On the recordSeptember 30, 2013
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.…





