    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [January 18, 2000]
    [Pages 67-71]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the National Firearms Enforcement Initiative in Boston,
    Massachusetts
    January 18, 2000

        Well, Mayor, I was just thinking that
    you should hope that Detective Holmes stays in
    police work and out of politics. [Laughter] Didn't she give a good
    speech? Let's give her another hand. That's great. [Applause] I thought
    it was great.
        Mr. Mayor; Senator Kennedy; Representative Joe Moakley; Barney Frank; Mike
    Capuano; to Commissioner Evans and all the members of the Boston Police Department
    that are here; representatives of law enforcement who have come to
    Boston today to be with us--Jerry Flynn of the
    International Brotherhood of Police Officers, Tom Nee of the National Association of Police Organizations--I
    thank you all for welcoming us.
        I want to say that in addition to the Attorney General, we are joined today by Treasury Under Secretary Jim
    Johnson; the Director of Alcohol, Tobacco,
    and Firearms Division, Brad Buckles; and
    of course, as the Attorney General mentioned, our United States
    attorney, Don Stern.
        I also want to thank Lynn Jackson for
    welcoming us to Orchard Gardens Community Center. She was nervous when
    she got up here to speak. I said, ``Go on, you're supposed to start.''
    She said, ``I'm not supposed to start until they sit down.'' So I said,
    ``You go up there and speak. I'll make them sit down.'' [Laughter] So
    then when you stood up for Lisa Holmes, she
    said, ``Make them sit down. Make them sit down.'' I said, ``Not on your
    life.'' [Laughter]
        Let me say to all of you, I am profoundly grateful to the people of
    Boston and the State of Massachusetts for being so good to me and to my
    family and to our administration. I've been running over in my mind all
    the wonderful moments I've had here just since 1991 when I first started
    exploring whether I should run for President, the first time I visited
    City Year here in Boston, the day I spent--Commissioner Evans and the mayor took a
    half a day with the Attorney General and me to
    explain what you'd done to lower juvenile crime and lower dramatically
    the fatalities among children in this community--all the other
    incredible times I have spent in this city and in this State, including
    the times that Hillary and Chelsea and I have been vacationers here and
    contributed, I might add, to the tax base of Massachusetts. [Laughter]
        But this is a special day for me, because it is an enormous source
    of pride for me to stand up after hearing a community leader, a police
    officer, the mayor, your Representatives in the United States Congress,
    and our Attorney General talk about what you have done to give real life
    and real freedom back to this community.
        When I ran for President, the biggest issue on most people's minds
    was the economy. Here I am in Boston, just south of New Hampshire; 8
    years ago, I would have been up there today. But they were all concerned
    about the banks closing and people having their mortgages foreclosed and
    all these other problems. But I knew that the challenges facing America
    were not simply economic and that we had to have a policy to try to move
    people from welfare to work, we had to have a policy to try to open up
    educational opportunities to all of our young

    [[Page 68]]

    people, and we had to have a policy to lower the crime rate.
        In Washington, the primary debate then was whether we needed more
    prevention or tougher punishment and whether the Federal Government
    ought to just give speeches about it, because it was primarily a local
    problem, or give money and walk away. Well, I felt that on both counts,
    we should do both.
        The first elected job I ever had was attorney general of my State.
    Before that, when I was a young lawyer, and even when I was a law
    student, I used to teach criminal law, criminal procedure, and
    constitutional law to law enforcement officials. I have always been
    interested in this, and I have always been convinced that we had to have
    the proper balance of punishment and prevention and that the police
    could never do it alone, not without the community, not without the
    people in the street and the neighborhoods, not without the parents and
    the kids, people who want the blessings of a normal, safe life in every
    neighborhood in this country.
        And so we've been working to try to give you the tools to do both,
    to prevent more crime, to save more kids, to effectively punish those
    who violate the law. In 1993 we passed the Brady bill. The Congress
    passed it; it had previously passed, but it had been vetoed by the
    previous President. I signed it and said I wanted to sign it, and I
    believed in it. And I heard all that talk about how terrible it was
    going to be and what an awful burden it is. And now we have almost half
    a million felons, fugitives, and stalkers who have not been able to get
    handguns because of the Brady bill, and not a single hunter in America
    who's been inconvenienced. It was the right thing to do. There are more
    citizens alive; there are more police officers alive today because the
    Brady law is in effect.
        In 1994 the crime bill provided funds for 100,000 police officers
    over a 6-year period. Thanks to the leadership of the Attorney
    General and those working with her, we
    distributed those funds and got those folks hired, under budget and
    ahead of schedule. We passed the assault weapons ban, cracked down on
    illegal gun dealing to young people, kept an eye out also for the most
    innovative local crime-fighting strategies like Operation Cease Fire
    here in Boston.
        Now, the things you have done and the things we've tried to help you
    do have transformed life in America. As the Attorney General said, the
    crime rate's dropped now for 7 years in a row. The overall crime rate's
    at its lowest level in 25 years. The murder rate is the lowest level
    nationwide in 31 years; gun crime down 35 percent; juveniles committing
    homicides with guns down 57 percent; gun prosecutions up at all levels
    of government, local, State, and Federal. Federal firearms prosecutions
    are higher today than they were in 1992, but they're up 25 percent just
    since 1998 to 1999; those convicted of Federal gun crimes serving longer
    sentences. We are trying to send a message, an unambiguous message, to
    people who violate the law: If you commit crimes with guns or violate
    gun laws, you will pay a heavy price.
        No city has sent that message more clearly than Boston. But your
    message is more than that. You have made us know that this is not just a
    numbers game. You have shown that to reduce crime most and therefore to
    increase freedom most among your families, your children, and your
    neighborhoods, prosecutions must be targeted where they'll have the
    greatest impact--in Boston's case, on violent repeat offenders and on
    gun traffickers who supply them.
        You have also shown that there needs to be a team effort,
    partnerships with citizens and leaders in every community, focused on
    saving kids and preventing crime before it occurs. And so after all
    these years of effort and the leadership of your great mayor and others, you have made Boston one of the safest
    cities in America. It is essential to making America what we want it to
    be in the 21st century.
        You know, yesterday we celebrated the annual holiday honoring Dr.
    Martin Luther King's birthday. And I was honored to sign the bill that
    made it not only a national holiday but a national day of service. We
    call it a day on, not a day off. Yesterday, in keeping with my
    tradition, I went to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Washington, DC, with a
    group of citizens called Greater DC Cares and some young AmeriCorps
    volunteers, and we worked on rehabbing a facility. But in preparation
    for that day, I thought about all the other King holidays we've had
    since I've been President and an astonishing opportunity I had back in
    1993 to speak in the Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis,
    Tennessee. That's where Dr. King spoke the night before he was killed.
        We had all the leaders of that great church in America there, at a
    time when America was

