Robert Torricelli: “2 weeks ago it was a Michigan nursing home and Monday night it was a shootout at the National Zoo here in Washington…”

“2 weeks ago it was a Michigan nursing home and Monday night it was a shootout at the National Zoo here in Washington, D.C. The epidemic of gun violence has become something that affects all Americans, not only those living in our inner cities. Whenever we open our morning newspapers and read about these tragedies, we are left to wonder whether our loved ones might be the next victims and whether our own community, our own neighborhood, and our own home could be tomorrow's headlines. The devastation that guns have brought to our families and to our communities has been well documented, but the statistics bear repeating. Only with an understanding of the dimensions of the problem will we ever bring real change. In 1997 alone, more than 32,000 Americans were shot and killed, including 4,000 children. The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates by the year 2006 firearms will become the largest single killer of our own children in the United States. The economic cost of every shooting death in society--if it is necessary to measure it in these cold terms--is $1 million per victim in medical care, police services, and lost productivity. The American public has grown tired of hearing of these appalling statistics. And so have I. More importantly, they have grown tired of a Congress that does nothing about it, with no real efforts to stop this bloodshed.”