    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [October 23, 1993]
    [Pages 1811-1812]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    The President's Radio Address
    October 23, 1993

        Good morning. Last year I waged a campaign for President on a
    commitment to change our economic course in Washington, to change
    economic policy and put the American people first. After a long struggle
    we are finally seeing signs of hope in our economy. We have moved to
    significantly lower our Federal deficit, and now we have the lowest
    interest rates in 30 years. That's bringing back business investment,
    housing starts, purchases of expensive capital equipment. And now in the
    past 8 months, our economy has created more jobs in the private sector
    than were created in the previous 4 years.
        We've still got a long way to go. We need more investment, more jobs
    that pay living wages, more opportunity for our students and workers to
    train and retrain themselves for a changing global economy. We'll never
    make America what it ought to be until we provide real health security
    for all our people, health care that's always there, that can never be
    taken away, that controls costs and maintains quality and coverage.
        But we can't do any of those things until the American people really
    feel secure enough to make the changes we need to make. I see evidence
    of that uncertainty, that insecurity as I struggle to expand trade
    opportunities for our people through passing the North American Free
    Trade Agreement; as I struggle to convince people we should open our
    markets to others and force other markets open so that we can sell more
    of our high-tech equipment around the world; as we try to get people to
    accept the fact that most folks will change jobs seven or eight times in
    a lifetime, and therefore we can't have job security, but we can have
    employment security if we have a real lifetime system of education and
    training. All these changes require a level of confidence in our
    institutions and in ourselves, a belief that America can still compete
    and win, and that the American dream can still be alive.
        One of the problems in inspiring that confidence in America is that
    we've become the most dangerous big country in the world. We have a
    higher percentage of our people behind bars than any other nation in the
    world. We've had 90,000 murders in this country in the last 4 years. The
    American people increasingly feel that they're not secure in their
    homes, on their streets, or even in their schools. This explosion of
    crime and violence is changing the way our people live, making too many
    of us hesitant, often paralyzed with fear at a time when we need to be
    bold. When our children are dying, often at the hands of other children
    with guns, it's pretty tough to talk about anything else. Today, there
    are more than 200 million guns on our streets, and we have more
    Federally licensed gun dealers--who, believe it or not, can get a
    license from your Federal Government

    [[Page 1812]]

    for only $10--than we have gas stations.
        It's prompted the corner grocer to shut down because he feels
    threatened. It's made the shopper afraid to enter a parking garage at
    night. It's made children think twice about going to school because
    classmates have been shot there. It's made parents order their children
    inside in broad daylight because of gunfire.
        Nothing we aspire to in our Nation can finally be achieved unless
    first we do something about children who are no longer capable of
    distinguishing right from wrong, about people who are strangely
    unaffected by the violence they do to others, about the easy
    availability of handguns or assault weapons that are made solely for the
    purpose of killing or maiming others, about the mindless temptations of
    easy drugs.
        This issue should be above politics. That's why I'm working closely
    with the leaders of Congress in urging them to pass our comprehensive
    anticrime legislation when it comes up in the Senate next week. The bill
    is based on a simple philosophy and a simple message: We need more
    police, fewer guns, and different alternatives for people who get in
    trouble.
        We ask Congress to honor the struggle of Jim and Sarah Brady by
    passing the Brady bill, a 5-day waiting period for background checks
    before a person can purchase a handgun. We want to take assault weapons
    off the street. And we want to take all guns out of the hands of
    teenagers. We want more police officers on the street, at least 50,000
    more. And we want them working in community policing networks so that
    they'll know their neighbors and they'll work with people not simply to
    catch criminals but to prevent crime in the first place. We want to put
    more power in the hands of local communities and give them options so
    that first-time offenders can be sent to boot camps and to other
    programs that we know work to rehabilitate people who use drugs and to
    give our children a way out of a life of crime and jail.
        We also are recharting the way we fight the drug problem. Under the
    leadership of Dr. Lee Brown, our father of community policing in this
    country and now the Director of the Office of National Drug Control
    Policy, we are increasing our focus on the hardcore user, those who make
    up the worst part of the drug problem, who fuel crime and violence, who
    are helping a whole new generation of children to grow up in chaos, who
    are driving up our health care costs because of the violence and the
    drug use.
        Our program will reach out to young people who can be saved from
    living a life of crime and being a burden on society, the ones who've
    taken a wrong turn but can still turn around. They'll have access to
    boot camps to learn skills and the kind of responsibility that they have
    to adopt if they want to turn their lives around.
        Every time we feel the need to view strangers with suspicion or to
    bar our homes and cars against intrusion or we worry about the well-
    being of the child we send off to grade school, we lose a little part of
    what America should mean. Some of these problems were decades in the
    making, and we know we can't solve them overnight, but within adversity
    there is some hope today.
        In our administration, with the Attorney General Janet Reno, our
    outstanding FBI Director Louis Freeh, and the Drug Policy Coordinator
    Lee Brown, we have a dedicated team of people used to fighting crime,
    determined to restore security for our people, determined to give our
    young people another chance. We are dedicated to restoring and expanding
    personal security for people who work hard and play by the rules. We're
    dedicated to insisting on more responsibility from those who should
    exercise it. We have a comprehensive crime bill that says we need more
    police, fewer guns, tougher laws, and new alternatives for first
    offenders. We're asking for a new direction in the control of illegal
    drugs to make our streets safer. We're asking all our people to take
    more personal responsibility for their health, their lives, and the
    well-being of their children.
        I believe the American people have decided simply and finally they
    are sick and tired of living in fear. They are prepared to reach beyond
    the slogans and the easy answers to support what works, to experiment
    with new ideas, and to finally, finally do something about this crime
    and violence. If we do it together, we'll make America more prosperous
    and more secure. We'll have the courage, the self-confidence, the
    openness to make the other changes we need to make to put the American
    people first in the months and years to come.
        Thanks for listening.

    Note: The address was recorded at approximately 9:40 a.m. in the Oval
    Office at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m.