[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 48 (Monday, December 6, 1999)]
[Pages 2474-2481]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a ``Stop the Violence'' Benefit in Beverly Hills, California

November 30, 1999

    Thank you very much. We can pass laws, but we can't fix this podium 
here. [Laughter] Maybe I'll stand up on it, how's that? [Laughter]
    I love Whoopi Goldberg. The greatest thing about being President is 
that nearly anybody will come talk to you. [Laughter] Some will talk for 
you; some will talk against you; some will talk at you, but nearly 
anybody will come talk to you. And so I've had the honor of meeting all 
kinds of people from all walks of life.
    But when I met Whoopi Goldberg--and I was already sort of a big fan, 
you know--but I looked at her, and I thought, now, there is a woman who 
will be my friend. [Laughter] You know, there have been times when I'm 
sure my friendship has been somewhat embarrassing to her. [Laughter] And 
times when her jokes have caused me some discomfort in public. 
[Laughter] But I'm not a hypocrite about that. I'm with her through 
thick and thin. [Laughter] And she has certainly been with me though 
thick and thin.
    Of all the people that I know, I continue to be amazed by how 
generous truly busy

[[Page 2475]]

and successful people are. But Whoopi, you have been so generous to me 
and to my family and our administration, and in so doing, you've been 
generous to America. And I thank you for that.
    I thank Beau Bridges for being here and for his leadership and for 
telling his story; for portraying everyone from Jim Brady to P.T. 
Barnum. [Laughter] Sarah, when you get home, you tell Jim I said that I 
thought he was just playing the same role twice. [Laughter]
    I thank Steve Sposato for being here and being so faithful to this 
call. I have on the wall of my private office, which is just off the 
Oval Office, a picture of Steve and Megan Sposato, which he gave me 
shortly after I signed the assault weapons ban. I see it every day 
still, and every day it is an inspiration to me to continue to work on 
the issues we come here tonight to support.
    And I thank Sarah Brady for being my friend and my guiding light. I 
thank Representatives Sherman and Berman and Becerra, who are here; and 
Senator Dianne Feinstein, who isn't, and Senator Barbara Boxer, who flew 
out to California with me today--they have both been terrific on all 
these issues.
    I talked to Governor Davis a couple of hours before I got here, and 
he said to tell you all hello, and he is justifiably proud of the record 
he established in this recent session of the legislature.
    And let me, lastly, by way of introduction, congratulate this year's 
``Pete'' Shields Award-winner, Gregory Peck, for sharing his many gifts 
with the world. And Veronique, thank you.
    You know, we meet in this wonderful old, historic Hollywood home 
tonight, and it gives me the opportunity to say once again that I have 
been, since I was a small child, an ardent movie fan. I don't know how 
many Gregory Peck movies I have seen and enjoyed. But I think that his 
remarkable performance as Atticus Finch, of all the roles that he 
played, probably was closer to the person Gregory Peck really is.
    There is a wonderful moment in Harper Lee's classic when Atticus 
sits down to talk with his children about courage. He says, ``I want you 
to know that real courage isn't a man with a gun. It's when the odds are 
against you, but you begin anyway, and you see it through no matter 
what.'' Steve Sposato, you have done that. Sarah, you and Jim have done 
that. And we thank you.
    I am honored to be here tonight. I have come to California many 
times pursuing the work of this administration. Often I have come to 
this town that has been so wonderful to Hillary and me and asked for 
funds to continue our campaigns or our work. Tonight the main reason I'm 
here is to say a simple thank you. Thank you for what you're doing to 
support the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence; for supporting its 
groundbreaking research, its public education, its coalition building, 
its leading light to protect families from gun violence.
    Thank you for all you've done year after year to support our 
administration's initiatives to build safer streets and stronger 
communities. Thank you for championing the Brady bill; as Sarah said, I 
signed it into law 6 years ago today. Thank you for supporting the 
assault weapons ban. Thank you for supporting the 100,000 community 
police officers on our streets and programs to help keep our children 
out of trouble. It is working. Today--[applause]--yes, you can clap for 
that.
    Today in America the crime rate is at a 25-year low; the murder rate 
at a 31-year low; violent crime down 35 percent since 1992, with the 
longest continuous decline in the crime rate in our Nation's history. On 
this 6th anniversary of the Brady bill, I want you to know that the 
latest figures are in and the Brady bill has now helped to block more 
than 470,000 gun sales by licensed gun dealers to felons, fugitives, and 
stalkers--470,000. And in the last year alone, the National Instant 
Criminal Background Check system has blocked gun sales to more than 
160,000 people.
    Now these are more than numbers. Remember Steve's story. These are 
470,000 acts of community conscience and common mercy. They have saved 
lives, avoided injuries, averted tragedies. Yesterday I signed the new 
budget bill. And I want to thank the Member of Congress here who stood 
with

