[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.