[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.