    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [October 15, 1999]
    [Pages 1797-1800]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Unveiling Public Service Announcements on Youth Violence
    October 15, 1999

        The President. Thank you very much, Epatha; welcome back to the White House. She was here back in
    February, again trying to help children, when we unveiled the PSA to
    help our children get the health care they need. So she is becoming the
    Federal Government's number one volunteer for America's children, and
    we're grateful for her.
        I think she knows that if she and the
    rest of us could do enough for our children in a preventive and
    preparatory way, we'd put a lot of police officers and actors playing
    police officers out of work--[laughter]--because we wouldn't have nearly
    as much trouble. I thank you so much.
        Attorney General Reno and Secretary
    Shalala, thank you both for your commitment
    to helping our children and to unifying our Government's resources, not
    having a lot of little, indistinct programs that are separate, one from
    another.
        I want to thank all of those who are here supporting this campaign.
    Thank you, Dr. Roz Weinman, from NBC. Thank
    you for everything you've done. I want to thank the ADL national
    director, Abraham Foxman, the Human Rights
    Committee's executive director, Elizabeth Birch, the people from La Raza, and all the other groups
    that have supported this endeavor.
        I'd also like to acknowledge the young people behind me. They're
    from Eastern High School in Washington, DC, and they are actively and
    personally working to prevent youth violence. They are the symbols of
    the people we are trying to empower with this public service campaign,
    and we ought to give them a hand. [Applause]
        Six months ago next week we will observe the half-year anniversary
    of the tragedy at Littleton, Colorado. As awful as it was, we all know
    it was not an isolated event. We have seen since and we saw before, in a
    string of violent incidents at school and in the fact that 13 young
    people lose their lives every single day to gunshots in ones and twos,
    that our children--notwithstanding the fact that we have the lowest
    crime rate in 26 years and a dramatic drop in the murder rate--are still
    subject to a nation that is too dangerous and can be made safer.
        That is why we have asked every sector of our society to get
    involved in the search for solutions to youth violence, to hatred, to
    the absence of control, to environmental and cultural factors that need
    to be dealt with. We've asked people to help at home and school, in
    Hollywood and in the heartland, in our State capitals and in the
    Nation's Capital.
        In August we helped launch the national campaign against youth
    violence, to pull together commitments from people and organizations
    from all different walks of life. Although this new campaign is not even
    2 months old, it has already made a remarkable start. Over the coming
    months, it will roll out a major media campaign, begin supporting
    antiviolence concerts and townhall meetings, in-school and after-school
    programs, and sponsor a city-by-city effort to shine a spotlight on the
    local initiatives that are producing the most promising results.
        The executive director of this national campaign, Jeff
    Bleich, is here with us today. I introduced him
    when we named him, but I want to thank you again for your great work.
        Today we are pleased and grateful that NBC is making its own
    commitment to protect our children from youth violence. As part of it's
    ``The More You Know'' campaign, NBC has created a series of ads that
    speak to parents and children about how families can help to stop
    violence and hate before they start. I would like to now stop and show
    one of these ads, which features Epatha
    and her ``Law & Order'' colleague, Angie Harmon. So could we show the ad?

    [[Page 1798]]

    [At this point, the public service announcement was shown.]

        The President. Thank you, thank you, and thank you. [Laughter]
        This ad and others like it will be seen by millions of viewers every
    day. In clear and powerful terms, they will convey the message that
    stopping violence and intolerance begins at home. They say if you're a
    parent, you owe it to your children to sit down with them, to draw them
    out, to give them a comfortable opportunity to express their fears, to
    give you early warning if there's a problem you need to address.
        The thing I like best about it is the message I think every parent
    ought to try to give every child: If you've done something wrong, tell
    me. It's okay. It's not the end of the world. Before it gets too bad,
    tell me.
        As you saw, these ads also provide an 800 number and a web address,
    so viewers can immediately get the best advice from national
    organizations which deal with these issues every day.
        I look forward to continuing to build on the progress that NBC, its
    national partners, and the fine actors who appear in this campaign have
    started. It's a wonderful example of what you can accomplish, with the
    power of television, to send out positive messages to parents and
    children alike.
        I also want to emphasize that we are going to change the way we in
    the Federal Government do our part, along the lines that the two Cabinet members here have
    long advocated. Youth violence has many origins and so many facets. Not
    just one but many of our Cabinet agencies are working to provide
    solutions. And they should be. They get contacted by people all over the
    country. Today I had this year and last year's winner of the Points of
    Light Award in the White House for pictures. And an enormous percentage
    of these national winners were people who were involved in trying to
    keep our kids out of trouble and give them good things to do.
        So we see responses ranging from community policing to mental health
    to after-school programs to job opportunities. To respond to what
    Donna and Janet have
    talked to me about for years--Janet sent me another memo just a couple
    of weeks ago about how we've got to get the Government to work together
    on this--we are creating a new Youth Violence Council. The job of the
    Council will be to coordinate, accelerate, and amplify all the
    antiviolence efforts now coming out of our Cabinet agencies, so that
    they will work together, not at cross purposes; they will waste less
    money and make the money they have go further; and they will touch more
    children's lives.
        So I want to thank you, Madame Attorney General, and you, Secretary Shalala, for your suggestion, and we will do this.
        I also want to say again that it is my strong conviction that
    preventing youth violence requires Congress to do more. It has been 6
    months since Littleton now. Congress has had more than ample time to
    analyze and act on the elements of this problem. They have had more than
    enough time to recognize that one of the biggest problems of intentional
    and accidental violence against our children is the appalling ease with
    which young people can gain access to guns.
        And yet, after a very encouraging vote in the Senate last May--when
    the Vice President was able to break a tie
    and pass legislation that makes a lot of sense, among other things
    closing the Brady background check loophole that didn't apply to gun
    shows and flea market gun sales--there has been no action, because the
    leadership has done nothing but delay.
        So again, I say to the Republican leadership, I know this is a tough
    issue for you; I know that nobody likes to make the NRA mad looking
    towards the next election. But we--when I went to the American people in
    1992 and I said, ``Let's adopt the Brady bill, and let's ban assault
    weapons,'' and I told all the hunters in my home State--which is about
    half the people that breathe down there, me among them--[laughter]--I
    said, ``Look, I'm telling you this will not affect hunting. This will
    not affect sporting events. It will make our country a safer place.'' It
    was an argument no one knew. It's not an argument anymore. We have the
    results.
        The Brady bill has kept 400,000 people who had criminal records or
    otherwise should not have had handguns from getting them, and we have
    the lowest crime rate in 26 years. This is not an argument anymore.
    There is evidence. And we now know that a lot of people who shouldn't
    get these guns know they can go get them at a gun show or an urban flea
    market because there is no background check. There are loopholes in the
    assault weapons ban in

