[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 127 (Tuesday, September 13, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 13, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                              GUN VIOLENCE

  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I rise today to once again call to the 
attention of my colleagues a fact that the country is all too aware of: 
gun violence is destroying America's brightest hope for the future--our 
children.
  Here are just two examples taken from the last month. Just two 
stories that tell us what can happen when children get their hands on 
guns.
  In High Bridge, NJ, a 13-year-old boy shot and killed an 11-year-old 
friend over a silly, childhood argument.
  In Chicago, IL, an 11-year-old boy shot into a crowd, murdered a 
girl, and was then killed himself--by a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old.
  Both tragedies demonstrate what happens when kids can gain easy 
access to guns in our streets and in our homes.
  At a time when our children should be playing in little league, 
studying algebra, or going to high school dances, they are engaged in 
deadly street warfare.
  Instead of notebooks and pencils, they carry guns and bullets.
  Instead of dreaming about college, 15-year-old boys dream of streets, 
of gangs, and of semiautomatic handguns.
  Instead of planning their sweet 16's, 15-year-old girls sit around 
and plan their funerals.
  One woman brought her grandson to 11-year-old Robert Sandifer's 
funeral in Chicago. She wanted her grandson to see what could happen if 
he drifted into the world of gangs and guns. She wanted to teach him a 
lesson. I hope she did; but I know she taught all of us a lesson. She 
went up to pay her respects and saw how tiny the body was, how strange 
it was to see this small corpse dressed for eternity in a coffin. 
``That's a baby in there,'' she said.
  In the words of a New York Times editorial last week--and I ask for 
unanimous consent that this editorial be placed in the Record:

       People too young to comprehend death's finality have easy 
     access to death's machines. It gives them status and power. 
     No formula for change will work without a plan to reduce the 
     number of guns on America's streets and in children's hands.

  That is what we are trying to do, Mr. President: to get the guns out 
of our neighborhoods and out of our schools. But each time we try to do 
it, regressive forces get in the way.
  Every day 14 American children--14 kids here in America--are killed 
by guns.
  But every day, the National Rifle Organization gives more than $14 to 
politicians, orchestrates more than 14 letters, inspires more than 14 
phone calls. Few politicians are willing to stand up to such a powerful 
special interest. So little gets done.
  It took us years to pass the Brady bill--a bill which has already 
proven to be effective and would have saved thousands of lives if it 
had been passed when it was proposed 10 years ago.
  It took us 6 years to get a ban on selected semiautomatic weapons 
passed. And even then, the NRA wanted to scuttle the entire crime 
bill--all that money for cops and prisons--if that was the price of 
keeping semi's in their homes and on our streets.
  Well, Mr. President, this time they lost. And we won. Today, 
President Clinton will sign the crime bill, enacting a ban on 19 
different assault weapons and prohibiting gun possession by minors. It 
is a giant step in the right direction, but we cannot forget that it 
was almost derailed by the NRA.
  We can celebrate today. But we also have to make a commitment today. 
A commitment to keep going. To keep fighting.
  Here is one reason: according to the National Education Association, 
more than 100,000 students pack a gun with their school things every 
morning.
  Our response was the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 which 
prohibits the possession of firearms within 1,000 feet of a school. It 
is a law that can and does work. But it is also a law that is being 
challenged in the courts.
  Next month, the Supreme Court will decide if this law is 
constitutional. Along with 16 colleagues in the Senate, I have signed a 
legal brief urging the Court to uphold the law.
  We know that guns do not belong in or near America's school yards, 
and we will continue fighting to keep them away.
  We must remember, Mr. President, that this crime bill is not an end 
to our fight against guns and crime. It is a beginning.
  We must restore traditional ideals and the sense of family values. We 
must give our children the hope and guidance they need to grow up and 
reject a life of crime. We must continue to fight for reasonable gun 
control: to stand up to those who put their ideology above the safety 
of our children.
  We have made a start, Mr. President. The crime bill is a step 
forward. But we have a long way to go. Together, we can get there.
  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                       [From the New York Times]

                       ``That's a Baby in There''

       The speaker of those words was not, we know, referring to a 
     stroller but to a coffin. She was talking about Robert 
     Sandifer, an 11-year-old accused of murdering another child, 
     who was murdered in turn, probably by his own colleagues in 
     crime. The woman had brought her grandson to look at Robert--
     as had many other adults in this Chicago neighborhood--in 
     hopes that his small body would serve as a warning: Death is 
     permanent. This is where gangs will take you. Beware.
       Much has been made in the media this week of Robert's sad 
     story: Abused and abandoned at 3, cared for variously by a 
     grandmother and child welfare agencies, a gang member at 9. 
     But that neglect cannot be the entire explanation. Neighbors 
     and schoolmates of Robert's alleged killers--brothers aged 14 
     and 16--say those two had good parents. ``Their mother and 
     father are real good, nice people,'' said one. ``They just 
     can't control them.'' Others talked of losing sons and 
     friends to the streets. Children spoke openly of being 
     thankful each day to make it home from school.
       Robert Sandifer has quickly become the symbol of something 
     very big and very wrong in America. His alleged crime, his 
     age and his death have combined to provoke a universal 
     revulsion, a feeling that things have gone too far. The 
     question now is: How to harness this moment?
       Last month Congress passed a crime bill aimed at making a 
     dent in the appalling conditions in American cities that lead 
     to tragedies like Robert's. It was the culmination of months 
     of furious debate. Conservatives called for more jail cells 
     and more certain punishment; liberals wanted prevention 
     programs to give kids alternatives to the street culture. A 
     ban on a small number of deadly assault weapons barely 
     passed. The bill itself was mired for weeks in the partisan 
     confusion of competing philosophies on crime. It was saved 
     only by legislators' fear that failure to act would bring 
     disaster on Election Day, since crime has become their 
     constituents' chief preoccupation.
       Americans like symbols. Sometimes it takes a particular 
     tragedy to galvanize us, to remove the partisan blinkers from 
     an issue and make it human. Jim Brady's wounding turned the 
     gun debate around, making it respectable for conservatives to 
     support gun control, bringing home the message that gun 
     violence in America needed attention.
       Can Robert Sandifer's tragedy do something similar? And if 
     so, what?
       Clearly, simply building more jail cells cannot help an 11-
     year-old so alienated that he must seek approval and kinship 
     from a gang of thugs. Robert's story is as complicated as 
     America's urban disaster. More certain punishment--and, yes, 
     more police and more jail cells--might help to counter the 
     atmosphere of impunity in which urban gangs operate. But just 
     as clearly, city children need a community in which to grow 
     up, some adult structure that will chasten them for doing 
     wrong and show them how to do something right. Too many 
     American children of all races now lack functional families. 
     Boys need career paths other than the drug business; girls 
     need one other than teen-age motherhood that produces more 
     neglected children. No amount of partisan or scholarly 
     disparagement of traditional social programs can change that 
     fact.
       Part of what makes this social chemistry volatile is the 
     gun culture. People too young to comprehend death's finality 
     have easy access to death's machines. It gives them status 
     and power. No formula for change will work without a plan to 
     reduce the number of guns on America's streets and in 
     children's hands.
       Robert Sandifer's short life and pitiful death--along with 
     the strangers who mourned beside his coffin--illustrate the 
     awful state of America's cities, where even loving parents 
     cannot save children. If they cry out for anything, it is to 
     abandon the demagoguery and partisanship that have 
     characterized the crime debate so far, and to focus some real 
     resources on the neglected cities where the children struggle 
     every day to survive.

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