Sunday, March 4, 2018
Economic Cost from Gun Violence
Gun violence is taking its toll on the economy and it will be interesting to see what will happen in the future. After the recent shooting in Florida it is interesting to see what different big department stores are doing to their gun selling. For example look at Dicksportinggoods who made it so you have to be 21 to buy a guns from their stores. I wonder if these rule will have any impacts on their profit for the gun department. Many agreed with this idea of Dicksportinggoods because of it being able to stop the illegal purchase of guns. I don't really have any stance on this topic but I do agree with the Dicksportinggoods because hopefully this choice will decrease gun violence in some sense. But for the economics of it, who knows how well this idea will do but I guess we will have to wait and see.
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I found an article that said the gun industry is about $42.9 billion. I think an interesting aspect to look at is the number of jobs in the industry. Just in the state of Ohio there are 3,667 licensed gun dealers which is a very large amount. While I don't have an answer by any means I think the loss of this industry would have a pretty significant impact on the US economy.
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/san-bernardino-shooting/americas-gun-business-numbers-n437566
I think we will see a change to the gun industry, mostly in terms of regulations and access to suppliers. A lot of it depends on legislation. For instance, when Obama was in office, many feared increase regulations on the buying of guns. This ultimately increased demand for guns, in present time, because the expectation was they wouldn't be able to buy guns in the future. Now with Trump, most people believe not much will happen in terms of tougher regulations.
As the post mentions, companies like Dicks, are taking matters into their own hands and not allowing the sale of guns. Eventually, regardless of what the government does, I could see firms following Dicks and closing the gun department of their stores. This could have a long-run impact on jobs as more people get put out of work as gun departments shut down.
While there may be economic pressures that may keep firms in the fire arms market there may be an added benefit to bottom line profits from this move. Sure, Dick's will be missing out on some potential sales from the firearms themselves but this move may also prompt support from more left leaning customers and the company may benefit from the publicity that this announcement caused. I agree poitically with Dick's so my perspective may be skewed but I support them in taking matters tht they care about into their own hands when the government won't.
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