[[Page 2476]]

me to make sure this budget will begin putting up 50,000 more community 
police officers on top of the 100,000 we've already funded, targeted to 
the most dangerous streets left in our country; provide new crime-
fighting technology to police; and more than double after-school 
programs to keep more kids out of trouble and in safe environments.
    I want to also thank you for being a source of strength and courage 
to all of us in our larger administration family, to Hillary, who urged 
me every step of the way to push for the Brady bill, to push for the 
assault weapons ban, to continue to push and take on this issue; who 
reminded me that because I grew up in the South, and first shot a .22 
when I was 12, and understood the mind set of the people, the good 
people, who uncritically followed the NRA into the voting booth year-in 
and year-out, that I had a special responsibility to deal with this 
issue.
    And she asked me to tell you, hello. I just talked to her about 30 
minutes ago, and I thank you for that.
    I want to thank you on behalf of Vice President Gore, who cast the 
tie-breaking vote in the bill to close the gun show loophole that passed 
the Senate. And I want to thank you on behalf of Tipper Gore, who has 
done so much to see that Americans with mental illness get treatment and 
not more handguns.
    But I didn't just come to say thanks, because we have a lot more to 
do. When the Brady bill finally passed Congress and was signed, rather 
than vetoed, by me--[laughter]--someone asked Sarah, ``Well, what are 
you going to do now?'' And without missing a beat she said, ``I'm going 
to keep fighting.''
    So I come here to tell you, you have to keep fighting. Because even 
though America is safer from Columbine High School to the Jewish 
community center in Grenada Hills to the Wedgewood Baptist Church in 
Fort Worth, and every community in between and beyond, no one believes 
America is as safe as it should be or can be.
    Still, 12 children die every day from gun violence. And America is 
not acceptably safe when the rate of children under 15 killed 
accidentally by guns--listen to this--the rate of children under 15 
killed accidentally by guns is 9 times higher than the rate of the 25 
next biggest industrial nations combined. Now, what do we have to keep 
fighting for? For what works.
    Seven years ago a lot of people did not believe we could get the 
crime rate down. And when the Brady bill come up again in Congress they 
said--I remember what they said--they said, ``Oh, this Brady bill will 
not make a difference because criminals and kooks don't buy guns at gun 
stores.'' Do you remember that? That's what they said. And we said, 
``Well, we think it will. And besides that, it's not that big an 
inconvenience to have everybody go through the background check.'' Well, 
470,000 rejections later we know it did make a difference. The same 
people, I might add, said that if we put 100,000 community police out 
there, it wouldn't make a difference; if we passed the assault weapons 
ban, it wouldn't make a difference. Well, they were wrong. They were 
just wrong.
    Now, I come here to suggest that the time has come to set a 
different goal. Let me just sort of parenthesis a minute. I want you all 
to think about this as citizens in the context of gun violence and every 
other thing America needs to do.
    In my lifetime--a 6-year-old boy asked me this weekend, who was 
visiting my family on Thanksgiving, he said, ``How old are you?'' And I 
said, ``I'm 53.'' And he said, ``That's a lot.'' [Laughter] Well, I 
guess so. [Laughter]
    But in my lifetime--and that's a lot--[laughter]--there has never 
been a time ever, not even once, when our country had this remarkable 
combination of economic prosperity, social progress, self-confidence, 
and the absence of external threat and internal crisis, so that we are 
freer than we have ever been in my lifetime as a people to shape the 
future of our dreams for our children.
    And the great question before the American people is not whether 
we'll change it, as how we will change and whether we will do that. And 
I'll bet you everybody here can remember an instance in your personal 
life, in your family life, and in your work life when you squandered a 
terrific opportunity because things were going so well, you thought you 
could relax; and you got diverted; you got divided; you got distracted. 
You just blew

