    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [September 9, 1999]
    [Pages 1508-1511]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Combating Crime
    September 9, 1999

        Thank you very much, Mayor Webb, for
    your words and your work and your friendship. Thank you, Commissioner
    Timoney, for the example that you and so many
    others in law enforcement set. I want to thank all the mayors here
    today. There's really quite an amazing array of our Nation's chief
    executives of our cities, and Republicans and Democrats alike. Thank you
    all for coming.
        I thank the county officials who are here, the police chiefs and
    others in law enforcement who are here, and those of you who are here
    supporting them from the National Council of Churches and other groups.
        I want to thank Attorney General Reno and
    Secretary Summers and Secretary
    Cuomo, Deputy Attorney General
    Holder, Treasury Under Secretary for
    Enforcement Jim Johnson. They are some of
    the team and the heart of the team that we have had working at this
    crime issue now for 6\1/2\ years. And any success that our
    administration has enjoyed, I think belongs in large measure to them as
    well as to the remarkable partnership that we have enjoyed with all of
    you, and I thank them for that.
        There have already been a couple of references made to the fact that
    many of you were with me here in the White House way back in January of
    1994 when I asked you to walk a beat in the Halls of Congress to put
    more police on the street, to ban assault weapons, to keep guns out of
    the hands of those who shouldn't have them, to fund local prevention
    programs, to help keep our kids out of trouble in the first place even
    as we have tougher punishment for serious, violent crimes.
        At the time, I think most people in this country assumed that the
    crime rate would go up forever and that nothing could be done to bring
    it down substantially. But I didn't believe that, because I had seen
    from neighborhoods in Los Angeles to the street I walked with Mayor
    Rendell in Philadelphia and to many other
    places that I have been with many of you from late 1991 through 1993
    that the crime rate was already going down in places where people had
    done what makes sense to reconnect police officers to their communities
    and to take sensible preventive measures.
        Well, with a lot of effort, a lot of blood on the floor, and the
    sacrifice--I think we should never forget the sacrifice--of some
    Members' seats in the United States Congress, we did pass the 1994 crime
    bill. A lot of people used that passage to go home in 1994 and then try
    to terrify the voters that we were going to take away all their hunting
    and sporting rights. And others said it was a great waste of money, that

    [[Page 1509]]

