2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
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Here we have a look at how much money, and how many lives are saved by Armed American citizens....
Annual Defensive Gun Use Savings Dwarf Study's "Gun Violence" Costs - The Truth About Guns
Our man Bruce Krafft ā whose posts we dearly miss ā did the math back in 2012. Here it is:
Our fearless leader suggested that I take a look at the flip side of the antiās 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 āfactā 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).
Itās one of the antisā 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 letās 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 āprobablyā and āmight haveā 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 āreasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harmā 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 government, 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 personās lifeāas āgun violenceā predominantly affects younger demographicsāthat 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 per year. Thatās trillion. With a āTā.
I was going to go on and calculate the costs of incarceration ($50K/year) saved by people killing 1527 criminals annually, and then look at the lifetime cost to society of an average criminal (something in excess of $1 million). But all of that would be a drop in the bucket compared to the $1,000,000,000,000 ($1T) annual benefit of gun ownership.
When compared to the (inflation adjusted from 2002) $127.5 billion ācostā of gun violence calculated by by our Ludwig-Cook buddies, guns save a little more than eight times what they ācost.ā
Which, I might add, is completely irrelevant since āthe freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right ā subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility.ā
So even taking Motherboardās own total and multiplying it by 100, the benefits to society of civilian gun ownership dwarf the associated costs.
Annual Defensive Gun Use Savings Dwarf Study's "Gun Violence" Costs - The Truth About Guns
Our man Bruce Krafft ā whose posts we dearly miss ā did the math back in 2012. Here it is:
Our fearless leader suggested that I take a look at the flip side of the antiās 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 āfactā 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).
Itās one of the antisā 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 letās 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 āprobablyā and āmight haveā 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 āreasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harmā 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 government, 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 personās lifeāas āgun violenceā predominantly affects younger demographicsāthat 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 per year. Thatās trillion. With a āTā.
I was going to go on and calculate the costs of incarceration ($50K/year) saved by people killing 1527 criminals annually, and then look at the lifetime cost to society of an average criminal (something in excess of $1 million). But all of that would be a drop in the bucket compared to the $1,000,000,000,000 ($1T) annual benefit of gun ownership.
When compared to the (inflation adjusted from 2002) $127.5 billion ācostā of gun violence calculated by by our Ludwig-Cook buddies, guns save a little more than eight times what they ācost.ā
Which, I might add, is completely irrelevant since āthe freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right ā subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility.ā
So even taking Motherboardās own total and multiplying it by 100, the benefits to society of civilian gun ownership dwarf the associated costs.
