Guns at Town Hall Meetings

It's not exactly news; in fact, the national media has been reporting for a least a couple of weeks that a handful of opponents of health care reform have been attending Obama town-hall meetings armed with handguns, presumably to protect themselves in the event that a death panel appears.

Such events have gotten me thinking about just how much handguns cost our current health care system and our society as a whole.

These thoughts led me to the work of Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig whose book,Gun Violence: The Real Costs(published by Oxford University), concludes that handguns cost America 100 billion dollars a year.

Here's a snippet of the review of the book from the Oxford University Press:

"Until now researchers have assessed the burden imposed by gunshot injuries and deaths in terms of medical costs and lost productivity. Here, economists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig widen the lens, developing a framework to calculate the full costs borne by Americans in a society where both gun violence and its ever-present threat mandate responses that touch every aspect of our lives.

All of us, no matter where we reside or how we live, share the costs of gun violence. Whether waiting in line to pass through airport security or paying taxes for the protection of public officials; whether buying a transparent book bag for our children to meet their school's post-Columbine regulations or subsidizing an urban trauma center, the steps we take are many and the expenditures enormous."

Perhaps a major facet in the heath care debate has been overlooked: the connection between our obsession with guns and the high price we pay for that obsession.