Well, this explains...

I'd almost rather have a velociraptor for a room-mate than Chucky for Majority Leader of the Senate.  He is a bad person who is very smart. That's the worst kind.

Don't you just love their "statistic" about how unsafe gun-owners are?

Gun owners are eleven times more likely to have a household member attempt suicide, and four times more likely to suffer an accidental homicide or shooting injury, as to successfully use the gun in self-defense.  [emphasis mine]

Wow!  That's really... not at all relevant to the issue.  Comparing the rate of suicides and accidents to the rate of the gun directly saving lives (likely quite a bit less than the rate of life-saving including goblins deciding to stay the hell away from Mr. Shoots-Robbers-In-The-Face) does absolutely nothing to support Mr. Chait's premise that gun-owners incur greater healthcare costs than non-owners (and we're operating under the assumption that both categories have an equal rate of enrollment in the socialized system versus a now much more expensive private plan).  See, a relevant statistic would be the rate of suicides in gun-owning households versus that in others (assuming a set percentage of attempts fail, thereby incurring medical costs; or do many healthcare plans cover funerary expenses?), similar comparison of overall medical costs due to injury, or even comparison of the frequency of mental illness incuring medical costs.

Can't say I'm really surprised, though.  Why try to find data that actually supports your argument when there is readily available Scary Numbers that sound like they will work to villify your targetted group?

They pulled those stats out of thin air. Less than half -- 44.5% -- of suicide attempts (successful and unsuccessful) involve firearms. Next most-popular method is poisoning, followed by strangulation/suffocation. That's from the NIMH -- they're only current to 2007.

FBI stats from 2003 (the latest year I could find stats for) estimate citizens used guns to *deter* a criminal at least 1.5 million times (and maybe as many as 2.5 million -- not all were reported) that year, but most perps ran, and the gun-owner only *shot* 8% of the time.

Here's where it gets interesting.

CIDC said that the leading causes of *accidental* death are 39% auto, 19.5% poisoning, 16.3% falls, 3% drowning, 2.6% fire (burns, smoke inhalation), 2.6% airplane or train crash, 2.2% surgical complications, 1.8% forces of nature, and -- ahem -- 0.7% firearm. 13.9% was from "all other causes" whatever they were.

About 95,000 people died by accidents in 2005, 0.7% of them by accidental gunshot.

That's 665 people.

At least 1,500,000 citizens had a firearm and *shot* 8% of the time.

That's 120,000 perps hit.

In other words, if you're one of the 8% who has to shoot, you're *three hundred* times more likely to take out the bad guy than die yourself. If you're one of the 92% who *don't* have to shoot, you're over *two thousand* more times likely to scare him off than get killed yourself.

Now, on top of all that, remember that you're three times more likely to die because a doctor misreads your chart and prescribes the wrong med during your next hospital stay than from someone shooting you by accident.

So, where'd Little Jonny get his stats? Simple. He made them up.

IOW, just like every other Bed-Wetting, Pillow-Chewing, Left-Leaning GFW on the planet, he lied in order to further his agenda.

Ah, the Jonathan Swift of Leavenworth has arrived!

P.s. this is also why I am against helmet laws for motorcyclists.  Helmetless folk on bikes tend to die more frequently in low-speed wrecks than those with the buckets on. Low speed means that more of the rest of the parts are re-usable, except maybe the liver, for obvious reasons.

Heh.  And don't hit the front brakes too hard, either. Unless you've got an amateur driving...