According to Medical experts:
Many people feel that having a gun provides greater safety for them and their family. Actually, having a firearm in the home escalates the risk for death or injury, while using it to shoot someone who endangers the household is much less common. The resultant injuries, deaths, emotional turmoil, and/or disabilities lead to greater utilization of health care and legal/police services. Payment for these expenses is provided by higher insurance premiums and tax rates. This financial aspect has become a part of our country's current political concern over firearm ownership rights, gun violence or regulation, health care costs, the economy, and taxes....
The article lists mind-numbing numbers of injuries and deaths caused by guns. Of course, gun rights advocates don;t bother to contest these numbers. They argue instead that it is a cost of having the right to "a well-regulated militia" a need which they offer to meet with unregulated, untrained, unregistered or liscenced citizen soldiers regardless of whether they can hit a target the size of a barn.
Taxpayers often bear a large percentage of these financial burdens; thus this matter is a hot political topic nationally. In Kentucky in 2008, 73% of gunshot victims were uninsured, 10% were covered by governmental plans, and 17% were insured.[18] Nationally, data reported in 2001 documented that government programs pay for about 49% of this amount, 18% is covered by private insurance, and 33% by all other sources.[19] Past medical bills are reflected in future insurance rates.[2]
Gun violence costs about 2.4 billion dollars annually to the criminal justice system in America, which is almost equal to all other crimes put together.[19] Each homicide results in approximately $244,000 of incarceration expenses for our taxpayers. Indirect costs are high as well; for example, local governments across our country spend up to $100 million each year just on bulletproof vests.[19] Most of these bills are then passed on to the taxpayers.
Guns, purchased for protection, paradoxically result in increased rates of injury or death to the owners and their families. Since firearm possession is related to a high occurrence of domestic violence, restriction of access is sometimes suggested as a prevention policy. That, however, remains politically sensitive despite public wishes to reduce the costs of medical care and insurance. Availability tends to increase crime rates and the presence of these dangerous weapons escalates rates of both morbidity and mortality. Shootings are often precipitated during the commission of other crimes.[9] Clearly, guns are easily available to the at-risk population; yet gun control remains generally unpopular. Firearm possession does not appear to yield safety. Documentation evidences that the presence of guns and injuries are correlated,[17] and are thus related to medical attention and disability costs.
