    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [June 30, 1995]
    [Pages 986-990]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Receiving the Abraham Lincoln Courage Award in Chicago
    June 30, 1995

        Thank you so much, Mike Robbins. Thank you for your presentation.
    Thank you much more for your courage and for your willingness to come
    back to work after being wounded 11 times. A lot of Americans wouldn't
    do that, and we appreciate you for doing it.
        We thank you, Officer Jackson, Officer Bubalo. We thank the
    representatives of the Fraternal Order of Police who are here from
    Chicago and the State of Illinois, Bill Nolan and Sgt. Keith Turney.
    Thank you, Commander O'Shield. I hope you don't decide to run for
    President anytime soon after that reception you got when you were
    introduced--[laughter]--or mayor or anything else. [Laughter]
        I want to thank Mark Karlin for what he said and for his long and
    often lonely battle against handgun violence.
        The First Lady and I are delighted to be here with you today. I do
    want to introduce just one person of the many who came with me today
    because he carries on our part of the bargain fighting for law
    enforcement and against violence in Washington, Under Secretary of the
    Treasury Ron Noble, who is back here with me. Ron, stand up. Thank you
    very much.
        I thank Superintendent Rodriguez for his outstanding leadership.
    Senator, thank you for what you said and for what you have done. To all
    the other distinguished officials who are here, I thank you. I want to
    say a special word of thanks to the mayor for his leadership and for his
    willingness to roll up his sleeves and actually solve problems.
        You know, I like listening to the mayor talk because he never tries
    to be flowery, he just says what he has to say. [Laughter] But when

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    he gets finished talking, you don't have any doubt about what he just
    said. [Laughter] And I like it because he's interested in doing things
    and giving other people the power to do things and bringing people
    together. That means a lot to me. We need more in Washington of what you
    have here in Chicago and in this Austin neighborhood.
        I thank the other dignitaries who are here. Congressman, Bishop,
    thank you for coming. And ladies and gentlemen, I want to say a special
    word of thanks to some young people who are here from the ``I Have A
    Dream'' Program and the AmeriCorps volunteers who are working with them.
    Where are they? They're over there.
        The ``I Have A Dream'' Program was founded in New York by a friend
    of Hillary's and mine named Eugene Lange, who believed that if you would
    reach young people in grade school and tell them that if they'd stay in
    school and stay off drugs and make their grades, you'd guarantee them
    that they could go all the way through college. That's what the ``I Have
    A Dream'' Program is about. And those kids in this neighborhood are part
    of that, and our national service program is helping. And I'm proud of
    them.
        Ladies and gentlemen, it's already been said by Officer Robbins and
    others, but really this award ought to be given today to the officer who
    was killed here just a few months ago, Daniel Doffyn, and to his
    partner, and to Mike Robbins and his partner, and to all those who are
    willing to put their lives upon the line.
        You heard the superintendent say it a moment ago, but Officer Doffyn
    and his partner, Officer Bubalo, were standing just where we stand
    today, getting ready to go to work, when they heard a call on the radio
    that said men were breaking into an apartment building just across the
    street. They were rookie officers who answered the call. They found gang
    members from another neighborhood who had come to disrupt this
    neighborhood. They were stopping one of the suspects when another came
    upon them. He murdered Officer Doffyn. He critically wounded his
    partner. He did it with a TEK-9 semiautomatic, one of the weapons banned
    in the 1994 crime bill.
        Officer Doffyn was like me in one important respect, the most
    important of all: He had a daughter, an 8-year-old daughter who now will
    have to live with the memory of her father and his sacrifice.
        When we talk about these issues and the decisions we ought to make
    on them, we're a long way, in Washington, DC, from the streets of Austin
    neighborhood. We'd be a lot better off if we had to vote on issues in
    front of the place where the police officer was killed.
        I know that even from the worst tragedies, some good can spring.
    After the awful, awful bombing in Oklahoma City a lot of the meanness
    went out of America, and we all began to ask ourselves again, what can
    we do to do a better job for our country? What can we do to reach across
    the lines that are dividing us? What can we do to minimize the hatred
    and extremism in our own country?
