    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [April 11, 2000]
    [Pages 673-676]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Maryland State Bill Signing Ceremony in Annapolis, Maryland
    April 11, 2000

        Thank you very much, Governor and
    Mrs. Glendening, Lieutenant Governor
    Kathleen Kennedy Townsend,
    Secretary of State Willis, Attorney General
    Curran, Mr. Speaker, President Miller. I also want to
    acknowledge the Members of Congress who are here, who are on the right
    side of this fight, Senator Mikulski,
    Representative Morella, and
    Representative Wynn. You can be very
    proud of what all three of them are doing on this issue.
        I thank the members of the legislature, the overwhelming numbers of
    Democrats and the brave Republicans who joined you to pass this
    legislation. I thank the students from the Young Kids Against Violence
    and the Students Together Against Guns and from Largo and Potomac
    schools for their work. And I want to say a little more about each of
    you in a moment.
        Let me say, I think it is fitting that we are here today in this
    magnificent old place where our forebears walked the halls more than 200
    years ago. It's a site of firsts. The Speaker mentioned George Washington resigning his commission just
    a few steps from here. The State House was also the site of the
    ratification of the Treaty of Paris, which officially put an end to the
    Revolutionary War and marked the birth of our new Nation.
        Today we are trying to end another kind of war, an ongoing struggle
    to reduce the staggering toll of violence on our citizens and especially
    on our children. The Maryland Legislature once again has made history,
    and I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I came up here
    today more than anything else to say thank you.
        I applaud first your Governor. I
    remember after I first met him--you know, he's sort of low-key; you have
    to keep listening to Parris Glendening. [Laughter] But I must say, he

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    wears well. The more I watched him--I remember once, a couple years ago,
    I was talking to people at the White House about what was going on in
    the States about a completely different issue. And I said, ``You know,
    it is astonishing; in almost everything I have tried to accomplish as
    President, Maryland has been out there on the forefront of change, ahead
    of the other States in virtually every area.'' And I might say, in the
    area of gun safety, it's worth pointing out for the record that Maryland
    has already banned assault weapons, cheap handguns known as Saturday
    night specials, already limited handgun sales to one per month. And with
    this new law, you are again leading the way.
        Last year California passed legislation to limit handgun sales to
    one a month, to ban junk guns, new generations of assault weapons. Last
    week Massachusetts began enforcing consumer product safety rules for
    guns, to ban junk guns, and to adopt devices to prevent children from
    firing guns. Tomorrow I'm going to Colorado to support a citizen ballot
    initiative to close the gun show loophole and require background checks
    on all gun sales.
        We ought to talk for a moment about how this came to be. I was
    looking at Mike Miller up here, and I've had the
    privilege to know him well for many years now. I know what kind of
    district you represent. This can't have been an easy fight for him. I
    heard the Speaker talking. I used to go
    down to the Eastern Shore when I was a student at Georgetown. I've had
    the privilege of spending a little time at Camp David since I've been
    President, traveling in the neighborhood. I know not all of Maryland is
    Baltimore, and I know what the Speaker was saying. I know how hard this
    vote was for a lot of you.
        And I know something else, too. None of us want to really pay
    tribute to the people who are truly responsible for us all being here
    today. We thanked each other. The truth is, we're all here because too
    many children got killed. And I was so moved by what Kathleen said, and
    I couldn't help thinking how proud her father would be of her today.
        Most of the history of the United States to bring sanity to our gun
    laws has been a sad history, littered with the lost lives of people we
    could ill afford to lose. President Johnson, to his everlasting credit,
    proposed sweeping gun legislation in the aftermath of the deaths of
    Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. He got something past the
    Congress in 1968, which was better than nothing but woefully weak. I
    will remind you that that law only required gun sellers to ask but not
    to verify whether purchasers had a criminal record or a mental health
    history.
        And then, somehow, we just forgot about it. And a lot of people like
    me who came from places like Arkansas and Maryland, who always knew we
    ought to be doing something, just didn't. I remember in 1982, when I ran
    for Governor, I actually blurted out what I thought. I said I would
    support a waiting period and background checks for gun sales, handgun
    sales, 18 years ago. It sparked a withering firestorm. And when I got
    elected, I saw there was no support for it. So I just walked away and
    went on to other things.
        My life was changed when a friend of mine who ran a hardware store
    in a small mountain town of about 1,000 people--a man, I knew him and
    his family very well--was in his store one day, and a guy came in he
    hadn't seen in a long time, and he said, ``Where you been?'' And he
    said, ``Well, I went away to the service, and then I lived in other
    States, and I just got back. I want to buy a gun. I want to do some
    target practice.'' And he kind of joked about the gun control form,
    ``Well, have you ever been in prison, ever had a background check, a
    mental health history?'' And the guy said, ``No, no.'' He handed him the
    gun; 18 hours later 5 people were dead. He had broken out of the State
    veterans mental hospital that morning.
        And it nearly destroyed my friend. He lost years of his life trying
    to get over what had happened. He was not responsible. The law, in any
    case, would not have found out what had to be found out; it was totally
    inadequate. But he lived with the nightmares of those people.
        And then the NRA started trying to pass legislation all over the
    country to actually require States to keep cities from having gun
    control laws more stringent than the State did. And I vetoed it a couple
    of times, and had some rather interesting exchanges with them. Then,
    when the Brady bill was vetoed in 1991 or '92, whenever it was, I just
    promised myself if I ever had a chance to start again, I would.
        And unfortunately, our cause has been aided by the deaths of all
    these children in all these schools and in other settings. And I think
    we should pay tribute to them. They are why we're

