[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 18 (Monday, May 9, 1994)]
[Pages 957-959]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Legislation To Ban Assault Weapons

May 2, 1994

    Thank you very much, Chief. He's come a long way from Wisconsin to 
bring a little Middle Western common sense to the Nation's Capital.
    When the House of Representatives votes this week on Thursday, they 
shouldn't forget the tragedy that the Chief just talked about. Think 
about it, a 30-year veteran of the police department killed by an M1-A1 
assault rifle after a bank robbery, two other police officers and a 
hostage also wounded. These things can be prevented.
    I also want to thank John Magaw for what he's said. He's done a fine 
job as Director of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division. And 
before that he was the Director of the Secret Service. I think you could 
tell his heartfelt concern there. He has two sons and a son-in-law, all 
in law enforcement. They deserve a chance to do their job with less 
danger, not more.
    I thank Secretary Bentsen for his sterling leadership. We joked a 
lot of times about whether there will be somebody blocking his entrance 
to his ranch when he goes quail hunting this fall--[laughter]--but I 
don't really think so.
    One of the things that I've learned since I've been here, even more 
than when I was a Governor, is that very often a lot of these organized 
interest groups don't always represent the members, their unorganized 
members, and what they really feel in their heart of hearts.
    I want to thank the leaders of the law enforcement organizations 
that are here today: Bob Scully, the Director of the National 
Association of Police Organizations; Sylvester Daughtry, the President 
of the International Association of Chiefs of Police; John Pitta, the 
Vice President of the Federal Law Enforcement Association; Mark 
Spurrier, the Director of the Major City Chiefs; and Chuck Wexler, who's 
with the Police Executives Research Forum.
    I want you all to think about what all you've heard. There are a lot 
of people in this audience today who have experienced a loss of life in 
their own family. And I realize that here today, in a fundamental way, 
we're sort of preaching to the saved. But what we hope to do here is to 
energize you to talk to those last few Members of the House. We need to 
put this bill over the top, to tell them this is not about gun control; 
it's about crime control.
    You know, I would never do anything to infringe on the rights of 
sportsmen and women in this country. I have--I guess I was 12 years old 
the first time I fired a .22 or a .410. But I think to hide behind the 
rights of sports people to justify the kind of unconscionable behavior 
that takes place every single day on the streets of this country is an 
unforgivable abuse of our common right to be hunters. It is an abuse of 
that.
    All over the world today, all you have to do is pick up the 
newspaper, any given day, and you see how we are worried about the 
disintegration of civic life in other countries. We read about the 
horror of Bosnia, and we say, my God, why can't the Muslims and the 
Serbs and the Croats just get along? We read about bodies being thrown 
into the river in Rwanda and say, Good Lord, why are those people doing 
that to each other? We read now about the rise of organized crime in 
Russia, and it breaks our heart. They finally get rid of communism and 
they try to go to a more entrepreneurial society, and a new group of 
dark organizations springs up and commits murder. We worry about what's 
happening in our neighboring country south of our border, especially to 
our friends in Mexico, when we hear about what's being done there by 
people running drugs.
    And we worry, we worry, we worry, and we don't look around and see 
we have more people behind bars already in this country, a higher 
percentage of our population, than any country in the world, already. 
And when we come up with a bill like this, they say you ought to put 
more people in jail and keep them there longer. Well, some people ought

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to go to jail longer, and our crime bill does that.
    But our disintegration, my fellow Americans, is in the streets of 
our cities where, as John Magaw says, we have suffered a breakdown of 
family and work and community, and where that vacuum has been filled by 
guns like this and people who use them in a very well organized way.
    Will this solve all of the problems in America? No. Like John said, 
this is a puzzle. We're trying to fill in the puzzle with the crime 
bill. And in the end, the puzzle has to be filled by people like this 
fine chief out there on the streets of our cities, and whether the 
people who live in his community will work with it to take their streets 
back. But I'm telling you: This is an amazing--it's amazing to me that 
we even have to have this debate. I mean, how long are we going to let 
this go on?
    San Francisco last summer, a gunman carrying two TEK-9's killed 
eight people and wounded six others. Last week, when we had an event for 
this bill, I'm sure a lot of you saw the husband of one of the women who 
was killed in that tragedy, Steve Sposato, who now is raising his 
beautiful daughter by himself.
    Yes, that guy was crazy, and maybe he'd have gone in there with that 
old six-shooter and killed somebody, but Steve Sposato would like to 
have his wife's chances back.
    Five years ago, a gunman using an AK-47 killed five elementary 
school kids. This happens every day. We lost two people and had three 
more wounded outside the CIA headquarters last year. Remember that, with 
a gunman with an AK-47.
    So I say to you, I'm sorry to be so frustrated, but sometimes it 
seems that the President's job ought to be dealing with things that are 
not obvious. I mean, at least health care is a complex subject. It's 
obvious we need to do something about it, but it's complicated. I 
concede that; I welcome these debates.
    How can we walk away from this? Especially when this bill protects 
over 650 specific hunting weapons? I mean, I don't understand why the 
organizations aren't saying, ``Well, hallelujah, this is the first 
Federal explicit protection we ever had for the means of hunting.''
    And I really--I was proud of what Mr. Magaw said, talking about the 
only color--I mean, I have heard people with a straight face saying, 
``Well, there are some adults that like to go target practice with these 
things.'' Well, they need to read a good book--[laughter]--or take up 
bowling or just follow--or, you know, you can hunt nearly 12 months out 
of the year if you hunt everything. [Laughter] This is--it is 
imperative. We just have a few days left.
    And I urge you to spend less time with each other and more time 
putting the hammer of your feelings into the deliberations in the House 
of Representatives. And something else: No good Member of the House or 
Senate, no Republican or Democrat, no rural legislator should ever fear 
losing their seat for voting for this bill. And something else you ought 
to do is tell every office you call: ``If you do this, I will fight for 
you for voting for this; I will--there may be differences over other 
issues, but I will do everything I can to see that nothing diminishes 
your standing because of this.''
    This is not a complicated issue. And we will have more issues like 
this. Every great society is going to face, for the foreseeable future, 
these incredible tensions between our freedom and our abuse of our 
freedom, between the need for liberty and the need for order, between 
our desire to have an entrepreneurial, free-flowing society and the 
absolute need for some discipline that enables us to live as human 
beings civilly together and give our children a chance to grow up.
    And some of the decisions we'll have to make will be more difficult 
than this. But this is a lay-down no-brainer--[laughter]--and the 
Congress must not walk away from it. Please help us to pass it.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:37 p.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive 
Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Chief David Steingraber, 
head of the Wisconsin Police Chiefs Association.

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