        I'm told that after Officer Doffyn was killed, children from Howe
    Elementary School across the street came to the police station to make
    sure their favorite police officers were safe, and that some of the
    officers took the children home in squad cars to reassure them and make
    sure they were okay. Now, outside this neighborhood that might surprise
    some people, but I've learned enough from the mayor and others about
    what you're doing here to know that you've been working for a long time
    to build that kind of community. Your mission statement--I wish every
    neighborhood in America had a mission statement--your mission statement
    says you want to make your neighborhood safe, prosperous, secure,
    productive, and proud. That's what I want for America.
        In this neighborhood the words ``community'' and ``policing'' mean
    the same thing because the men and women of the 15th are the community
    and they understand that the best way to lower the crime rate is to
    prevent crime, to stop it from happening in the first place. They are
    working with you to set up a drug court to help people who get in
    trouble find a way to get out of trouble and go on to productive lives,
    not just go to prison. They are working with you to reach out to your
    children, to help them stay off drugs and stay out of gangs. They are
    watching out for you as you watch out for one another.
        So many of you have taken responsibility for this neighborhood and
    your lives, and you are getting results. Crime is down across the board.
    I drove through these streets today and I saw homes, schools,
    businesses, churches, police stations, all doing their part to keep you
    safe and pull you together.

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        Despite the sadness that we all feel today, you should all be very
    proud. And you should be committed to keeping this community strong and
    to saving the lives and futures of these children.
        When I ran for President, I promised that I would do everything I
    could to help you in this effort. Part of it was trying to restore the
    economy and bring opportunities to places that had been too long denied
    them, which is why I worked with the mayor and others to put an
    empowerment zone in Chicago, to try to prove that we could bring jobs
    and incomes and a future to people. But a big part of it was just trying
    to restore a simple sense of security to people who work hard and obey
    the law and are doing the best with their own lives.
        The mayor referred to this, and Senator Simon knows it well because
    he was there for the whole time, but the Congress actually debated a
    crime bill for 6 years without doing anything about it, because there
    was always some political objection on the right or the left for getting
    together and doing something that would make a lot of sense at the
    grassroots level a long way from Washington. Well, we passed the crime
    bill, and it was largely written by the police officers of America. And
    it had a requirement that we put 100,000 more police on the street, a 20
    percent increase of people walking the beat, working in the
    neighborhoods, helping to prevent crime in the first place.
        I can tell you, that bill just passed late last year, but we are
    already--we already have given law enforcement agencies in this country
    enough grants to hire more than 20,000 new police. We're moving ahead of
    schedule to do that.
        The second thing we did was to try and give law enforcement and
    community officials the tools they need to help save kids, to give
    children something to say yes to as well as something to say no to. The
    law enforcement people in this country knew that we needed tougher
    punishment, we needed greater protection. We passed the ``three strikes
    and you're out'' law. We passed the law strengthening the death penalty
    provisions, especially for people who kill law enforcement officers in
    the line of duty. But we also did what the law enforcement officers told
    us to do, which is to give them and community activists the tools to
    reach children early, to get them on the right path in life, to give
    them schools and jobs and opportunities and a future.
        And yes, we took on the gun issue. And I want to say a little more
    about that in a minute, but it's been mentioned already. We passed the
    Brady law, which requires people to wait 5 days while we check the
    criminal and mental health histories of people who want to buy handguns,
    unless there is a computerized instant record check in place in a State.
    And we did ban 19 kinds of assault weapons and any identical copycats
    that might be made of them, for the obvious reasons you know.
        I'll never forget--Mayor, you probably remember this--but we came
    here in 1994, and we sat at a panel in which people from your health
    care institutions told us that the mortality rate from gunshot wounds
    was dramatically increasing because the average victim had more bullets
    in his body when they showed up at the hospital. Why? Because of these
    assault weapons. I learned that in a hearing in Chicago from people who
    make a living working in emergency rooms, seeing people like Officers
    Robbins and Jackson every day. So yes, we did that.
