Caffeinated Politics

Gut-wrenching is the best word I can find to describe what it felt like to read the Wisconsin State Journal story about Samuel “Samy” Garduno-Martinez. He was one of six students shot at Abundant Life Christian School in December of 2024. Today, that young man has been hospitalized for over nine months, requiring ongoing specialized care for his severe injuries. The need for financial aid is obvious, as the needed treatments and therapy are extremely costly. Additionally, the economic struggle loved ones are facing between work and paying bills, so to be with their child in a medical setting is numbing. Do not lose sight this is just one story in a nation that is plagued with this type of outcome from gun violence every day. As a society, we must consider the financial mountains that families must climb for their loved ones to recover as best they can from their injuries.

Samy’s mother said he was shot twice, or possibly three times, in the head, once in the lower back, and once in his right arm. He underwent emergency surgery to relieve his swollen brain and damaged kidney and liver.

Samy fell into a coma and was recovering in the intensive care unit, she said. “The doctors gave little hope, despite having done everything possible to save his life. Three days later, Samy opened his eyes. That was the first miracle of resurrection in Samy’s life.”

Her son slowly began to recover with the help of doctors, nurses and various physical, occupational and speech therapists, she said. He underwent lumbar spine surgery, required a feeding tube and had a procedure on his vocal cords to help him speak.

After a month, he started talking again and was scheduled to be discharged on April 8, but in March developed “a devastating inflammation of his brain,” encephalitis, as a result of the initial trauma, she said.

Samy’s family is raising funds to support his extensive medical care and living expenses. This includes relocating near a specialized rehabilitation center in the Chicago area and creating a GoFundMe page to make ends meet.

In the United States, unlike in other nations that know how to control gun violence, we have to measure not only the lives lost to bullets but also the billions of dollars drained from a strained healthcare system. Consider the emergency surgeries to the months or years of long-term physical therapy and the financial toll that entails for families. Gun violence is so prevalent that we are growing immune to the carnage it causes. But make no mistake about what is occurring. Firearm injuries in the 2020s have become a quiet financial crisis. After the headlines of the guns used and the number of bullets sprayed and the dead and injured are listed, we do not often hear of the plight of families such of that now playing out locally.

For this column, I pulled some data together from a September 2025 report from Northwestern University and Giffords from May 2025.

Between 2016 and 2021, U.S. hospitals spent an estimated $7.7 billion treating firearm injuries. Annual costs hovered around $1.2 billion until 2019, then surged to $1.6 billion in 2021—a 33% increase that mirrored the spike in gun violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Medicaid, the public insurance program for low-income individuals, was billed for 52% of these costs. Yet Medicaid reimbursements often fall short of actual treatment expenses, forcing safety-net trauma centers to absorb the losses.

The financial burden doesn’t end at the ER. A single emergency room visit for a gunshot wound averages $1,388—nearly double the cost of unarmed assault injuries. If hospitalization follows, the median cost climbs to $27,820. More severe injuries push the bill even higher: abdominal wounds average $66,780, while head and neck injuries can exceed $81,000. These figures don’t account for the months—or years—of physical therapy, mental health treatment, and readmissions that follow. One in ten gunshot victims is readmitted to the hospital within 90 days, most often those in the lowest income bracket and covered by public insurance.

Insurance companies, once again, get a bad reputation as they play a quiet but often decisive role in determining who gets care for gun violence patients. Victims often face denials for extended therapy, limited coverage for mental health services, and bureaucratic hurdles that delay recovery. Many turn to crowdfunding platforms and I tell my readers that it is a heartbreaking testament to our systemic failure. In a country with the resources to provide massive tax cuts to the wealthy, Samy’s family should not need to rely on digital charity as needed therapy continues to deal with gun violence in a school shooting.

Gun violence has become such a polarizing topic because of the NRA, but what is not disputed is the cost of the required health care for the victims of these weapons. The economic data is clear. It would be much more logical and fiscally prudent to enact effective firearm safety laws that have proven to work in civilized nations around the world. We should not need GoFundMe pages to help survivors walk again, eat again, or sleep without pain. What we need is a commitment to gun control that matches our commitment to public health. Because ending gun violence is a public health issue. Until then, the financial wounds of gun violence will continue to bleed through families, hospitals, insurance systems, and our collective conscience.

Enough, already!