Earl Blumenauer: “a livable community is one where our families are safe, healthy, and economically secure. The Federal Government has an…”

“a livable community is one where our families are safe, healthy, and economically secure. The Federal Government has an obligation to be the best partner it can in helping create and maintain livable communities. A critical element in creating the climate in which a livable community can thrive is reducing the threat of gun violence. Since Richard Nixon was President of the United States, over a million Americans have lost their lives to gun violence. This is more than all the deaths in all the American wars since the Civil War. For every gun death, there are three to four injuries. Mr. Speaker, this is clearly a major threat to the health of our communities. One hesitates to put a dollar cost on such tragedy, but the fact is gun deaths are the most expensive trauma-related deaths, costing over a third of a million dollars. For each child shot by a gun, those injuries total what it would take to send them to college for a year. The total costs are over $4 billion a year. If we add all of the indirect costs, lost of productivity, it is over $100 billion by some estimates.”