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​A Giant Step Forward In Forensic Science

Every day in the Untied States an average of 289 people are shot. Eighty-six of them die: 30 are murdered, 53 kill themselves, two die accidentally, and one is shot in a police intervention.

The annual price tag is staggering. In an April 15, 2015 article published in The Telegraph, Philip Sherwell wrote that the annual economic toll of the U.S. gun violence epidemic is $229 billion. 229 billion is another one of those numbers too big to comprehend. It is about the annual GDP of ​Portugal, and is $47 billion more than Apple Inc’s 2014 worldwide revenue.​

To put $229 billion in perspective; as I write this in early 2016, the world population is 7.3 billion. $229 billion is enough to give every man, woman, and child on the planet, thirty-one dollars and thirty-five cents. That is the cost of America’s gun violence.

Political lobbying has made accurate figures extremely difficult to find. But, from what is available, it would be reasonable to say that close to half of the cost is paid from public funds.

The Ballistic Identification Number/Ballistic Liability Insurance system will not stop gun violence, nor will it pay for all the damage, but if it reduces the drain on public funds by only ten percent it would return 6.5 billion dollars a year to communities across the country.

The Public Cost Of Gun Violence

According to The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, every year in the U.S. more than 100,000 people are victims of gun violence.