What to Know Today
The cost of surviving a mass shooting. Hospitals often charge patients injured in a mass shooting tens of thousands of dollars for initial treatment. That doesn’t account for the other, frequently lifelong costs of surviving, like follow-up surgeries, disabilities that prevent a return to work, and mental health care. It’s a pricey recovery for an impossible-to-predict situation, CNN reports, and one that’s affecting a growing number of Americans.
Half of Virginia Beach’s Mass Shooting Commission has resigned. The resignations come amid allegations that the panel is failing to conduct a thorough investigation of a May 2019 mass shooting by a city employee at a municipal building, The Virginian-Pilot reports. A former commission member wrote to the state attorney general, “I have concerns that the commission’s work is being obstructed from within, either deliberately or due to negligence.”
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An earlier criminal case against the alleged Colorado Springs shooter was dropped. Why? Newly unsealed court records show that last year’s case against the suspect — involving an alleged kidnapping and armed stand-off with a SWAT team — fell apart when family members refused to testify. Documents in the case shed light on an alleged pattern of violent behavior shielded from authorities, CPR News reports. “Second Amendment sanctuary”: It appears that a red flag order could have been used against the suspected shooter — and local officials may have chosen not to.
Hawaii’s Big Island has new gun restrictions. The county’s “sensitive locations” law — a response to the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision — limits the places where concealed weapons can be carried, Honolulu Civil Beat reports. The measure also requires conspicuous signs if concealed carry is not allowed on a private property open to the public.
In D.C., the number of young people shot and killed has more than doubled this year. Sixteen people under 18 died by gunfire in the city before December 1, according to police data provided to The Washington Post, and nonfatal shootings in this age group also increased 80 percent compared with the same period in 2021. As The Trace’s Fairriona Magee reported in September, nearly one-third of Gen Zers say they’ve experienced gun violence personally. Are the kids all right? Historically, young people are responsible for a small portion of U.S. shootings and homicides. That’s still the case today, even as politicians and the media scapegoat young people for the country’s gun violence crisis: In D.C., people under 18 make up less than a quarter of all arrests in violent incidents.
Data Point
>$64,900 — the average for initial hospital charges per person for patients injured during a mass shooting between 2012 and 2019. [JAMA Network Open via CNN]