[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Page 14752]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     STOPPING THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE

  Mr. LEVIN. Madam President, the recent tragic shooting at the Navy 
Yard has by now moved off the front pages, but for the victims and 
their loved ones and for the Washington, DC community, the effects of 
that horrific day will linger much longer. We may never fully 
understand what demons compelled the perpetrator to commit this heinous 
act, but at least one thing is clear: We should not consider this 
incident in a vacuum, not after 6 dead in Tuscon, not after 12 dead in 
Aurora, not after 6 dead in Oak Creek and 2 dead in Clackamas and 27 
dead in Newtown, 20 of them children, not while mass shootings are 
occurring all around our Nation, every day, in places like Albuquerque, 
Minneapolis, Newton Falls, Seattle, Chicago, and many more. In the 
words of MedStar Washington Hospital Center chief medical officer Dr. 
Janis Orlowski, ``There's something wrong here when we have these 
multiple shootings, these multiple injuries, there's something wrong.''
  Dr. Orlowski is right. Our Nation is torn by gun violence. Facts are 
facts: The American Journal of Medicine recently released clinical 
research showing that the United States has a rate of 10.2 gun-related 
deaths per 100,000 people. This rate is far higher than almost all of 
the 27 other countries the study examined--higher than the rates of the 
United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Japan, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Turkey, 
Germany, and Canada combined. The Washington Post has put similar 
findings in sobering perspective by noting that an American is ``20 
times as likely to be killed by a gun than is someone from another 
developed country.''
  Congress can take important steps to stop this violence. There is 
legislation in the Senate right now that, if enacted, would take 
important steps toward reducing gun violence in this country. Among 
other things, these bills would close the `gun show loophole' that 
allows 40 percent of gun purchases in this Nation to go forward without 
any sort of background check on the buyer. This loophole allows 
criminals, the mentally ill, domestic abusers, and terrorists to obtain 
deadly weapons to turn on our communities.
  The American people agree that taking this step would just be common 
sense. Study after study has shown that around 90 percent of Americans 
support comprehensive background checks for all gun sales. Another 
study conducted by the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program 
found that 55.4 percent of gun dealers and pawnbrokers in the United 
States support comprehensive background checks.
  Public safety is not a partisan issue. Dr. Orlowski said it well: 
``Mass murders people--walking through schools, people walking through 
movie theaters, people walking through work places--unfortunately is 
common, or more common than what it should be . . . we've got to work 
together to stop this.'' The American people overwhelmingly support 
commonsense gun safety measures. Our law enforcement communities, our 
medical communities, even our licensed gun sellers overwhelmingly 
support commonsense gun safety measures. We should listen to them, and 
act.

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