What is the cost of a single gunshot?
A quick check of Ammo.com — which proclaims itself as the “best source for discount ammo” — tells us we can buy a bullet for a .357-caliber Magnum for about 63 cents.
That’s what it costs to buy a single bullet. But what changes when one human being, gun in hand, shoots that bullet and it strikes another human being?
The true cost of a single bullet might shock you.
Let’s start with the costs of physical treatment. According to a 2017 Johns Hopkins University study, emergency medical treatment for gunshot wounds averages out to $5,254. Of course, these primary interventions are just the beginning of attending to physical healing. Based on a sample of more than 700,000 American gunshot victims — contemplate that for a moment — researchers determined inpatient charges average $95,887. One 63-cent bullet leads to more than $100,000 in hospital bills.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg of the cost of one bullet.
For every person shot in the state of Illinois, costs accrue in multiple places. There are costs to families directly affected, or, even worse, to families who survive the loss of a loved one. Shootings also affect a neighborhood, taking a toll on commerce, eroding a sense of public safety and eviscerating a community’s mental health.
Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for gun control, has an online tool for calculating the overall economic impact of a gunshot. The calculator factors in the widening ripple effect of a bullet’s launch from a chamber: the immediate costs of hospital treatment and police response; second-level expenditures related to long-term physical and mental health care, institutional care, foregone earnings and criminal justice costs; and long-term quality-of-life costs for pain and suffering over a victim’s lifetime. According to the calculator, every person shot in Illinois who is lucky enough to survive results in a total cost of $845,013. If that person is killed, the costs escalate to more than $16 million, $800,000 of which are costs borne by taxpayers: first responders, ambulances, police, investigations and criminal justice services.
While the cost of human life is all that matters, the spending on resources after a shooting is enormous.
And this staggering cost of a single gunshot does not factor in the long-term effects on quality of life: the pain and suffering of those who witness a shooting, those whose families were involved in the shooting and the neighborhoods where shootings occur. Anyone who has witnessed gun violence knows it causes life-altering trauma. As Everytown explains, “The collective trauma we all feel when a mass shooting, homicide, or suicide occurs certainly isn’t free.”
What we have learned from members of our faith community is borne out by research: Gun violence takes a toll, a serious emotional, physical and financial toll, on an entire community. Under Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the city created an initiative called the Ripple Effect to bring to life stories of these widening ripples by placing them throughout the city; the staggering headline reads, “Constant fear can cause chronic illness.”
Entire neighborhoods, with more unfortunately being added every day, suffer from this chronic affliction. This mostly untreated illness spreads too easily. The long-term, often hidden, costs of firearm injuries include worse mental health, substance use disorders and higher health care spending for survivors, as well as increased mental health disorders for their significant others and children, according to new research by investigators at Harvard Medical School.
As President Joe Biden said a few weeks ago, “What’s the difference between the post-traumatic stress that a soldier meets in the hills of Afghanistan, and a fourth grade kid meets in a classroom when they have to duck and cover?”
Our answer? Not much.
The trajectory of a single 63-cent bullet can take a single life, and affect many more. That is the only cost that really matters.
But what is the cost of preventing that 63-cent bullet from being fired from its chamber? If a single homicide costs the system more than $16 million, how much does it cost to prevent a single gunshot?
Over the next four weeks, here on the Sunday Opinion pages of the Tribune, you can start to explore the many answers to this question. A weekly spotlight this month will shine on many excellent violence prevention leaders and advocates here in our city; they have much to teach us, and we have collective action we should take based on their sage advice.
Regardless of the cost of a single bullet, our real goal should be to make sure bullets are never fired at human beings. While it’s important to recall Benjamin Franklin’s advice that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, we know from our faith traditions that the one who saves a single life is like the one who saves the entire world.
Yes, the financial costs of gun violence are immense and charged to every taxpayer in Chicago, but the uncalculated cost that no one is talking about is the all-too-human cost of broken dreams, depression and traumatized victims and communities. Every life we lose makes us a little less a city.
And so we look forward to learning, alongside you, dear reader, about the many ways we can save our city, and the world, together this summer.
Chicago faith leaders Rabbi Seth Limmer and the Revs. Otis Moss III, Ciera Bates-Chamberlain and Michael Pfleger joined the Tribune’s opinion section last summer for a series of columns on potential solutions to Chicago’s chronic gun violence problem. The column continues on an occasional basis.
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