Defensive Gun Uses Save the U.S. One Trillion Dollars Per Year

Our fearless leader suggested that I take a look at the flip side of the anti’s latest attack on our freedoms (a recycled strategy from the Clinton-era Public Health model of gun control): the monetary cost of gun violence. For example, the Center for American Progress touted the “fact” that the Virginia Tech massacre cost taxpayers $48.2 million (including autopsy costs and a fine against Virginia Tech for failing to get their skates on when the killer started shooting). It’s one of the antis’ favorite tricks: cost benefit analysis omitting the benefit side of the equation. So what are the financial benefits of firearm ownership to society? Read on . . .

In my post Dennis Henigan on Chardon: Clockwork Edition, I did an analysis of how many lives were saved annually in Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs). I used extremely conservative numbers. Now I am going to use some less conservative ones.

The Kleck-Gertz DGU study estimated that there are between 2.1 and 2.5 million DGUs a year in the U.S. The Ludwig-Cook study came up with 1.46 million. So let’s split the difference and call it 1.88 million DGUs per year.

In the K-G article Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun, 15.7 percent of people who had a DGU reckoned they almost certainly saved a life. Ignoring the ‘probably’ and ‘might have’ saved a life categories for simplicity, 15.7 percent of 1.88 million gives us 295,160 lives saved annually.

[NB: A number of people have questioned the 15.7 percent stat. Remember: many states regard the mere act of pulling a gun on someone a form of deadly force. In addition, virtually every jurisdiction in the nation requires that an armed self-defender must be in "reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm" before using (or in some places even threatening to use) deadly force.]

How can we get a dollar figure from 1.88 million defensive gun uses per year? Never fear, faithful reader, we can count on the .gov to calculate everything.

According to the AZ state gov’t, in February of 2008 a human life was worth $6.5 million. Going to the Inflation Calculator and punching in the numbers gives us a present value of $6.93 million.

So figuring that the average DGU saves one half of a person’s life—as“gun violence” predominantly affects younger demographics—that gives us $3.465 million per half life.

Putting this all together, we find that the monetary benefit of guns (by way of DGUs) is roughly 1.02 trillion dollars per year. Trillion. With a ‘T’.

The ineffectiveness of this argument is that no left-wing, liberal, has ever been swayed by facts, by the truth, on any subject, no matter what. The adage that liberals don't think, they simply emote in pavlovian, knee-jerk demeanor, impervious to logic, reason and rule of law is particularly intractable to their brain-addled consciences. Another reason this argument makes no difference to liberal mind-think is that "saving" and money are mutually exclusive. Money exists only as a tool in which to spend never to save.

Let's say we can prevent 20,000 serious assaults or shootings per year. If a typical shooting victim spends 2-4 days in the hospital and needs surgery, along with er fees, radiology, labs, pathology, room and board etc. You are probably looking at $40-50,000.00. This alone is 1 billion dollars saved in medical costs that would most likely be eaten by the hospital

Now also factor in time lost from work, rehab costs, long term medical care, plus the cost for criminal investigations that 1 billion is probably around 10 billion. There is also the savings when a victim kills the criminal as that person doesn't need to be in prison for life and a huge burden on tax payers.

The author omits quite a bit in savings from Defensive Gun Uses.

Police investigations not performed. Many DGUs prevent crimes that are never reported and thus never investigated.

Insurance claims not filed or paid. Some DGUs prevent home invasions and burglaries. These preventions of this crime prevent thefts that would have been submitted to insurance companies for compensation.

Medical expenses not incurred when DGUs prevent assault that would require hospitalization or out patient services.

These are some huge expenses that are not incurred because of DGUs that I can think of in just a few minutes. I am sure others can come up with more.

He missed a whole heck of a lot of savings by noting just the defensive savings. However, there are a huge number of “offensive” savings as well.

1) Every time a violent criminal kills another violent criminal, which is a huge percentage of the homicides committed in the US every year, the taxpayer is still saved the cost of incarcerating the dead criminal. Likewise, the killer is that much closer to being arrested before he can attack innocent people.

2) Criminals who kill other criminals often prefer head shots, which has the added bonus of *making available* tens of thousands of dollars worth of usable human organs into the organ transplant market. This *saves* many lives a year.

3) The biggest savings of all is invisible, however. This is in crimes that never happen in the first place, because criminals are too afraid of an armed public willing to interfere with their crimes.

You’ll note that more and more, hate crimes are committed not by individuals, but by groups that act like predator animals, selectively choosing someone who looks weak and alone. This is an indicator of fear on the part of the criminals.

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