[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 21 (Monday, May 31, 1999)]
[Pages 966-967]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
The President's Radio Address

May 22, 1999

    Good morning. It's been just over a month since 15 students and a 
teacher lost their lives at Columbine High School. On Thursday Hillary 
and I traveled to Littleton, Colorado, to visit with the families of the 
victims and the students of Columbine. They're brave, good people, full 
of faith, determined that the children lost will not be forgotten, 
dedicated to doing whatever they can to make our schools and our 
children safe. All of us in Washington and in every community in America 
owe them the same dedication.
    As if we needed another reminder, on Thursday, as I was going to 
Littleton, a young man opened fire at his high school in Conyers, 
Georgia, wounding several of his classmates. No child should have to 
worry that a classmate is carrying a loaded gun to school. No parent 
should have to fear sending a child to school. And no American should 
tolerate this level of violence against our children. There is no task 
more urgent. Every one of us has a role to play.
    First, Government must do more to protect our children from guns. 
We're making progress. This week was a turning point in our long 
efforts. I'm so pleased that the Senate passed key elements of my 
commonsense plan to address gun violence: mandatory child safety locks 
with every new handgun; a lifetime ban on gun purchased by violent 
juveniles; a nationwide ban on the importation of high-capacity 
ammunition clips and juvenile possession of assault weapons; and 
finally, after a tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President Gore, 
mandatory background checks on gun sales at gun shows.
    I'm pleased that Speaker Hastert has agreed that we should also 
close that deadly loophole and also raise the age of handgun ownership 
to 21. Now I call on the House to take immediate action. I hope the 
House of Representatives will pass every one of these commonsense 
efforts that the Senate has passed to protect our children from guns. 
And I hope they'll do it before school lets out.
    Protecting our children from guns is important, but it's just one 
step. The media and entertainment industry have enormous power in our 
children's lives and they must take responsibility, too. By the time he 
or she reaches 18 years old, the average child has watched 40,000 
killings over the media. There are now hundreds of studies that show 
that these viewings actually desensitize our children to the horror and 
the evil of violence and its consequences and that this has greater 
impacts on more vulnerable children.
    Now here, too, we've made some progress--with the TV ratings and the 
V-chip to enforce them, with video ratings, with new

[[Page 967]]

screening devices for the Internet which parents can use. But we must do 
more. Last week I issued three specific challenges to the entertainment 
community--from keeping guns out of ads and previews that children might 
see, so that we don't market violence to children when we say we're not 
showing it to them in the programs; to strictly enforcing the ratings in 
theaters and video stores, where they're often not enforced at all; to 
reevaluating the PG rating, itself, to ensure that movies approved for 
viewing by our children do not contain gratuitous violence.
    Schools must also do more with violence prevention and peer 
mediation efforts, with effective counseling programs and, when 
necessary, access to mental health services. Next month, under the 
leadership of Tipper Gore, we will host a White House Conference on 
Mental Health and talk about how we can reach out to troubled young 
people.
    Students should work harder to promote respect among all groups at 
schools, not the kind of hostility and demeaning conduct and remarks we 
too often see when groups become gangs or cliques.
    Finally, parents must take primary responsibility, paying attention 
to the shows their children watch, the webpages they visit, refusing to 
buy products that glorify violence, and, above all, staying involved in 
their children's lives, making sure that no child crosses the line 
between the healthy desire for independence and the potentially deadly 
alienation.
    Last week at the White House, we committed to launch a national 
campaign to turn back the tide of violence. We need a grassroots effort 
in every community, involving all sectors of society to connect every 
child, to help all parents do their jobs better, to use every known 
prevention technique, to lobby for sensible changes in the law and in 
practice. It worked when Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and then 
Students Against Drunk Driving, decided we didn't have to tolerate the 
death on our highways. It's working now with grassroots efforts on teen 
pregnancy all across America, and with efforts among grassroots business 
people to hire people off welfare. It will work here if the American 
people determine to make it work.
    Now, here in Washington, we can't once again let the gears of 
politics as usual grind our urgency into dust. The signs of the past 
week are very hopeful, but we have to keep at it. We can't forget the 
children of Columbine and all the other children who were lost because 
their culture, their society, is too violent, their laws too lax.
    The American spirit is stronger than the forces of hate. This is a 
very good time for our country, and we have made so much progress. Now 
we must, and we will, find the strength to do whatever it takes to give 
our children a safer future.
    Thanks for listening.

Note: The address was recorded at 1:20 p.m. on May 21 in the Oval Office 
at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on May 22. The transcript 
was made available by the Office of the Press Secretary on May 21 but 
was embargoed for release until the broadcast. In his remarks, the 
President referred to Thomas J. (T.J.) Solomon, Jr., alleged gunman in 
the Heritage High School shooting in Conyers, GA, on May 20.