Washington DC: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. July 1987.
37 Sugarmann J and Rand K. Cease Fire - A comprehensive strategy to reduce violence. Washington DC: Violence Policy Center. 1993.
Excerpted from:
Suter EA, Waters WC 4th, Murray GB, Hopkins CB, Asiaf J, Moore JB, Fackler M, Cowan DN, Eckenhoff RG, Singer TR, et al.
Violence in America. Effective solutions.
J Med Assoc Ga. 1995 Jun;84(6):253-63. Review.
PMID: 7616135 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]