In expressing his grief and frustration over yet another mass gun shooting, President Barack Obama, in a speech Thursday evening, challenged news media to compare the number of US citizens killed by terrorism versus those killed by gun violence, each year.

The President’s remarks were in response to shootings at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., earlier that day, which left multiple people dead and wounded. President Obama pointed out the disparity of funds spent to protect Americans — and rightly so, he added — from relatively few terrorist attacks, as compared to what is spent on preventing gun violence.

Micah Zenko, senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a June 19, 2015 Foreign Policy Magazine article (“Terrorism Is Booming almost Everywhere, But in the United States”), “terrorism continues to pose an extremely small threat to the United States and its citizens. The number of Americans killed by international terrorism grew over the past year from 16 to 24. However, this is still fewer than the average number that has tragically been killed each year since 9/11, which is 28. Moreover, not one U.S. citizen died from terrorism within the United States last year. Rather, as has been consistent with previous years, Americans die from terrorism when they travel to war zones, or areas marked by violent instability: Of the 24 deaths last year, 10 were in Afghanistan, 5 in Israel or the Occupied Territories, 3 in Somali, 3 in Syria, and 1 a piece in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.”

In comparison, numerous resources show that more than 10,000 Americans die from gun murders each year, and at least another 20,000 die from suicide by gun.

According to a “The Case for Gun Policy Reforms in America,” a paper published by the Johns Hopkins Center For Gun Policy and Research, published in 2012 and updated in 2014, “Gun violence in the United States is unusually high for a nation of such wealth. Although there is little difference in the overall crime rates between the United States and other high-income countries, the homicide rate in the U.S. is seven times higher than the combined homicide rate of 22 other high-income countries. This is because the firearm homicide rate in the U.S. is twenty times greater than in these other high-income countries. The higher prevalence of gun ownership and much less restrictive gun laws are important reasons why violent crime in the U.S. is so much more lethal than in countries of similar income levels.”

While noting on October 1 that trillions of dollars are spent on combating terrorism, President Obama did not address the high cost of gun violence.

Beyond the immediate heartbreak and trauma experienced by those who lose loved ones to gun violence, or who are injured by gun violence, taxpayers foot the bill for other costs related to these kinds of tragedies.

Medical treatment, immediate and ongoing; legal fees; prison costs; disability; mental health care; emergency services; police investigations; and security upgrades add up to $229 billion dollars, or over $700 per American, per year, according to a report by Mother Jones. That is far more than the $30 billion spent on foreign aid, and nearly equal to the $251 billion spent for Medicaid.

“There are enormous economic costs associated with gun violence in the U.S.,” the paper from Johns Hopkins Center For Gun Policy and Research agrees. “Firearm-related deaths and injuries resulted in medical and lost productivity expenses of about $32 billion in 2005. But the overall cost of gun violence goes well beyond these figures. When lost quality of life, psychological and emotional trauma, decline in property values, and other legal and societal consequences are included, the cost of gun violence in the U.S. was estimated to be about $100 billion annually in 1998. A new study has examined the direct and indirect costs of violent crime in eight geographically-diverse U.S. cities, and estimated the average annual cost of violent crime was more than $1,300 for every adult and child. Because much of these costs are due to lowering residential property values, violent crime greatly reduces tax revenues that local governments need to address a broad array of citizens’ needs. The direct annual cost of violent crime to all levels of government was estimated to be $325 per resident.”

The President left it to Americans to determine for themselves if federal funding and federal laws are addressing the issue of gun violence in this country, and noted “We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.”

“I hope and pray that I don’t have to come out again during my tenure as President to offer my condolences to families in these circumstances,” he ended his speech. “But based on my experience as President, I can’t guarantee that. And that’s terrible to say. And it can change.”