[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
[November 15, 1997]
[Pages 1576-1577]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



The President's Radio Address
November 15, 1997

    Good morning. Today I want to talk about the progress we're making 
in our fight against crime and the steps we're taking to build on that 
progress. All over our country, crime is dropping. Responsibility and 
respect for the law are on the rise. But the true measure of our 
progress is whether our children can play in their front yards, whether 
they can walk to school in safety, whether our parents can unlock their 
front doors, whether our grandparents can walk down the streets with 
confidence, free from the fear of violence.
    To give our families that security, we've put in place a 
comprehensive plan to bring the crime rate down with 100,000 new 
community police officers, tougher punishment, stronger antigang 
prevention, the Brady bill. And we've led an unprecedented effort to 
join the forces of national, State, and local law enforcement to fight 
crime in every community in America.
    In the 3 years since I signed the crime bill into law, we know our 
strategy is having a real, measurable impact. Crime has dropped now for 
a record 5 years in a row. Today we have even

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more dramatic proof of our progress, the Annual National Crime 
Victimization Survey. It says that in 1996, crime rates fell to their 
lowest recorded level in nearly 25 years. Property crime is down. 
Violent crime is down. Since 1993, murder has dropped by 22 percent, 10 
percent in 1996 alone. This remarkable drop in the crime rate is no 
accident. The hard work of people from Washington to every community in 
the country made it happen.
    Community policing is at the center of this success. In only 3 
years, we've already funded 65,000 new police officers under the crime 
bill, and we're close to meeting our goal of putting 100,000 new police 
officers on our streets.
    Our Nation's police officers will tell you that our ongoing effort 
to ban lethal assault weapons has also been critical to their ability to 
do a better job. We've banned these guns because you don't need an Uzi 
to go deer hunting, and everyone knows it.
    But as effective as the assault weapons ban has been, we know that 
some foreign gun manufacturers are getting around the ban by making 
minor modifications to their weapons that amount to nothing more than 
cosmetic surgery. Well, we didn't fight as hard as we have to pass the 
assault weapons in the first place only to let a few gun manufacturers 
sidestep our laws and undermine our progress. Assault weapons in the 
hands of civilians exist for no reason but to inspire fear and wreak 
deadly havoc on our streets. They don't belong on our streets or in our 
schoolyards, and they shouldn't be aimed at our children. That's why we 
banned them 3 years ago and why we're taking action today.
    Effective immediately, the Secretary of the Treasury is suspending 
the importation of all modified assault weapons for 120 days while we 
study whether they can be permanently blocked from our borders and 
banned from our streets. We must continue to do everything we can to 
crack down on illegal firearms and the organized criminals, terrorists, 
and drug lords who seek them. Yesterday President Zedillo of Mexico and 
I signed an unprecedented international convention to help fight illegal 
gun trafficking in our own hemisphere and to strengthen law 
enforcement's ability to combat this deadly trade.
    Working together over the last 5 years, we've proven that we can 
drive down the crime rate. Now we have to press on, confident that we 
can take our streets back from crime, take assault weapons and illegal 
firearms out of the hands of criminals, enact a tough but smart juvenile 
justice bill, and eventually give our families and our children the real 
security they deserve.
    Thanks for listening.

Note: The address was recorded at 7:30 p.m. on November 14 in the 
Roosevelt Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on 
November 15.