Summary: | Each year in the United States around 35,000 people are killed as the result of gun violence, and another 100,000 or so suffer nonfatal gunshot injuries. While everyone agrees that these figures are too high, any attempts to reduce the number of gunshot injuries presents policy makers and citizens with difficult trade-offs. In this important new book Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig quantify the social costs of gun violence. Drawing on the most detailed and extensive economic study available, the authors show that the cost of gun violence is approximately $700,000 per injury. The also provide detailed information about how the burden of gun violence is distributed in the U.S. Based on this data, Cook and Ludwig assess the effectiveness of violence-reduction programs and make suggestions about how best to curb gun violence.
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