    it would never lower the crime rate. Others said there would never be
    any police put on the street. I heard it all.
        But thanks to the mayors, the law enforcement chiefs, the county
    officials, and others involved in trying to make our streets safer, this
    strategy has worked beyond all expectations: the lowest murder rate in
    30 years, the lowest overall crime rate in 26 years, violent crime down
    by 27 percent in the last 6 years nationwide. And in many smaller ways,
    crimes like vandalism that undermine our quality of life have also
    dropped dramatically.
        I know that one reason this has happened is that we have enjoyed the
    longest peacetime expansion in our history, and we have 19.4 million new
    jobs. But every single serious analysis of this phenomenon has also
    shown that a major portion of the credit belongs to sensible law
    enforcement and prevention strategies and especially to the strategy of
    community policing and day-to-day involvement in the communities.
        I see Mayor Menino from Boston here.
    Many of you know that Boston went virtually 2 years without any young
    person being killed in a violent act. You cannot explain those kind of
    results, which we have seen in the neighborhoods of every person
    represented in this audience, simply by economic improvement. We now
    know what works, and more and more mayors and law enforcement officials
    and other local officials are doing what works. All we've tried to do is
    to give you the tools to do it.
        We've now funded, ahead of schedule and under budget, the 100,000
    community police officers promised in the 1994 crime bill. Working
    together, we have created, I believe, all across the country, across
    party lines and jurisdictional lines, a new consensus on how to fight
    crime and violence, on what works. But, as Mayor Webb said, we have been
    reminded in recent months from Los Angeles to Littleton to Atlanta to
    what happened in Illinois and Indiana, gun violence is still too much a
    part of America's life.
        We've learned a lot about it and what it takes to reduce it in the
    last 6 years, and we know that we need to do some more things. But once
    again, just as I asked you 6 years ago, you have to walk a beat in
    Congress if you want the results. We have to send the message that out
    in America, this is not a partisan issue; this is simply a commonsense
    issue about what does and doesn't work. Mayors and police chiefs,
    Republicans and Democrats all work on the frontlines. They know the cost
    of inaction; they know the benefits of prudent action.
        You also know that the Federal Government needs to be a partner in
    giving you the tools to do your jobs. Today the Justice Department will
    take another step in that direction by releasing $146 million in grants
    to hundreds of law enforcement agencies across our country to hire
    nearly 1,600 more police officers, including over 750 who will walk a
    new beat, the halls of our schools, to protect our children.
        I am also pleased that the Department of Housing and Urban
    Development will invest $15 million to help public housing agencies,
    working with the police, to get guns off the street through gun buy-back
    programs.
        A lot of you have already invested in efforts like these where
    citizens can exchange their guns for food or clothing or small sums of
    cash. They have been successfully pioneered at the local level. I just
    want the Federal Government to lend a hand to do more.
        We know that too many neighborhoods still are awash in guns, and
    that's not just through crime; that is just not through crime that guns
    lead to tragedy. You heard Mayor Webb mention the tragic case in Gary,
    Indiana. Listen to this: The rate of accidental shooting deaths for
    children under 15 in the United States is 9 times higher than the rate
    for the other 25 industrialized nations combined. If any of you have or
    ever had a child in those wonderful, glowing years, that makes a lasting
    impression. I'm going to say it one more time: The rate of accidental
    shooting deaths for children under 15 in the United States is 9 times
    higher than the rate of the other 25 industrialized nations combined.
    Every gun turned in through a buy-back program means, potentially, one
    less tragedy. And there's more we can do to help you as well.
        As all of you know, in the balanced budget, I proposed funding
    through our COPS program that would allow us to put another 30-50,000
    police on the street in the neighborhoods that still have very high
    crime rates, to concentrate more resources where they're most needed.
        You are doing your part; now it's time for Congress to do its part.
    Unfortunately, there is the chance that it will go in the other
    direction. The budget approved by the Republican leaders would cut our
    successful COPS program policing in half, really by more than half.

    [[Page 1510]]

