GUNSThe Business Case for Reducing Gun Violence
While gun violence in the United States continues to claim lives at an alarming rate, it is also taking a quiet toll on the U.S. economy, according to new research. The research found that the toll of U.S. firearms injuries on the U.S. economy reaches billions of dollars annually.
While gun violence in the United States continues to claim lives at an alarming rate, it is also taking a quiet toll on the U.S. economy, according to new research by Zirui Song, associate professor of health care policy in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and associate professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
In 2020, according to a PEW Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries in the United States — more than any other year on record.
Another study found that the United States accounted for 73 percent of mass shootings and 62 percent of related fatalities in developed countries between 1998 and 2019.
Song’s work has focused on the somewhat hidden aspects of firearm injuries, revealing that the cost of gun violence is far greater than the loss of human life alone. Earlier this year, he and colleagues delved into the long-term repercussions of firearm injuries for those who survive them.
In his newest paper, published Sept. 27 in JAMA, Song reported that the overall economic cost of firearm injuries in the United States has been estimated at $557 billion annually, or 2.6 percent of gross domestic product. Eighty-eight percent of this cost is attributed to quality-of-life losses among those injured by firearms and their families. Yet, Song said, the business case for reducing firearm injuries has remained largely unaddressed.
From his latest work, Song reported that:
· Among U.S. companies with employer-sponsored health insurance, the rate of total firearm injuries in employees and dependents increased more than fourfold from 2007 to 2020 — from 2.6 to 11.7 per 100,000 insurance enrollees.
· Each nonfatal firearm injury leads to roughly $30,000 in direct health care spending per survivor in the first year alone. That is a more than 400 percent increase in health care spending from the pre-injury baseline, relative to peer workers who did not sustain firearm injuries.
· The direct first-year medical spending for treating a firearm injury likely already exceeds the average first-year spending on other common conditions that employers have long aimed to prevent, such as nonfatal myocardial infarction and heart failure.
