Interview With Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone Magazine - part 2 - President Bill Clinton - Interview

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Dec 11, 2000

There was one in Pearl, Mississippi, and there was---

Mr. Wenner. One in Oregon.

The President. The one in Springfield, Oregon. What I thought there was that--I thought a lot of things. I thought, number one, how did those kids get all those guns, and how could they have had that kind of arsenal without their parents knowing? And I thought, after I read a little about it, how did they get so lost without anybody finding them before they went over the edge?

We had a spate of--before all these killings associated with that kind of darkness on the net, network _____

Mr. Wenner. What do you mean, darkness on the net?

The President. Well, those kids were apparently into some sort of a--weren't they into some sort of satanic-like thing?

Mr. Wenner. No, they had their websites and _____

The President. Their websites, yes. There were, earlier, a number of kids who killed themselves who were into talking to each other about destruction, but they weren't killing other people. And I just kept--I worry that--I worried then; I worry now about the people in our society, particularly children, that just drift off, and no one knows, or people feel helpless to do anything about it.

You know, I couldn't help thinking, wondering whether those kids could have been saved if somebody got to them, and then whether all those other children would still be alive.

Gun Safety Legislation

Mr. Wenner. It seemed shocking to me and a lot of other people that after that there was no--we didn't get any new gun control legislation after an event like that.

The President. It's going to be interesting to see what the voters in Colorado do. They have a provision on the ballot now in Colorado to close the gun show loophole. And it's a heavily Republican State, and I think it's going to pass.

Mr. Wenner. Right.

The President. I think what happened is that--well, first of all, you can't say nothing came out of it, because there was an organization of young people in Colorado that then organized kids all over the country for commonsense gun legislation. They got about 10,000 kids involved. Now we have the Million Mom March, and they're very active.

But the truth is that when legislation time comes that a lot of the people in Congress are still frightened of the NRA, because even though there is broad public support for these measures, they are still not primary voting issues for a lot of the people who are for them. Whereas, the NBA can muster an enormous percentage of the vote--maybe 15 percent, maybe even 20 sometimes--for whom that's a primary voting issue.

So if you've got an issue where you're ahead 60-30 but in your 60 it's a primary voting issue for 10 percent of the people, and in their 30 it's a primary voting issue for 20 percent of the people, the truth is, you're a net loser by 10 percent. That's the way--that's what happens in Congress and State legislatures. They're genuinely afraid.

Mr. Wenner. They know they could lose their seats.

The President. You see the tirade that Charlton Heston has carried on against Al Gore and me, before--saying that I was glad some of these people were killed because it gave me an excuse to take people's guns away. We never proposed anything that would take anybody's guns away.