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    a much more unsafe place. And I just started thinking off the top of my
    head, with the crowd. I said, ``You know, if Dr. King could come back to
    Earth today, what would he say?'' He'd say we've done a pretty good job
    of integrating our society, and we have more African-Americans and other
    minorities moving into the middle class, taking jobs in public service,
    being fairly compensated for what they do. But he would be sick by the
    crime and violence that is ravaging all the poor neighborhoods of this
    country. And he would say, ``I want you to know I did not live and die
    so that children could destroy children, so that children could destroy
    themselves with drugs and become millionaires destroying the lives of
    other children.''
        And a lot of you are nodding your heads about that. This is a
    different country today because of you. Yes, those things still happen,
    but now America knows we can make it better. All you have to do is tell
    somebody the story of Boston and all cynicism disappears, all skepticism
    disappears. Everybody knows we can make it better. We don't have to give
    up on our kids. We don't have to give up on our neighborhoods. We don't
    have to tolerate a level of fear and violence and crime and insecurity
    that no civilized society will tolerate.
        Now, that is the good news, and we can all celebrate that good news.
    But if I were to ask you this question--and I won't make you do it--but
    if I were to ask you this question, if I were to say to you, ``Now,
    everybody that now thinks that Boston and Massachusetts and America are
    safe enough, please raise your hand,'' nobody would raise their hand,
    right? Even though we're at a 31-year low in the murder rate, even
    though the juvenile murder rate with guns has gone way down, even though
    the crime rate's at a 25-year low, nobody believes that America is as
    safe as it ought to be. No one who knows anything believes that all of
    our kids are as safe in their childhood as they ought to be.
        And so I say to you, what are we going to do with this moment of
    promise? We don't have any excuses anymore. You know, maybe 7 years ago
    people could throw up their hands and say, ``Oh, we can't make it
    better. Just support the police, lock them up longer, and hope someday
    it'll get better.'' Nobody really knew.
        Now we know. We don't have any excuses now. We know how to drive the
    crime rate down, down, down. And we know how to keep kids out of trouble
    in the first place. We know how to save children. I think it's time we
    had the real goal we ought to have as a nation. We ought to say, ``Okay,
    we got the crime rate down. Here's our real goal: We want America to be
    the safest big country in the entire world.''
        We can do that, not with a silver bullet but by continuing to build
    on what has worked. And in my new budget and in the State of the Union
    Address, I'm going to ask the Congress and the country to continue to
    move forward in the direction that has worked. Today I want to announce
    to you five specific initiatives that I believe will help us a lot.
        First, in my new budget I will call for hiring 500 new ATF agents
    and inspectors, the largest increase in ATF firearms enforcement ever.
    These new agents and inspectors will help us to crack down on violent
    gun criminals, illegal gun traffickers, and bad-apple dealers, a small
    percentage of the dealers who supply a very large percentage of the guns
    that go to criminals and to kids.
        Second, we will add, as the Attorney General said, 1,000 new
    Federal, State, and local prosecutors to help take dangerous gun
    criminals out of our communities and put them where they belong, behind
    bars.
        Third, to strengthen the hand of the prosecutors, we will invest
    more in the ATF's national gun tracing center and supply local law
    enforcement agencies with the tools they need to utilize that center,
    from computers to training. We want to make it possible and we can make
    it possible to trace the origin of every single gun used in every single
    crime in the United States.
        Fourth, we will create a groundbreaking national ballistics network
    that eventually will enable us to trace almost any bullet left at a
    crime scene anywhere in America to the gun of the criminal who fired it.
        Fifth, the budget provides local communities with grants to run the
    same kind of anti-gun-violence media campaigns that have been such an
    important part of the successful strategy used to reduce gun crime here
    in Boston or in Richmond or in other cities which have tried it.
        All together, these efforts represent the largest national gun
    enforcement initiative in the history of the United States. They will
    help communities across America to push violent crime rates down by
    cracking down harder on gun criminals and, again, by interrupting the
    flow to prevent more crimes.