[[Page 2477]]

it. And countries are no different than people, families, and 
enterprises. That's what countries are.
    So the great question before us as a people is, what are we going to 
make of this magic moment to deal with the challenge of educating all 
our children, to deal with the challenge of the aging of America, to 
deal with the challenge of getting poor people an opportunity to be part 
of our prosperity, to deal with the challenge of environmental 
preservation? And I could go on and on.
    Now, I have a modest proposal here that, if I had said it 7 years 
ago when I was running for President, people would have said, ``Well, he 
seems like a nice young man, but we ought to send him home because he's 
touched.'' [Laughter] But 7 years ago, people didn't believe we could 
get the crime rate down. Okay. We've got the lowest crime rate in 25 
years and the lowest murder rate in 31 years, and there's not a single 
soul here who believes this country is as safe as it ought to be. So I 
say, let's set a goal now that is really worth fighting for. Let's say 
we're not going to stop until the freest big country on Earth is the 
safest big country on Earth. [Applause]
    Now, to achieve that, we just have to keep doing what we've been 
doing. We have to keep moving the ball forward and resisting the same 
old arguments in new guises. We have to pass the commonsense gun safety 
legislation Congress failed to pass last year in the aftermath of 
Columbine. We have to, one, build on the success of the Brady bill by 
closing the gun show loophole.
    Now, let me remind you--I don't know how many of you have ever been 
to a gun show, but I have been. That was sort of a mandatory stop when I 
was the Governor of my, what my distinguished opponent in 1992 said was 
a small Southern State. [Laughter] I've been to these things, you know, 
down a country road, alley, pickups and cars on both sides, trunks up, 
guns in the trunk. The same crowd that said--in 1993 when we were trying 
to pass the Brady bill, they said, ``All these criminals, they don't buy 
guns at gun stores; they buy all their guns at flea markets and gun 
shows and all that. So this Brady bill won't do any good.''
    So we did the Brady bill, 470,000 rejections later they now say, 
``Oh, it won't do any good to close the gun show loophole.'' I wanted to 
go back and read them what they said in '93. That's sort of the just-
say-no crowd. [Laughter] But I'm telling you--I'm telling you--we still 
have too many people getting guns at these gun shows and at urban flea 
markets, and there ought to be background checks. And it will make a 
difference. That's the first thing we have to do.
    The second thing we have to do is build on the success of the 
assault weapons ban by closing the gaping loophole there which still 
allows the legal importation of large-
capacity ammunition clips. They ought to be banned from import. We don't 
need them.
    The third thing we ought to do--remember the statistic I gave you on 
accidental child deaths--we ought to require child safety trigger locks 
on the sale of all new handguns in this country.
    Congress ought to follow the lead of California and pass my 
proposals to ban handgun sales to one a month, to limit them to one a 
month and once again to require the Brady waiting period to allow a 
cooling off period. Just because we've got the instant background checks 
doesn't mean we still don't need the waiting period. The waiting period 
causes people who may not have a criminal background, and who may be in 
some frenzy, to wait a few days, calm down, and it will save lives. We 
need to reinstitute it on a national basis.
    I also ask for your support for two non-gun-related initiatives, our 
national grassroots campaign against youth violence, headed by a 
California activist, Jeff Weiss, and our hate crimes legislation.
    I want to make just two general points in closing. One of the 
previous speakers mentioned that I had stood up to the NRA. It made me 
rather unpopular with one member of this community out here. [Laughter] 
But I'll tell you a story.
    I vetoed a bill--I think I was the only Southern Governor that ever 
vetoed a bill passed by the NRA in the State legislature, and it was in 
the late 1980's. They were going around--this conservative group--you 
know

