[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[March 17, 2000]
[Pages 481-483]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on the Gun Safety Agreement With Smith & Wesson and an Exchange 
With Reporters
March 17, 2000

    The President. Good afternoon. For 7 years, our administration has 
worked on every front to reduce violence and to keep our communities 
safer. That's why we've pushed for commonsense gun safety legislation, 
why I've taken executive action to crack down on bad gun dealers, and 
why in December I said we would engage gun manufacturers in ways to seek 
changes in how they do business.
    Today I am pleased to report that a key member of the industry has 
decided to set a powerful example of responsibility. Earlier today Smith 
& Wesson signed a landmark agreement with the Federal Government and 
States and cities across our Nation.
    For the very first time, a gun manufacturer has committed to 
fundamentally change the way guns are designed, distributed, and 
marketed. Under the agreement, Smith & Wesson will include locking 
devices and other safety features and will develop smart guns that can 
be fired only by the adults who own them. The company will cut off 
dealers who sell disproportionate numbers of guns that turn up in crimes 
and will require all its dealers not to sell at gun shows unless every 
seller at the shows conducts background checks. The company has also 
agreed to design new firearms that do not accept large capacity 
magazines and will work with ATF to provide ballistics fingerprints for 
all its firearms.
    This agreement is a major victory for America's families. It says 
that gunmakers can and will share in the responsibility to keep their 
products out of the wrong hands. And it says that gunmakers can and will 
make their guns much safer without infringing on anyone's rights.
    It has taken courage and vision for Smith & Wesson to be the first 
manufacturers to negotiate. And I applaud their determination to do 
right by their company and their country. As I've said all along, there 
are responsible citizens in the gun industry who do want to make 
progress on this issue. I hope today's announcement will encourage 
others to respond in kind.
    This agreement could not have come to pass without the leadership of 
many mayors, city attorneys, and State attorneys general. I'm glad to be 
joined today by Attorney General Eliot Spitzer 
of New York and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, as well as Mayors Alex 
Penelas of Miami, Bill Campbell of Atlanta.
    In a moment, I'll be telephoning some other mayors, Joe Ganim of Bridgeport, Dennis Archer of Detroit, Roosevelt Dorn of 
Inglewood, California, Marc Morial of New 
Orleans, Jimmy Yee of Sacramento, as well as city 
attorneys Jim Hunt of Los Angeles and Louise 
Renne of San Francisco and the city attorneys 
of Berkeley, California, Camden, New 
Jersey, and St. Louis, to congratulate them as well on joining this agreement 
and to urge them to continue to work to keep our children safe.
    I would also like to express my appreciation to former Congressman 
Mike Barnes, the new president of Handgun 
Control. I thank them all, as well as the members of our administration 
team who worked so hard on this: Treasury Secretary Larry 
Summers and Deputy Secretary 
Eizenstat, Attorney General Reno and Deputy Attorney General Holder, HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, 
and my Domestic Policy Adviser, Bruce Reed. 
They have also worked very hard to bring us to this historic moment.
    Let me say again today, the effort to reduce gun violence, to 
protect our children, to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and 
children,

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is not about politics. It is about saving lives. This agreement shows we 
can get so much done when we find the courage to find common ground.
    Thank you very much.
    Q. What's the chance of other companies falling in line?
    The President. Well, I don't know. You know, Smith & Wesson is a 
real giant in this field. And as I said, it took a lot of courage for 
the company and its leader to do this. But I think the American people 
will have such an overwhelmingly positive response to what they have 
done, that I would hope the other manufacturers would follow suit.
    We have had some success, you know. A number of other manufacturers 
are already embracing the idea that new handguns ought to have child 
trigger locks. So I hope that they will do these things, the--continuing 
to work on smart gun technology. And I think saying that they won't 
continue to allow their guns to be sold by dealers that don't clearly 
follow the law and that they won't participate in gun shows that don't 
do background checks, that's a big deal. That's a very important thing.
    So I really--I'm very pleased by what they've done, and I think, as 
I said, I hope the American people will express their appreciation to 
Smith & Wesson, and I hope that others will follow suit.