        And as we remember Officer Doffyn, I say there is at least one more
    thing we must do. Today I am announcing support for legislation that
    will ban armor-piercing bullets of all kinds.
        Senator Simon referred to what we are trying to keep--and he's
    right, we do ban some kinds of armor-piercing bullets, thanks to him and
    others. But you need to know the law is written, in my opinion, in the
    wrong way. Today the law is written to ban ammunition based on what it's
    made of. If it contains certain materials, then it's off the street.
    Now, that's a good thing, but it's not good enough because clever people
    have figured out how to design ammunition made from common materials
    that do just as much damage. This legislation will change that. It will
    see to it that we judge ammunition not based on what it's made of but
    based on how much harm it can do. That should be the test. And the test
    should be simple and straightforward. If a bullet can rip through a
    bulletproof vest like a knife through hot butter, then it ought to be
    history. We should ban it.
        Many Members of the United States Congress, Senator Moynihan,
    Senator Biden, Bradley, Kohl, Congressman Schumer from New York, have
    joined Senator Simon and others for a long time in trying to deal with
    these issues. Now, I know this will be controversial among some, just
    like the Brady bill was, just like the assault weapons ban was. But I
    want to tell

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    you something, folks. There's a reason that I decided that I should be
    the first President ever to take on these issues while in office rather
    than later. [Laughter] And I say that--I'm grateful for the support
    we've received from former Presidents. I'm grateful that Ronald Reagan
    stood up for the Brady bill and Jim Brady. I am grateful that President
    Bush resigned from the NRA when they called Federal officials
    ``jackbooted thugs.'' We should applaud them. [Applause] We should
    applaud them.
        But I want you to know the reason I decided to do it, apart from
    just--first of all, I was sick and tired of reading stories about young
    children in tough neighborhoods who were straight-A students, being
    gunned down standing by a bus stop. I got tired of reading that. You
    know, I got tired of reading all these high school kids and junior high
    school kids thinking about what kind of funerals they were going to have
    because they knew so many kids that had been shot. I got tired of
    reading about it.
        But there's another reason. I come from a place where more than half
    the people live in towns of 10,000 or less, where more than half the
    people have never been to a city as big as Chicago, and more than half
    the people have a hunting or a fishing license or both. When I was--long
    before I was a teenager, I had fired a .22 at cans and birds in bird
    season. I grew up thinking of guns as a part of my culture and not
    something evil or bad that would ever be used to kill people.
        I understand the kind of folks who have formed the basis of a lot of
    the opposition to this gun legislation because they never see what you
    live with every day. They literally don't experience it. So I understood
    that. But you know, what my position is, is very different. I don't
    think this is--I don't think the Brady bill or the assault weapons ban
    or the cop-killer bullet legislation is about the right to keep and bear
    arms. I think it's about whether we as Americans are willing, those of
    us who are law-abiding, to undergo some minor inconveniences so we can
    solve our problems together and keep our kids alive and have a safer
    future and be fair to our police officers. That's what this is about.
        And it's interesting, you know, most of the people who oppose the
    Brady bill and oppose the assault weapons ban, they don't mind walking
    through an airport metal detector. But I'm old enough to remember when
    those metal detectors were first put in when you walk through an
    airport. Now, we don't think about it today, do we? Even though most of
    us would never consider carrying a gun on an airplane, much less a bomb,
    we go through the metal detectors, and we don't think anything about it.
    Why? Because it is a minor sacrifice to get on a safe airplane.
        There was a decision made by the Supreme Court the other day that's
    somewhat controversial, but I support it. I want to tell you about it
    because it's the same point. The Supreme Court said it was all right for
    a school district to require young people who wanted to be on the
    football team to undergo drug testing, not because we think most kids
    are bad--they're not--not because most of them are using drugs--they're
    not--but because drugs are tearing the heart out of the children of
    America. It is a privilege to play on a sports team or be in the school
    band or do anything else like that, and it is a minor inconvenience for
    young people to take a stand to help to get drugs out of our schools.
