Remarks to the Aspen Institute in San Jose, California

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, March 6, 2000

March 3, 2000

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Eric. I appreciate your kind remarks, except I don't want you telling anybody that. [Laughter]

I'm delighted to be here with my friend Reed Hundt, our former FCC Chairman. And President Johnson, thank you for having us here at the Aspen Institute. Senator Feinstein, thank you for coming out with me this morning, along with Congresswoman Tauscher. And I thank Representative Eshoo for coming and Representative Lofgren for welcoming us to her district.

Governor Leavitt, thank you for being here. Governor Leavitt is the leader of the Governors this year. He just spent 3 days with me in Washington. I thought he would find something else to do. If he spends any more time with me, they'll run him out of the Republican Party. [Laughter] However, being a Baptist, not a Mormon, I believe in deathbed conversions. You're always welcome over here. [Laughter]

I want to thank Mayor Gonzalez for welcoming us. And I thank Mayor Menino for being here, and our former Governors, Roy Romer and Gaston Caperton and former Mayor Schmoke from Baltimore. And I thank Bill Kennard, our present FCC Chair, for coming out with me today.

Gun Control Legislation

I do want to talk a little bit about the meaning of this 50th anniversary of the Aspen Institute, but because this is my only opportunity to speak to the American people through the press today, there was a late-developing event last night in the Congress I'd like to comment on, related to the gun violence and what our national response should be in the wake of the tragic shootings this week.

Over the last couple of days, I have once again asked Congress to meet and pass commonsense gun safety legislation that they've been sitting on for 8 months. Let me mention, in the aftermath of the Columbine shootings, I asked the Congress to pass legislation that would provide for child trigger locks on all guns, close the loophole in the Brady law which requires background checks for guns bought at gun shops but not at gun shows or urban flea markets, and ban the importation of large capacity ammunition clips, which are now illegal under the assault weapons ban that Senator Feinstein gave us, if they're domestic. And I asked for also a national law on adult supervision responsibility if children were recklessly allowed to get guns, and that's, of course, exactly what happened in the case, the tragic case in Michigan.

Well, anyway, 8 months ago the House passed a version and the Senate passed a version. And from my point of view, the Senate bill was much better; it was much stronger, and it passed when the Vice President cast the tie-breaking vote. But for 8 months there's been no action on this legislation, so I asked for it.

Well, last night, Senator Boxer offered a nonbinding resolution that would put the Senate on record as saying we need to pass commonsense gun safety legislation now. And after all we went through this week, the resolution failed on a 49-49 tie, with 100 percent of the Democratic Senators and 10 percent of the Republican Senators voting for it, and 90 percent of the Republican Senators voted against it.

Now, this is not a partisan issue, I don't believe, anywhere but Washington, DC. Again, it's a great credit--you've got to give credit where credit is due--it's a great credit to the power of the NRA in Washington. Just this morning they said they were going to launch a $20 million campaign to target Members of Congress who do this kind of thing, try to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and children.

And right now they're running ads that treat the possibility that we could have technology to develop smart guns--that is, guns that could only be fired by their owners--as some sort of a joke. Well, I don't think it's very funny when a 6-year-old can pick up a gun and go shoot another 6-year-old, and a child safety lock would have prevented it; smart gun technology would have prevented it. We know the Brady background check law has kept half a million felons, fugitives, and stalkers from getting guns, and I think that we ought to close the loophole that allows a lot of people to buy at these gun shows and not do the background checks. They work.

And I believe, and I know Senator Feinstein believes, that we ought to ask handgun owners to have a license, the way we ask drivers to do.

But the main thing I want to talk about now is there is a practical bill before the Congress which would deal with the fact that we're losing 12 kids a day to gun violence. And in addition to the intentional deaths, the accidental death rates of children under 15 by guns is 9 times higher in the United States than in the next 24 biggest industrial countries combined.

So I ask you--I know I didn't come here to talk about this, and I know the American people may think I'm a broken record about it, but I think the older you get--you said something about when you get to 50 you begin to--whatever you said about being 50, I'm not so sure. [Laughter] The Vice President once gave me a birthday present that said that the Cherokees believed that people didn't achieve full maturity until they were 51. All I know is that if you've ever had a child, everything else seems small by comparison, including the most wonderful job in the world. And I think this is crazy what we're doing.