Oil Prices

    Q. Mr. President, on the issue of oil, do you expect to announce any 
of the measures that you talked about yesterday that you hope to do in 
the next couple of days to reduce the effect of high oil, gas, and 
diesel prices before leaving for India? And the second question, if I 
may, on the same subject, did you discuss the oil market with Saudi King 
Fahd when you spoke to him yesterday or with any other Saudi officials, 
and did they give you any assurances regarding production increases in 
the March 25th OPEC meeting?
    The President. Well, the answer is yes, I expect to have something 
to say before I leave for India, and yes, I talked about the markets 
with His Majesty King Fahd. And I think it's 
appropriate for me to let the OPEC members make their own decisions. But 
the Saudis have already expressed their support publicly for a 
production increase.
    I think everybody's struggling now to find a consensus. The point 
I've been trying to make is that it is necessary, in order to get the 
oil prices down to an acceptable level but still have them at a high 
enough level to earn a fair return to the producing countries and to 
keep them from precipitously falling and destabilizing the world economy 
again as they did a couple of years ago--it's necessary to have a 
substantial production increase that will not only close the gap between 
production and consumption on a daily basis but also enable the stocks 
to be rebuilt, because a lot of the oil price stocks have been drawn 
down too low, and that's one of the things that spiked the market so 
significantly.
    But I think that in terms of the decision they will make, that's for 
them to make, and they'll have to announce it. I think they're 
struggling to try to get a consensus. But they are, I think, concerned 
because the last time they increased production, there was this really 
big fall in the oil prices to a level that even those of us in the 
consuming countries thought was too low.
    But the problem is, that time they increased production just as the 
global economy went down, the Asian financial crisis and other problems. 
This time, we had the reverse effect. Just as the global economy was 
coming up in Asia and the Europeans were growing, they cut production, 
which had exactly the reverse impact. So first, prices went too low. 
Now, they've gone way too high.
    In our country, for example, lower income motorists, other motorists 
who live in rural areas and places where they have to drive a long way 
to work, and a lot of truckers, particularly independent truckers, have 
really, really been hurt by this situation.
    So there is a stable, win-win situation here that--where the fuel 
prices will be affordable by the American people and others, and they 
will still be able to have a fair return on their production and not 
risk the precipitous fall that they endured over the last couple of 
years. So they've got to find the right balance. They can do that, but 
as I said, we need to have enough to meet daily consumption requirements 
and to rebuild the stocks.

China and Taiwan

    Q.  Mr. President, any thoughts on China and the elections, on 
Taiwan?

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    The President. Well, we've already said publicly that we want to see 
a resumption of the cross-state dialog as soon as the election is over. 
But the election in Taiwan is for the Taiwanese people, and I don't 
think I should comment on it until they have all their votes in. And 
they'll elect a new President, and then we'll go from there.

Northern Ireland/South Asia

    Q. Mr. President, from a foreign policy standpoint, what is your 
best hope for this series of meetings this afternoon with Irish leaders, 
and what is your best hope on your upcoming trip to India and Pakistan?
    The President. First of all, the good news about Ireland is that 
even though the institutions have been taken down over the difference 
between the parties on decommissioning, no one wants to go back to the 
way it was or give up the peace process. The voters in Northern Ireland 
in both communities have overwhelmingly voted for it. And I think 
there's no sense that I got yesterday, in my first round of encounters 
with the leaders, that there's any desire to go back to the way it was.
    I think what we've got to do is to find a formula by which the 
institutions can be restored, the people can get back to governing. They 
actually found out they were quite good at working together, and they 
were getting a lot done. And we need to restore that process, and we 
need to restore a process that will eventually lead to all the 
requirements of the Good Friday accord being observed. And we'll just 
keep working on it until we find that answer.
    And on South Asia, obviously what I hope to do first is to rekindle 
the relationship between the United States and India. It's the world's 
largest democracy. No President has been there in 22 years. We have a 
lot of things that we can do together, a lot of mutual interests. I want 
to do what I can to reduce tensions on the Indian subcontinent to reduce 
the likelihood of weapons proliferation and the likelihood of conflict. 
And I want to do what I can to support the restoration of democratic 
rule in Pakistan and to continue our cooperation with them against 
terrorism and in many other ways that we have both profited from over 
many decades. I also will be going to Bangladesh, and I'm looking 
forward to that. I have seen a lot of the initiatives taken in 
Bangladesh, particularly for the empowerment of poor people, that I 
think are important there and throughout the world.
    And if you look at the size and the potential of the Indian 
subcontinent, if they could find a way to manage their difficulties, 
there's probably no other place in the world with the capacity for 
growth and modernization over the next two decades that you will find 
there. If you look at the success of Indians, Pakistanis, and 
Bangladeshis in the United States, that's clear evidence of that. So I'm 
going to do the best I can.

Syria

    Q. Do you have a meeting coming up with the Syrian President?
    The President. I don't have anything else to say about my foreign 
policy agenda today. But I will, in the next several days, continue to 
talk to you about all this stuff. And I thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:20 p.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to city attorneys John A. Misci, Jr., 
of Camden, NJ, Manuela Albuquerque of Berkeley, CA, and Dee Joyce-Hayes 
of St. Louis, MO; King Fahd of Saudi Arabia; and President Hafiz al-Asad 
of Syria.