[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.