From jmf9 at cdc.gov Tue May 4 15:18:32 1999
I think it still makes sense to either get rid of most firearms
or severely regulate their use. IMHO, the immediate gain
(preventing injuries and deaths and their associated costs ($42
billion in 1996$s: my estimate, which I presented at a violence
prevention conference last week) far outweighs the adverse
impact such restrictions could have on our real ability to
protect ourselves from "tyranny."
If you change that slightly from "most firearms" to "the firearms used to cause the $42B of costs" then I'm with you all the way. Given that most gun crimes are committed with illegal or illegally purchased guns, I don't see how you can accomplish what you're talking about and still have it "make sense" ... since firearms are already "severely regulated" in most parts of the US I'm familiar with (except seemingly level-headed Vermont), I presume your real agenda is total eradication.
The fallacy, of course, is that "getting rid of most firearms" would result in the "prevention of injuries and deaths and their associated costs" ...
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I'm sort of interested in your methodology, though, since the only other similar number I could find was $3B, unless of course you're counting lost wages or something -- HCI of course inflates this to $75B when you include "lost quality of life" whatever that is. A URL would be great, thanks.
In quickly reviewing the claims about how much this all costs, an alarming (to me anyway) trend is to mention that 80-85% of this cost is charged to "taxpayers" -- meaning it was for care to people who are un- or under-insured. Which of course seems to indicate that the real issue here is that everyone shoudl be shocked that all these poor peopleare shooting each other and us upstanding taxpayers should do something about it, because can you believe we have to pay for it?
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This reminds me of the campaign in California to get people to conserve water during the most recent drought. "Don't water your lawns!" or "take faster showers!" or "don't flush so often!" were the slogans. The blame for not having water was put squarely on John & Jane Q. Public. Huge bilboards of leaky garden faucets with "Give the earth a good turn!" slogans on it. Of course, in California, 94% of the water consumed is by agribusiness, so even if California's 30M "other" users dropped their consumption of water to ZERO, the state would have "saved" all of 6%.
My (rejected) suggestion for a water-saving slogan was "Save 15%, stop trying to grow cotton in the fucking desert!" ...
98% water myself,
/jordan