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        But I ask Congress to support them and also ask Congress to start
    this new century by abandoning another stale debate. For in addition to
    the old debate about whether we should focus on punishment or prevention
    and whether the Federal Government should make speeches or give money,
    there's a debate that unfortunately hasn't died out in Washington, and
    that's about whether it's better to strengthen the enforcement of the
    existing gun laws or to have strengthened gun laws.
        The truth is, just like the other questions, the real answer is, we
    should do both. That's what we've done with the Brady bill. That's what
    we have done with the assault weapons ban. And we should do more. The
    drop in the crime rate has been due both to changing laws and to better
    enforcement and better prevention.
        Last year we passed some sensible measures in the United States
    Senate, thanks to the help of Senator Kennedy and with the Vice President
    casting a tie-breaking vote. As he says, whenever he has to vote, we
    win. [Laughter] So by one vote, we were able to defeat the high-pressure
    tactics of the NRA to pass an important advance in doing background
    checks at gun shows and urban flea markets, having child safety locks
    for all new handguns, a ban on importing large capacity ammunition
    clips. But we couldn't pass it in the House of Representatives, even
    after the travesty of Columbine High School. I believe passing
    commonsense gun safety legislation should be the very first action of
    this Congress.
        I will say again, to all the people who listen to these arguments,
    there has been no discernible increase in the burden on any law-abiding
    sportsperson in this entire country with the Brady bill and the assault
    weapons ban, but we've saved a lot of lives of kids, police officers,
    and citizens. And closing the gun show loophole, which is something I
    know something about because they're very popular in my part of the
    country, or the urban flea market loophole or banning the import of
    these large capacity ammunition clips, which people can't manufacture
    and sell here at home anyway, or requiring these child safety locks for
    kids is an important advance, and it ought to be done. It'll have the
    same impact that the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban did. It
    won't cause anybody who is law-abiding any hassle, but it'll save lives.
    It's important that we do this, too.
        I also want to say I think it's important that the gun industry take
    more responsibility in changing the way it designs, markets, and
    distributes firearms. [Applause] And let me say to all of you who care
    about this--there was some spontaneous applause there--you should know
    this. There are responsible citizens in the gun industry who actually
    want to work with us to find new ways to make sure the guns they sell
    don't wind up in the wrong hands and that kids aren't killed
    accidentally with them. Part of the answer may be in new technologies
    that could reduce accidents.
        I want all of you to listen to this. The law enforcement officers
    probably won't be surprised by this, but this is important that you know
    this. The accidental gun death rate of children under 15 in the United
    States is 9 times higher than that in the other 25 biggest industrial
    countries combined--combined. We don't have to put up with that either.
    Technologies now exist that could lead to guns that can only be fired by
    the adults who own them. My budget helps the gun industry accelerate the
    development of this technology. So we need to support that as well.
        In his last campaign in 1968, Robert Kennedy said the fight against
    crime, and I quote, ``is a fight to preserve that quality of community
    which is at the root of our greatness.'' We saw something about the root
    of America's greatness today here in Orchard Gardens: a community leader
    proud of her center; a police officer who grew up just a stone's throw
    from here; elected leaders who know the people who live in this area,
    whom they represent; a mayor proud of the progress that people working
    together can do; all these people in uniform justifiably proud of what
    they have achieved. That's what this is all about, all of us working
    together and helping each other.
        I say again, for all the progress we have made, we should never
    rest, not any of us, as long as there's one more child whose life needs
    to be saved, as long as there's one more kid that can be turned away
    from drugs and guns and violence and kept out of prison in the first
    place, as long as there's one more street to make safe. We shouldn't
    quit until your country, your State, and your community are the safest
    places in the world.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:20 p.m. in the Orchard Gardens Community
    Center. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Thomas M. Menino

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    of Boston; Lisa Holmes, detective, and Paul F. Evans, commissioner,
    Boston Police Department; Gerald Flynn, alternate national vice
    president, International Brotherhood of Police Officers; Thomas J. Nee,
    executive vice president, National Association of Police Organizations;
    and Lynn Jackson, director, Orchard Gardens Community Center.