[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 11 (Monday, March 20, 2000)]
[Pages 569-572]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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 Gamin of 
Bridgeport, Dennis Archer of Detroit, Roosevelt Dorn of Inglewood, 
California, Marc Morial of

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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, 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.

Other Gun Manufacturers

    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 King Fahd 
yesterday or with any other Saudi officials, and did they give you any 
assurances regarding production increases for 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 year 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.

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    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?
    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.

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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 Berkley, CA, and Dee Joyce-Hayes 
of St. Louis, MO; King Fahd Al Saud of Saudi Arabia; and President Hafiz 
al-Asad of Syria.