Gun violence costs America $229 billion a year

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last updated 15 April 2015

A sobering investigation from Mother Jones found that gun violence costs $700 per American per year. Gun violence's total $229 billion price tag is more than the cost of obesity ($224 billion), and almost as much as the cost of Medicaid ($251 billion).

How did Mother Jones come up with that $229 billion figure? Well, relatively little of it — just $8.6 billion — is direct costs such as prison for people who commit homicides using guns. The bulk is all "indirect costs" — including $169 billion for the "impact on victims' quality of life," and $49 billion a year in lost wages.