I really, really, really should stay off the Internet. I have no idea if I'm gonna be able to handle it when I start the program I've signed up for, when I will be working weekends, going to class, and putting in hours for clinical.

So, one link led to another, and I find one on gun control. Not gun control per se, but about research concerning the whole mess. A free Wall Street Journal article has this to say on the topic.

Gun violence "is costing this country over $100 billion a year," New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, who is pushing tougher gun-control laws, said this week on CNBC, citing the gun-control advocacy group Brady Campaign. The Brady Campaign, in turn, cites research by Duke economist Philip J. Cook and Georgetown public-policy professor Jens Ludwig. But the 2001 estimate, based on a 1998 phone survey, isn't a direct measure of cost.

The researchers used a technique called contingent valuation, in which they surveyed respondents about how much they'd pay for a 30% reduction in gun violence. Extrapolating the survey results to the general population, they concluded that Americans are willing to pay $24.5 billion for that outcome. Extending that to a theoretical 100% reduction of gun violence, and factoring in the costs of suicide and injury by firearm, Profs. Cook and Ludwig arrive at $100 billion.

Holy fuck!! They call this research? They derived a cost of gun violence by asking people how much they would pay to end it. What kind of twisted logic is that? "The researchers themselves noted drawbacks to their technique." Well no fuckin shit. "Most economists agree "that none of the available methods for measuring WTP are entirely satisfactory," Profs. Cook and Ludwig write in their paper." Then why write the paper... why do the STUDY in the first place?