Bait and Switch
A Lesson in Exaggerating Benefits and Hiding Costs
by dischord
(distribution permitted and encouraged)

Violence Policy Center, which surprisingly enough still openly advocates a total ban of handguns, recently had the following to say about the supposed monetary benefits of such a ban (http://www.vpc.org/studies/unsafe.htm).

“If a handgun ban were enacted, what should be done about the existing supply of some 65 million civilian-owned handguns? Could the nation afford to eliminate them through a program? Since many handguns began as cheap “junk guns,” a generous estimate of the average buy-back price would be $250. The total tab would be about $16.25 billion, which is slightly more than three SSN-21 nuclear attack submarines. Considering that by conservative estimates America spends $4 billion annually on medical care for gun violence victims, the cost of a buy-back could be recouped in a few years.”

Zowie-Wowie ? $4 billion saved in medical costs over 5 years is $20 billion! Ban those handguns now, and by 2005, we could run a surplus on this project. Imagine all the chickens in our pots and squiggly puppies for our children that the big beneficent gub’ment could provide.

Well, no.

First, the $16.25 billion cost of the ban is not the total cost. It is but a part ? the “buy back” price.

VPC fails to consider the cost to handle the collection of guns, the cost of issuing tens of millions of checks or otherwise distribute the money, the cost of destroying or storing the guns, the cost of verifying that the ban is complete, the cost of forcibly collecting guns that citizens refuse to turn in, the cost of shutting down black market channels of new guns, the cost of lost income tax as some workers in the firearm industry lose their jobs, the cost of paying some of those people unemployment, the cost of lost sales tax because handguns, accessories and some ammo will be forced into the untaxed black market.

I’ve probably left out a bunch of costs myself, but you start to get the idea that VPC’s $16.25 billion price tag would soar to hundreds of billions of dollars.

Second, the $4 billion a year savings is exaggerated. Foremost, VPC gets this figure from a 1995 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association which estimated the medical cost of gunshot for 1995 would be $4 billion based on 1990-1992 costs at a single California university hospital projected to the number of nationwide gunshots. But where do they get this number?

This projection was made in 1995 when the most recent available data represented the peak of gunshot in 1993. We’d cut those rates by nearly 33% by 1998 (most recent data) and likely are approaching a 50% reduction today. Thus, even factoring in increased costs of medical care, the real medical cost of gunshot *today* is much lower than that $4 billion projection.

Third, whether $4 billion or lower, that figure is the maximum *potential* savings, not the actual savings we’d see. The figure represent the extreme end of a spectrum from $0 to $4 billion. There is no way that we’d hit that extreme, and I believe that it is more likely to be rather close to $0. Here?s why — each of the following factors would move us farther and farther from $4 billion:

Some currently legal guns would remain in circulation and be involved in shootings. A black market would open up, and new illegal guns would be involved in even more shootings. Some homicides and attempted homicides would occur anyway through weapon substitution. Some “saved” gunshot victims will get sick or hurt anyway in manners unrelated to firearms. Most of the suicides and attempted suicides (half of all gunshots, incidentally) still would occur anyway since people who shoot themselves are people who really want to die rather than are just crying for help. Violence rates would rise, as always happens when a government ban creates a black market over which organized criminals fight. Some people who would have protected themselves with guns would be hurt and hospitalized. And so on.

Thus, VPC’s contention that the monetary cost of a gun ban would be made back in just a few years is absurd. It would take centuries. More likely, we’d never see the money recoupedt, and we’d make more than a one-time payment. Rather the ban would follow the course of alcohol and drug prohibitions, in which the government spends billions of dollars year after year without success.

There are multiple line items on each side of this economic comparison, and VPC pretends there?s only one on each side. Talk about bait and switch. It?s as if a salesman tries to lure us in with a promise that if we make a one time payment of $4, we?ll stop paying $1 per year. We find out that we?ll really be spending over $100 per year indefinitely and be saving but a few cents a year.

And that leads me to where I always end up. It’s all about saving lives.

We have only a limited amount of money to spend on saving lives no matter if we think “any amount is worth it.” We’ve cut not only firearm-related violence but all violence by at least 33% and perhaps as much as 50%. If we enacted a handgun ban that would divert hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of government workers, we would have to stop or severely limit the programs that actually are working for a lot less money.

That’s the choice: Make ourselves *feel* safer with an astonishingly costly gun ban that is doomed to failure or make ourselves *actually* safe for less money by continuing with what we?re already found works.