[[Page 2478]]

conservative groups believe in limited national or State authority, 
maximum local authority. They had a bill they were trying to pass in 
every legislature in the country to prohibit local governments from 
having gun laws more stringent than State government. There was a reason 
for that. State governments tend to be dominate by rural legislators, 
whereas local urban governments tend to be more interested in keeping 
cop-killer bullets out of guns that can kill police officers wearing 
bullet-proof vests, for example.
    So they thought this was a big threat to the Constitution and our 
individual liberty, so they wanted to stop all these local governments 
from doing this. And they passed such a bill in my legislature, and I 
vetoed it. And my legislature was really good. They knew that they 
didn't want to be in a position of overriding my veto, but they didn't 
want to be in the position of having the NRA go after them in the 
election. And so they waited until late in the session to pass it, and 
they were gone when I vetoed it, so they didn't have to face the fact 
whether they would override it or not. It was a great deal.
    So then 1990 comes along--this is a true story, I want you all to 
remember this. I never will forget this. This not a joke, and I'm glad 
we're laughing because otherwise we would be crying about this.
    So 1990 comes along and the NRA comes up with this bill again. And 
they send a lobbyist from Washington to Little Rock to lobby for the 
bill. I'll never forget this guy. He was a real big, fine looking young 
man, a couple inches taller than me, very well dressed. One day he came 
up to me in the rotunda of our State capitol, which is sort of a 
miniversion of the National Rotunda, you know, and everything echoes.
    And this young man came up to me, and it was like the E.F. Hutton 
ad, you know, everybody got really silent. [Laughter] And this guy says, 
``Now, Governor, Governor,'' he says, ``I want you to just let this bill 
become law without your signature. You don't have to do anything.'' I 
said, ``I can't do that. I think your bill stinks.'' He said, ``All 
right, Governor, it's this way. I think you're going to run for 
President, and when you do, if you veto this bill, we're going to beat 
your brains out in the Texas primary.'' And all of a sudden everybody 
got real quiet. There must have been 50 of my legislators standing 
there. And I said, ``Young man, you just don't understand, do you? I 
think your bill stinks.'' And I said, ``Not only that, you know this is 
a conservative State. You know we're not going to pass any sweeping gun 
control legislation here. You know that we've got this big influx of 
gang warfare in a couple of our areas. And it won't hurt anybody if the 
local government here in Little Rock decides to ban cop-killer bullets. 
The reason you're trying to pass this bill is back in Washington, in 
your national headquarters, there's a big chart on the wall, and this 
bill is at the top of the chart, and all the States are listed down the 
side, and you want to be able to put a little check by Arkansas.'' I 
said, ``This doesn't have anything to do with the safety of our children 
or the freedom of people to hunt.'' And I said, ``If that's the way you 
feel, you just get your gun, and I'll get mine, and I'll meet you in 
Texas.'' [Laughter] So, anyway, we lost Texas in the general election by 
a few points--[laughter]--but got 67 percent there in the Democratic 
primary in 1992. So it didn't work very well.
    So anyway, so then we go in 1993, and we got the Brady bill. In 1994 
we got the assault weapons ban. And it was very difficult for a lot of 
our people. That's what I want to tell you. We're all here, preaching to 
the saved, patting each other on the back. Let me tell you something. 
When these votes are cast in the State legislature and the Congress, 
there are people who put their seats on the line to do this because not 
everybody has the same views that you do and not everybody has had the 
chance to talk about this.
    And one of the reasons there is a Republican majority in the House 
of Representatives today is that I got them to vote on both the Brady 
bill and the assault weapons ban in my first 2 years as President. And 
there were a lot of people, I want you to know, there were a lot of 
people who laid their seats in Congress down so that there would be 
fewer people like Jim and Sarah Brady and Steve and Megan Sposato. They 
lost their seats in Congress to do that.
    I never will forget, in 1996 I went back to New Hampshire. We had 
one Democratic

