On the Monday after Christmas a bullet left a firearm, traveled across two streets, a front yard, and a vacant lot before striking a house and hitting the head of a three-year-old Minneapolis boy, Terrell Mayes, who was climbing the stairs with his three other brothers to hide in a closet when they heard the first gunshots. Terrell died the next day. Had the bullet gone a little farther to the east, it would have missed the house and struck a neighboring elementary school.
Tragedies like this bring out both sides of the endless argument in the U.S. over guns, with local politicians and the police calling for the end of gun violence and with gun advocates reminding us that guns don't kill, people do. The standoff in the quarrel over guns suggests that we need to reframe the terms of the debate, and the case of this innocent boy getting shot inside his house suggests one way of doing so.
As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once put it, "guns don't kill people, bullets do." The problem of gun violence begins and ends with bullets, so let's focus on them.
It's cheap to buy handgun bullets, but the real cost of that one stray bullet is enormous. Let's leave aside the inestimable cost to Terrell's family of his death and look instead on the cost the rest of us will pay for his loss.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association calculated a mean medical cost per gunshot injury of about $17,000 in the United States in 1994 (almost $25,000 in today's dollars), producing $2.3 billion in lifetime medical costs, of which $1.1 billion or nearly half was paid by US taxpayers. The study concludes that "Gunshot injury costs represent a substantial burden to the medical care system."
Add to that the cost of police work related to gun violence and the cost of trying and possibly incarcerating shooters, which averages $43,000 annually, and a conservative estimate of the cost borne by our health and judicial system of that one stray bullet is $68,000 the first year and roughly two-thirds of that every year for as long as the perpetrator sits behind bars.
If we include the loss of projected lifetime earnings -- $1.2 million for high school grads and roughly double for college grads -- and the indirect costs of gun violence on people's stress levels and home values, the long-term costs skyrocket.
For those who shrug and say that this is the price we have to pay for our right to bear arms, let's look at that stray bullet in terms of another cherished freedom: our property rights. In architecture we spend a lot of time working within the property boundaries, and ensuring that homeowners receive the level of safety and security required by building codes.
But bullets respect no property rights. The bullet that killed Terrell flew across four pieces of private property and two public rights of way before it hit him. One bullet, in other words, can negate all that we have put in place to protect people and their property and, as such, it represents an abrogation of our freedom as much as a protection of it.
In 1993, Senator Moynihan proposed that the Federal government tax ammunition, with a 10,000 percent tax on the deadliest projectiles. The gun lobby called his proposal laughable, and it went nowhere, but it is an idea worth revisiting. Instead of taxing ammunition, we might consider a more market-driven alternative: charging the ammunition industry for the costs incurred when their products are used to kill or maim people.
We know who makes bullets and we know how much it costs us when criminals use their products to harm others. By charging the industry for these expenses, companies would have an incentive to put in place better precautions to prevent their products' misuse. It would also reduce the costs to taxpayers, while saving lives and improving the quality of life for the millions of people who live in fear of gun violence.
The constitution may give us the right to bear arms, but it doesn't guarantee us the right to have cheap bullets. Nor does it give some the right to violate the property rights of others with ammunition that make us unsafe in and around our own homes. By making the deadliest bullets cost prohibitive, we would do a lot to protect the constitutional rights of the rest of us.
Thomas Fisher is Dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota.
Follow Thomas Fisher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@MNDesignDean
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But, why stop with bullets? Sure newspapers have the right under the First Amendment to seditiously criticize the Obama Regime, but let's TAX THE INK they print with!
Such laws would essetially make guns only useful for the rich, since the poor could not afford bullets. Once again, we see the true face of gun control: Disarming the most likely victims of crime while the well connected get a free pass.
Color me shocked. Bought and paid for research from a political advocacy group giving a predetermined result.
Where did you see that???
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/282/5/447.full
point two....do you think if you raised the tax on cameras and computers it would stop child porn...
point three...if this is an example of your best thinking i would not want to live in or use anything designed by your graduates....
That makes equal sense.
1. "It's cheap to buy handgun bullets," When a 50 round box of Wolf Gold .357 Magnum is $27 or 50 round box of Remington 45 ACP is $34, ammunition is not cheap for an average joe such as myself. Maybe for someone like Mr. Fisher who has money lying around it is, but not for most people on tight budgets just trying to enjoy one of their rights that hasn't been completely infringed upon.
2. Lets punish everyone else for the criminal or negligent actions of one person. So does that mean that when a homeowner trips over a piece of furniture and breaks their neck after declining to first turn on the light before crossing that room that the interior design firm and its employees should be fined for the placement of the furniture the homeowner originally signed off on? Oh really, you don't think so Mr. Fisher? Ok then, stop pissing on everyone else because you don't share their same hobbies or interests like firearms.
This Huffington post can a real breeding ground for INGSOC "we know whats best for you" types who think they know how to write witty op eds.
Another avenue you could look into is reloading. I go into that to help off set the cost of all the ammunition I need to purchase. I currently reload for 14 different calibers, and have reloaded approximately 6,200 rounds. That was enough to pay for all the reloading equipment and then some. Reloading can save upto 3/4 of the cost of new factory loads. A very good example of this is the 45 Colt Shotshells I reload. A box of 10 usually costs about $15 now. I can reload the same box of 10 for about $4.
To off set the price of ammunition, I reload. And to further off set the cost I cast my own bullets for most of the calibers I have. All handgun calibers, and a couple rifle calibers as well.
How does you illegal taxations play into that? Or are you going to write, pass and enact a bill taxing each and every gun owner $100,000 per month to own
a gun?
I have another idea of a law that could be written, passed, and enacted. A law stating that the 1st Amendment right of free speech be limited to those who do not lie, or constrive to delude citizens in a topic on just emotional outbursts biased numbers, or misleading researches. In other words, Mr. Fisher, if you lie, mislead or purposely try to sway, by not stating actual hard facts and in a very non-emotional way, you lose your right to free speech. You would not be able to speak out in public about any current topic, nor be able to express opinion in public or in print on any other current event, say for 30 years.
And as such, Mr. Fisher, by writting this article, with the emotional outburst by you, under that particular law, you have just lost your right to free speech.
That sounds fair to me, and probably most other people out here.
All agreed.......AYE.
The Ayes have it. Motion passed. You lose.
But instead of being thoughtfull, in place of being insightfull, and displaying the outright emotions of being unintelliegnt, the author decide to blame something other than the actual person who did the shooting. He is blaming the bullets.
IT"S THE BULLETS FAULT. And insead of puninshing the one who actually responsible for the crime, lets pass this onto legal manufacturers, and legal honest law abiding gun owners.
Would Mr. Fisher call for passing the high costs of health car of people you were hit, or killed by drunk drivers onto the car companies? NO!
Would Mr. Fisher call for passing the same medical expenses onto the breweries and distilleries of alcohol for the same drunk driving accidents? NO!
I each he wants the ONE, the very person who is responsible for the crime to pay. But in cases like he cited, he wants everyone BUT the ONE person who is really resposible for the crime to pay.
And in this ridiculous outcry of unfounded emotional outlash towards the one who are NOT responsible is downright criminal in itself.