        Now, that's what I think about this. So I say to all the people who
    own guns and don't feel like they're ever going to do anything wrong and
    just want us to punish criminals, it is no big deal if you have to wait
    a few days to get the next handgun. You will survive. And it's a good
    thing.
        And I say to all the people who love to hunt and shoot in shooting
    contests, you will be able to do it, and you will find a way to do it
    even without the TEK-9's. It's worth it to get the Uzis out of the high
    schools and off the streets, and the bullets out of the bodies of these
    police officers we celebrate today. It is worth it. It is worth it.
        Nobody is interfering with your right to hunt or to enter into any
    kind of sporting contest or to do whatever else you want to do. But this
    is a minor, minor change that's good for all of us. And sooner or later,
    those of us who live in disparate areas of the country with different
    experiences have got to realize we have common obligations to the common
    good. And everybody in the smallest rural hamlet in my State is going to
    be better off if kids don't get killed on the streets of Chicago and
    police officers don't get gunned down because we got rid of assault
    weapons and we got rid of cop-killer bullets. We're going to be better
    off if that happens.

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        And you know, let me just say one other thing to everybody who
    objects to this today. I'm almost 50 years old. I have never seen a
    deer, a duck, or a wild turkey wearing a Kevlar vest in my life. You do
    not need--[laughter]--you do not need these bullets.
        So I ask you all to support this. I ask you to oppose the efforts of
    the lobbies in Washington to lift the ban on assault weapons. I ask you
    to oppose their efforts to roll back the crime bill; oppose their
    efforts to keep us from getting all these horrible police-killing
    bullets out of our lives; and, as Senator Simon said, oppose their
    efforts to indiscriminately say all felons can have their guns back.
        We live in the freest nation the world has ever known, because over
    219 years we have found ways to agree on discipline, restraint, and
    order, to preserve our liberty. And all, all systems of discipline,
    restraint, and order affect the law-abiding and the lawless equally.
    That is the point.
        So I ask you all today to remember that. I accept this award today,
    even though I don't feel like I deserve it, because I just did my duty.
    And I knew because of my childhood and the life I live and the State I
    governed what the issues were, what the stakes were, and what the forces
    in play were in this battle over the Brady bill, the assault weapons
    ban, and the cop-killer bullet issue.
        Most of the people on the other side of this issue are good people.
    But they don't have your experience. And it is time for them to think
    about you. It is time for them to make minor concessions so that you can
    have major advances in safety, in security, in the future of your
    children, in the security of your police officers, in the Austin
    neighborhood, in Chicago, Illinois, and throughout the United States of
    America. It is time for us to pull together on this issue and do the
    right thing.
        Abraham Lincoln, who saved our Republic, said something very
    important in his first inaugural. When the country was coming apart at
    the seams over the issue of slavery and we were headed smack-dab into a
    Civil War, and when half the people in the country hated him and he'd
    been elected President with only 39 percent of the vote, he had the
    understanding to say, ``We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
    enemies.''
        So I say to you today, my friends: Let us stand up for the future of
    our children. Let us stand up for the security of our police forces and
    their ability to work with us. And let us say to those who disagree, we
    ask you for a minor contribution to a major public good. Let us not be
    enemies but friends.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:05 a.m. at the 15th District Police
    Headquarters. In his remarks, he referred to Mike Robbins, Talmadge
    Jackson, and Milan Bubalo, Chicago police officers wounded in the line
    of duty; Bill Nolan, president, Chicago Fraternal Order of Police; Sgt.
    Keith Turney, chairman of the trustees, Illinois State Fraternal Order
    of Police; Leroy O'Shield, commander, 15th District, Chicago Police
    Department; Mark Karlin, president, Illinois Council Against Handgun
    Violence, which sponsored the award; Matt Rodriguez, Chicago
    Superintendent of Police; and Bishop Shepard Little, Church of God in
    Christ.