[[Page 2479]]

Congressman and one Republican Congressman when I became President, and 
they beat the Democrat, largely because he voted for these bills. And I 
went back to Manchester, and I went there, and as I remember, it was on 
a weekend morning. I went to it, and I said, ``I want to get with a 
bunch of guys that I know go deer hunting and that I know are big 
sportsmen and that I know are mad about all this.'' And I had carried--
Al Gore and I carried New Hampshire in '92, which is very rare because 
it is basically a Republican State in the Presidential election.
    And so I got all these guys together, and I said, ``Let me tell you 
something. I know you beat your Congressman in 1994 in part because he 
voted for the assault weapons ban and the Brady bill. And I want you to 
know he did it because I asked him to. So if there is a living soul here 
who has been inconvenienced one iota in your hunting season because of 
what we did, then I want you to vote against me, too. But if you haven't 
been, they lied to you and you need to get even.'' [Laughter]
    We got, in a three-way race in 1996, a majority of the vote in the 
State of New Hampshire. I say that not to be self-congratulatory but to 
say the answer here is not to shrivel up, turn aside, or ignore the 
obligation to communicate with people who are not in this tent tonight. 
We have to continue to broaden the base.
    Look, this is about--it's bought on these two competing views of 
what liberty is. The view espoused by the NRA and others is that guns 
don't kill people, people do. That may be true, but people without guns 
don't kill as many people as people with guns.
    So the issue is--go back to what Whoopi said about us all being 
connected. We've got to go out to people who may live in very rural 
areas and say, ``Look if you carry this argument to its ultimate 
conclusion, we'll be in total anarchy.'' We've got a lot of people being 
killed by--you know these poor people in the Middle West--the former 
basketball coach at Northwestern, an African-American--killed by the 
same guy--then he turns around and kills a young Korean Christian 
walking out of his church, and kills two or three other people, and he 
says he belongs to a church that doesn't believe in God but does believe 
in white supremacy. And I could go on and on and on. You know all these 
stories.
    Now their answer is well, that we need a concealed weapons law and 
every law-
abiding person needs to carry a weapon. And if you take it to an 
extreme--I saw--I get my hometown paper still at the White House--I 
saw--we have a State legislator at home that says the answer to all 
these school shootings may be to have all the teachers go to the law 
enforcement academy and get trained to start carrying guns to school. 
[Laughter]
    Now you laugh about that, but that is the ultimate extension of the 
argument that, you know, we're all these sort of isolated individuals, 
and the last thing we can do is to have some common set of rules that we 
all follow.
    Now, we don't do that in other ways. We all give up a little of our 
liberty in theory when we walk through those airport metal detectors. 
Why? Well, we know we can't all pilot our own airplanes. And it's a 
matter of inconvenience to go take off your brass belt buckle or take 
your metal money clip out of your pocket and go through there again for 
the security of knowing that there is no terrorist on the plane. So you 
never hear anybody gripe about that anymore, do you?
    This is the same principle. You cannot be in a society where you are 
really free, unless your freedom is designed to enhance the freedom of 
all people in the community. And if you're not safe, you're not free. 
And we need to leave here tonight with a clear commitment to continue to 
take this debate to people and places--who are good people, who still 
don't accept this argument, because we have a lot more to do.
    You clapped when I said we ought to make this the safest big country 
in the world. We can do it and still have a vibrant hunting and sporting 
culture. But we cannot do it if we labor under the illusion that we have 
no responsibilities to one another that require us to show mutual 
restraint when it comes to this gun issue. And therefore, we have to 
continue to work on this. This is a huge, huge issue that will go a long 
way to defining what kind of country we are.
    And it goes to this whole hate crimes issue, and I will just close 
with this. I think it is