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    all here today. You know it, and I know it. They are what made our
    constituents in places like rural Arkansas and rural Maryland--who now
    know, because of the experience of the Brady bill and the assault
    weapons ban, we have no intention of interfering with hunting season or
    sport shooting events or any other lawful activities--they made those
    folks willing to say, ``You know, this is something we probably ought to
    do.''
        And now, in truth, the people are ahead of most of the politicians.
    And what I would hope today is that we could just keep on. We could make
    it clear that we have no intention of undermining the legitimate
    interests of people who hunt and sport shoot. We can also make it clear,
    to go back to what one of the previous speakers said, that we think the
    NRA ought to join us in this. What possible interest could anyone have
    in being against child trigger locks or being for safe gun technology
    that would permit handguns to be fired only by the adults who own them?
    There is a need, as they say, for more training of people, for more
    sensible education to make sure that responsible conduct is the rule for
    people who do lawfully own these guns. And it's time for us to get
    together.
        There's just one other thing I would like to say. The
    Governor talked about the terrible toll
    of deliberate killing, handgun killing, and how the--if my math is
    right--the death rate is roughly 30 times in America what it was in the
    other countries that he mentioned. I think it's worth also mentioning
    that the accidental death rate of children from handguns is over 9 times
    that of the next 25 biggest industrial countries combined. And this is
    something else that's worth pointing out. We are here not just to
    prevent crimes; we are here to prevent accidents that also, tragically,
    take the lives of these children.
        I hope that the United States Congress is paying attention to this
    event today, because every child in America deserves the protection you
    have given Maryland's children, and only Congress can provide that.
    There are very few people in Congress who represent districts any
    tougher, any more resistant to the argument that will be made against
    such legislation than some of you do who are sitting here--very few.
        There are more than enough people in the Congress who represent
    districts who would support this kind of action by more than 2 to 1, to
    pass this legislation in a landslide, legislation to require child
    safety locks, to ban the importation of large capacity ammunition clips,
    to close the gun show loophole. But for 9 months now, there has been no
    action. Oh, a good bill passed the Senate, as the Governor said, because
    the Vice President broke the tie. And a
    weaker bill passed the House, and we have been in conference. And the
    Democrats, through Congressman Conyers,
    have even offered a reasonable compromise. But nothing has happened.
        And I'll say again, every single day Congress waits, we lose 12
    children, nearly 90 people overall, to gun violence. Congress should
    follow Maryland's lead.
        Since the passage of the Brady bill, half a million felons,
    fugitives, and stalkers have been unable to get handguns at gun stores.
    Gun crime is down by more than 35 percent. The people who opposed
    closing the gun show loophole 6 years ago said the Brady bill would be
    ineffective because criminals didn't buy guns at gun stores; they only
    bought guns at gun shows and urban flea markets. Now they say, well,
    even if that's true--which it wasn't entirely true--it's just too
    burdensome.
        But it isn't. It isn't. The modest amount of time that would be
    required at rural gun shows in the most isolated area where people drive
    the longest distances are more than worth it to save one child's life.
    Over 70 percent of these background checks can be done in about an hour,
    over 90 percent in a day. People say, ``Well, why are you holding out
    for the other 8 or 9 percent?'' Because the rejection rate of the 8 or 9
    percent that can't be checked in a day is 20 times higher than the
    rejection rate of the 90 percent that can be checked in a day.
        So I say to you, we have got to do this. Do we need more
    enforcement? Of course we do. We've increased enforcement, and I've
    asked for 500 new ATF agents and 1,000 new Federal, State, and local gun
    prosecutors.
        You mentioned the Smith & Wesson announcement where they agreed to
    change the way guns are manufactured, marketed, and sold. I hope that
    did help you. It was a courageous thing for Smith & Wesson to do. And
    let me just explain the practical issue here again. An enormous number
    of the guns used in crimes that are bought from stores are bought from a
    very small percentage of the stores. That's what this is about,
    primarily. And I only hope

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    that other gun manufacturers will follow their lead instead of
    excoriating them. They don't deserve to be condemned; they deserve to be
    applauded. And others ought to step up to the plate and do the same
    thing.
        Now, Governor, you said the NRA
    ought to stop attacking me. I'll tell you what, if they stop attacking
    this legislation, I'd be happy for them to attack me for the rest of my
    life. I've kind of gotten used to it. What we say about each other
    doesn't amount to a hill of beans. But whether all these kids here live
    to have their children standing on these steps some day fighting for
    some other issue, that's what matters. That's what matters.
        So again, I say a simple thank you. Thank you, once again, for
    leading the Nation to a better tomorrow. And again I say, Washington
    should follow Maryland's lead.
        Thank you very much.

     Note:  The President spoke at 12:04 p.m. in the Maryland State House at
    the signing ceremony for Maryland's Responsible Gun Safety Act of 2000.
    In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Parris N. Glendening, Lt. Gov.
    Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Secretary of State John Willis, and Attorney
    General Joseph Curran of Maryland; Governor Glendening's wife, Frances;
    and Maryland State House Speaker Casper R. Taylor, Jr., and Senate
    President Thomas V. (Mike) Miller, Jr.