[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 30 (Thursday, March 17, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 17, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 KEEPING GUNS OUT OF AMERICA'S SCHOOLS

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senator Dorgan to 
speak once again about rising crime on school grounds throughout this 
country.
  Senator Dorgan and I offered the ``zero tolerance'' amendment during 
the Goals 2000 discussion.
  The amendment is simple: if a student carries a gun to school--which 
has increasingly become a common occurrence--he or she will be 
expelled.
  The House-Senate conference committee that is meeting on the 
education bill has initially approved the amendment and it must be in 
the final bill that will be ratified by both houses.
  Let me explain why this amendment is so important. In fact, I believe 
removing guns from schools is absolutely essential to achieving the 
national education goals embodied in Goals 2000.
  Jennifer Chien, a 16-year-old student at University High School in 
Irvine, recently wrote an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times that I 
think summarizes the fear so prevalent on school campuses:

       Violence has even spread to our schools. Last year, there 
     were thousands of incidents in the United States of students 
     taking weapons to school. Kids. Not young adults or even 
     adolescents, but children.
       School children should not have in their hands the means 
     for slaying their classmates over simple disputes. In the 
     past, a fistfight would have ended the quarrel; now a gun is 
     the solution. Imagine what would happen if students shot each 
     other every time there was a disagreement. No one would be 
     left to attend class.

  Jennifer is absolutely correct.
  What kind of a nation is this when students must go to school in 
constant fear of being shot, stabbed or attacked?
  What kind of a learning environment can there be when youngsters 
bring guns to school?
  How can we expect students to learn when so many resources are spent 
on metal detectors and safety personnel?
  The facts are clear:
  One out of every five children regularly carries a firearm, knife, or 
a club to school.
  One out of every eight teachers has been physically threatened in the 
classroom.
  Fifty-nine percent of all children in 6th through 12th grade know 
where to get a handgun (According to Joyce Foundation survey last 
year.)
  Between 1980 and 1990 there was a 79 percent increase in the number 
of young people committing murder with guns.
  Juveniles arrested for murder and manslaughter increased 93 percent 
between 1982 and 1991?
  According to a recently-released study of by the California 
Department of Health Services, teenagers in 1992 were 10 to 15 times 
more likely to be murdered than their counterparts in the 1950's and 
1960's.


                     statistics on guns in schools

  According to the Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice 
Prevention, California school officials confiscated 8,539 weapons, 
including 789 guns, in a single year--July 1987 and June 1988.
  While most confiscated firearms are handguns, schools throughout the 
State are experiencing an arms race, as students bring in more powerful 
weapons: A student in Garden Grove, CA, was found with a loaded Uzi 9mm 
in his duffel bag.

  And, this problem is not limited to older students in high school:
  Sixty percent of all students who carry guns to schools are in middle 
school, according to the Oakland Police Department.
  A 7-year-old from Stockton Elementary School in San Francisco took 
his parent's loaded gun to school last November.


                  los angeles unified school district

  In 1993, on campuses in Los Angeles, there were four shootings--two 
of them fatal:
  In January, a 16-year-old was shot and killed after a gun in another 
student's backpack accidentally discharged at Fairfax High.
  In February, a 17-year-old was shot and killed in a corridor at 
Reseda High.
  On September 7, the first day of his school year, a 15-year-old was 
shot and seriously injured as he registered for classes at Dorsey High 
School.
  In December, a 17-year-old student waiting for his mother to pick him 
up at Chatsworth High was shot and injured after he refused to give 
another teen-ager his backpack.


                   zero-tolerance expulsion policies

  As a result of rising school violence, several school districts--
including those in Los Angeles and San Diego--have adopted their own 
zero-tolerance expulsion policies for students caught with guns. Three 
hundred metal detectors are now in place at LA schools.


                      responsibility of government

  I submit to this Senate that providing a gun-free learning 
environment for our students is not just a goal, it is a responsibility 
of all levels of government.
  The mother of the student shot and killed at Reseda High School last 
year has filed a lawsuit against the school district for ignoring 
warnings about campus violence and failing to protect students.
  Although I don't know the specifics of the case, I think this raises 
a central point to this discussion: schools should be safe places to 
learn and to set goals.


                               conclusion

  When will the mayhem end? When will safety and learning take a 
priority over guns?
  The zero-tolerance amendment now part of Goals 2000 is reasonable 
and--indeed necessary--to stem the rising tide of violence. The 
amendment was drafted to even give local school boards the discretion 
to take extenuating circumstances into account.
  Mandatory suspension is not the only approach to addressing the 
problem of guns in schools, and I applaud efforts in California and 
other States to focus on school violence through prevention and 
conflict resolution programs, links with community police efforts, and 
alternative school programs for repeat offenders.
  But the fact is that, as stated by the Office of Juvenile Justice: 
``Students may be deterred from taking weapons to school if they know 
they face immediate expulsion.''
  The time has come to remove weapons from the schools of America.

                          ____________________