[[Page 2480]]

really ironic that on the edge of a new millennium when we are--we've 
got now 90 percent of our schools connected to the Internet, when we're 
unlocking the mysteries of the human genome--in a few years, we'll know 
what is in the black holes in space--when we'll be able to have little 
computer chips, before you know it, that we can insert into broken parts 
of people's bodies, including nerve centers in the spine and elsewhere 
and restore normal movement. When we are thinking about all of these 
marvelous things that are going to happen, it is amazing that the 
biggest problem we face as a society is perhaps the oldest demon of 
human society, the fear and hatred of people who are different from us: 
They are a different race; they're a different religion; they're gay; 
they're whatever. And this whole issue of gun violence and how we handle 
it as a community and how we approach people who are different from us 
are related.
    I've been working for years on this Irish peace process. It looks 
like we're going to make it. One of the provisions of the Irish peace 
agreement is its paramilitary groups should lay down their weapons of 
war. In the Middle East, one of the provisions of the Wye peace 
agreement and the modified version that Prime Minister Barak and Mr. 
Arafat agreed to is that there should be some laying down of the weapons 
of war. In Bosnia, where I just was, looking at children who got to go 
home and were uprooted and driven out and seeing them back in their 
schools and trying to get people to lay down their hatreds and say, 
``Look, I know you can't lay down your hatreds tomorrow, although you 
ought to try, but, meanwhile, you've got to lay down your weapons of 
war.''
    And so it's all about how you really define community, as just a 
label, or do we have some mutual responsibilities here? And I say to you 
if I could have sort of one wish for America--if somebody said to me, 
``You don't have another year. You've got to go tomorrow, but you're 
like a genie, you get to give America one wish.'' I'd make this country 
one America. I would have our people understanding that our diversity is 
our strength because our common humanity is more important, and that 
imposes on us common responsibilities.
    I wish that we had done more in gun safety than we have. I know we 
can do more, as I said, and still leave all those people that I grew up 
with and that I represented and that I love, the right to their hunting 
and sporting past times. It's a big part of our culture. But we should 
not tolerate a society where people can still readily get these horrible 
weapons of destruction for no other purpose than to kill other people. 
It should be much, much harder for profoundly disturbed children, like 
those kids at Columbine, to get the kind of weapons they got. We can do 
better.
    Yes, I'm very grateful that I've been privileged to work with Sarah 
and Steve and Senator Feinstein and Senator Boxer and the 
Representatives still here to do what we've done. But if you really want 
to make the most of this moment, you've got to keep going until we make 
America the world's safest big country. And if you want to do that, you 
have to reach out beyond those of us in this tent to the heart and soul 
of America and say, ``Listen, we are blessed, but we have a lot to do 
and we have responsibilities to one another we have not fulfilled. And 
as we do that we will become more free, not less free.''
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:07 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to comedian Whoopi Goldberg; actor Beau Bridges; 
former White House Press Secretary James S. Brady, who was wounded in 
the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan; Mr. Brady's 
wife, Sarah, chair, Handgun Control, Inc.; Steven Sposato, whose wife, 
Megan, was killed by a gunman in a San Francisco law office; Gov. Gray 
Davis of California; actor Gregory Peck and his wife, Veronique; Prime 
Minister Ehud Barak of Israel; and Chairman Yasser Arafat of the 
Palestinian Authority. The President also referred to the Public Safety 
and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, subtitle A of title XI 
(Public Law No. 103-322); the Brady Act (Public Law No. 103-159); and 
H.R. 3194, consolidated appropriations legislation for fiscal year 2000, 
approved November 29, assigned Public Law No. 106-113. The benefit was 
sponsored by the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence. A portion of these 
remarks could not be verified because the tape was incomplete.

[[Page 2481]]