    [[Page 1799]]

    terms of the importation of inappropriately sized magazines, of
    ammunition clips, and other problems that we ought to address. So I
    would say again, the time to act is now. The country overwhelmingly
    supports this.
        I want to give the House a pat on the back again for passing a
    decent Patients' Bill of Rights last week. They had to break the
    stranglehold of an interest group that had the allegiance of their
    leadership. They have to do it again. But if they do it, they'll feel
    real good about it, just like they did last week. [Laughter] You know,
    this is another one of those issues--it's not a particularly partisan
    issue except in Washington, DC, and we need to get free of all that and
    think about these kids.
        I feel the same way about the hate crimes legislation. Since I first
    proposed the hate crimes bill--believe it or not, hundreds of Americans,
    like young Matthew Shepard in Wyoming or James Byrd in Texas, have been
    killed or injured simply because of who they are, because of their race,
    their faith, because they're gay. And I think this is important for
    America and important for our leadership at home and around the world.
        What do I spend my time on around the world? If I'm trying to deal
    with peace in Ireland, what am I trying to do? Get people over their
    religious--if we try to make peace and avoid another Rwanda in Africa,
    what are we trying to do? Get people of different tribes not to kill
    each other. If we're trying to make peace in Kosovo and Bosnia, what are
    we trying to do? Trying to get people over their ethnic and religious
    hatreds. And on and on and on.
        This is a deep thing in the human psyche that has been with us since
    the dawn of time. And of course the most stunning example of all is the
    struggle we are still making to harmonize and reconcile the people of
    the Middle East, in the very heart of the place that gave birth to all
    three of the world's great religions that hold there is one creator,
    God.
        Now, when America is a force in all these places but at home, you
    have to read that a guy that hates people that aren't just like him
    shoots a bunch of kids at a Jewish community center and then drives
    around and kills a Filipino postman working for the Federal Government--
    he got a two-for--the guy was an Asian and a Federal Government
    employee. And you read there is a guy that belongs to something in the
    Middle West that he called a church, even though they don't believe in
    God; they believe in the supremacy of white people. And he shoots a fine
    young man who was a basketball coach at Northwestern and then toodles
    down the road again and kills a young Korean Christian coming out of his
    church. And you see all these things happening.
        It seems to me very hard to make the case that America, for our own
    sanity and our own humanity and for what we owe to the rest of the
    world, should not pass strong hate crimes legislation and do it without
    delay this year.
        So again let me say, to every proposal someone can raise the
    objection, this will not solve every problem. If we did that, no one
    would ever do anything constructive. That's like saying if you decided
    to go on a diet and you stay on it 3 days, you won't lose the 20 pounds
    you want to lose. That's like saying, don't do this because even though
    you should do this, even when you do it, there are three other things
    you should do.
        I mean, all these arguments don't make any sense. Look, I'm proud of
    the fact that I had the chance to be President when Americans believed
    we could lower crime again and where we have a 26-year low in the crime
    rate. But we have the highest murder rate of any civilized country in
    the world, still. The rate of accidental deaths of children by gunshots
    is 9 times higher than the rate of the next 25 industrial economies
    combined.
        What I'm trying to do with this PSA is to mobilize the American
    people to save our children, so the next President can say America is
    the safest big country in the world. Why don't we have a big goal here?
    It's nice to say that we've got the lowest crime rate in 26 years; maybe
    by the time I leave office, we can say it's the lowest in 30 years.
    Maybe we'll really be chugging along here.
        But don't you want to really be able to say, every time you look at
    a young person like this fine young boy here in this beautiful red
    sweater--[laughter]--that this child should grow up in the safest big
    country on the face of the Earth? Let's have a goal worth fighting for,
    for our children. And let's mobilize people to do what can be done now,
    in their families, and let's have nobody run and hide from the
    responsibility we all have to give that gift to our children in the new
    millennium.
        Thank you very much.

    [[Page 1800]]

    Note: The President spoke at 1:45 p.m. in the Presidential Hall
    (formerly Room 450) in the Old Executive Office Building. In his
    remarks, he referred to S. Epatha Merkeson and Angie Harmon, actresses
    on NBC's ``Law & Order''; Rosalyn Weinman, executive vice president,
    broadcast standards and content policy, NBC; Abraham H. Foxman, national
    director, Anti-Defamation League; and Jeff Bleich, executive director,
    National Campaign Against Youth Violence.