Data collected by the Florida Department of Health has found that four out of every ten people who are rushed to a Florida hospital with a nonfatal gunshot injury were unintentionally shot. In Orange County, Florida that number jumps to more than half of the people treated for nonfatal gunshot injuries.
In addition to leaving injuries which can be permanent, these gunshot wounds cost more than $57 million. The average unintentional gunshot patient admitted to a hospital in Florida required $85,024 in care. Half of that was borne by government providers such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Orlando police chief blamed the high Orange County numbers on the prevalence of firearms there. "Obviously, if you have a higher rate of firearms in a state or county or city, there's going to be a higher rate of nonfatal gun accidents," he said.
He urged gun owners to be responsible, to know at all times where their weapons are and to properly secure them. He added that his officers are finding and seizing too many stolen guns.
A University of Miami pediatrician commented, "We know how to prevent this. We should be reducing access to loaded firearms."
3 comments:
Color me skeptical. We have about 600 fatal firearms accidents in the United States each year.
We have about 9,000 firearms homicides each year, and from 500,000 to 3 million defensive uses of firearms each year.
The idea that half of non-fatal firearms injuries are accidental strains credibility, especially when you consider the strong incentive to lie about the cause if the person injured was involved in a criminal act at the time of the injury.
I would also be interested in how many unintentional shootings are among people who were allowed to have their guns or had legally obtained guns.
I am all for gun safety, think everyone should get training on gun safety (which is distinct from mandating it) and own plural safes for my guns, keeping everything that is not on my person locked up.
However these statistics sound awefully odd from my experience. I think the statistics would change sharply if you omitted guns possessed by felons illegally, unintentional shootings occurring inside dwellings that contain criminal activity (drug trade) and unintentional shootings among groups who are not allowed to have the weapons involved (such as a group of teenagers with an illegally obtained handgun.
The reason behind that ratio is the poor or no knowledge about firearms. That is why many firearms schools are there which are conducting firearms safety courses so that people can never fall victim of any crime, do the self defense from criminals, and know how to handle the guns. Firearms accidents won't happen if everybody knows how to safely handle the gun for the safety of the self and family.
Thanks for this informative blog post.
Regards,
Jacky
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