        First, they said it wouldn't work in '94, and it was a colossal
    waste of money. Now that it has worked and it's made the streets safer,
    they still want to cut it. The tax plan that the leadership is
    supporting would threaten law enforcement across the board. It would
    force reduction in the numbers of Federal agents that work with your
    local officials. It would cut deeply into our support for State and
    local law enforcement.
        To make matters worse, Congress has yet to pass a commonsense
    juvenile crime bill to prevent youth violence and keep guns out of the
    wrong hands. It's been over a month now since the House and the Senate
    conferees met, nearly 5 months since the shootings at Columbine. America
    is still waiting for Congress to act. It shouldn't take another tragedy
    to make this a priority, though we've had plenty of them in the last 5
    months.
        Now, the lawmakers are back in town. It would be unconscionable if
    they were to leave again without sending me a balanced bipartisan
    juvenile crime bill that closes the gun show loophole, I mean, really
    closes the gun show loophole, requires child safety locks on guns, and
    bans the importation of large-capacity ammunition clips.
        We need legislation that will strengthen our present laws, not
    weaken them. We need legislation that applies to all gun shows, not a
    bill that allows criminals to turn flea markets and parking lots into
    open-air gun bazaars. And we need legislation that strengthens, not
    weakens, the Brady background checks.
        These Brady checks are working. They've stopped over 410,000 felons,
    fugitives, and other prohibited persons from buying guns since 1993 when
    the Brady bill became law. In just the last 7 months, since our new
    instant criminal background check system went into effect, 100,000
    illegal purchases have been stopped by the insta-check system. Today the
    Justice and Treasury Departments are releasing reports analyzing the
    effectiveness of the instant check system.
        The report makes two things very clear. First, the system does
    provide law enforcement with a powerful new crime-fighting tool while
    causing little inconvenience for law-abiding gun purchasers. Listen to
    this: Seventy-three percent of the checks are completed within minutes,
    95 percent in 2 hours or less. That's the good news. But second, the
    report also makes clear that it is critically important to give law
    enforcement sufficient time to thoroughly check records. In fact, less
    than 5 percent of background checks take longer than 24 hours. But those
    purchasers, whose checks do take longer than 24 hours, are almost 20
    times more likely to be convicted felons or otherwise prohibited from
    owning firearms.
        Now, what does that mean? It means Congress did a good thing in
    pushing the instant check system. That's a good thing, and all of us
    should acknowledge that. It's a good thing. Anything that minimizes
    inconvenience to law-abiding people is a good thing. But it also means
    that our law enforcement officials should not be artificially required
    to get all this done within a window of time that is so small and that
    would inconvenience only 5 percent of the people by going more than a
    day who, themselves, are 20 times more likely to be prohibited from
    making purchases in the first place. So everybody, I think, will take
    heart from the results of this study. They will see that the instant
    check system is a good thing. And that is good.
        But I would also hope that everyone will take heart from the
    sobering fact that the 5 percent that take longer than a day are 20
    times more likely to be prohibited purchasers and not unduly tie the
    hands of our law enforcement officials who do this work. So let me be
    blunt. The NRA was right to support the instant check system; they're
    wrong when they try to tie the hands of the law enforcement officials to
    look at the last 5 percent, and I would hope the Congress would do that.
        In the next few weeks, this juvenile crime bill is but one of an
    enormous number of opportunities Congress will have, thanks to our
    present prosperity, to pull our country together and to move our country
    forward. We have an historic opportunity to lift the burden of debt off
    the next generation. We can literally not only continue to pay down the
    debt, but America, in 15 years, if we stay on the present path, could be
    debt-free for the first time since 1835. That would guarantee a whole
    generation of low interest rates and prosperity.
        We have an opportunity to strengthen Social Security and take it out
    beyond the lifespan of the baby boom generation, to strengthen Medicare
    and reform it with prescription drug coverage. We have an opportunity to
    invest in our children's future with world-class schools and safer
    streets. The tax plan passed by the

    [[Page 1511]]

    Republican leadership would not permit these priorities to be pursued.
    We could never pay off the debt; it doesn't add a day to the life of the
    Social Security or the Medicare Trust Funds; it doesn't provide for
    prescription drug coverage and would require cuts in education and law
    enforcement. The cuts in education and law enforcement could be up to 50
    percent.
        Now, in 1994, because we worked together, we passed the crime bill
    that enables us to come here and celebrate today, to enable every mayor
    to sit here and say, ``I wish the President were telling this story
    about my hometown. There is this thing I wish was mentioned today.'' And
    back home, people are celebrating, and no one asks you when you're a
    victim of a crime whether you're a Republican or a Democrat.
        And once a person gets elected, when the mayor walks down the street
    and we're talking about saving lives, no one cares what your party is;
    they just want people to be safe. We've come a long way since 1994 with
    a simple strategy: more police, fewer guns in the wrong hands. We don't
    want to adopt laws and budgets which would give us the reverse: fewer
    police and more guns in the wrong hands. No one in America wants that to
    happen. And there is, today, a bipartisan majority in the Congress that
    does not want that to happen.
        So, again, I implore the leadership of the Congress to work with us,
    to give us safer streets and a brighter future. In 1994 we were having a
    discussion, a debate based on what we thought would work, based on a
    year or 2 of experience in a few places. In 1999 there is no reasonable
    debate. We now have 6 years of what works. We have proven avalanches of
    indisputable evidence about what it takes to have safe streets and safe
    futures for our children. It is an American issue beyond the confines of
    the Capital City, and it should become America's cause as Congress
    returns to work.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:11 a.m. in Presidential Hall (formerly
    Room 450) in the Old Executive Office Building. In his remarks, he
    referred to Mayor Wellington E. Webb of Denver, CO; Police Commissioner
    John Timoney and Mayor Edward G. Rendell of Philadelphia, PA; and Mayor
    Thomas M. Menino of Boston, MA.