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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary


For Immediate Release May 10, 1999
     PRESIDENT AND MRS. CLINTON, VICE PRESIDENT AND MRS. GORE HOST 
                          STRATEGY SESSION ON
                  CHILDREN, VIOLENCE AND RESPONSIBILITY

                          Monday, May 10, 1999

Today, President Clinton will lead a strategy meeting to discuss the problem of youth violence and develop a strategy for a national campaign to address this problem. The meeting will include a broad cross section of Americans, including parents and children, teachers and religious leaders, law enforcement and government officials, gun manufacturers and sportsmen, and representatives of the entertainment industry. The President will announce several initiatives to address the problem of youth violence, including a Surgeon General's Report on Youth Violence, gun industry support for gun legislation in five important areas, and public and private commitments to ensure the effective implementation of the V-Chip.

SURGEON GENERAL'S REPORT ON YOUTH VIOLENCE

Today, the President will announce that he is asking the nation's Surgeon General, Dr. David Satcher, to prepare a landmark report on youth violence -- the first such study on this subject in more than a decade. This report will bring together leading experts to review and evaluate existing research, and build on the findings of the 1972 Surgeon General Report on Television and Violence, as well as the 1985 Surgeon General's Workshop on Violence. Much is already known about how to reduce and prevent youth violence, but this report will add to the nation's understanding in this field. It also will address media that have emerged since previous reports, such as the Internet and video games.

GUN INDUSTRY SUPPORTS LEGISLATION IN FIVE KEY AREAS

Today, leaders in the firearms industry will announce their support for working out legislation in five areas. Specifically, the American Shooting Sports Council (ASSC), the gun industry's trade association in Washington, which represents 350 firearms manufacturers and distributors around the country, will release a statement supporting legislation in five areas:

MAKING THE V-CHIP WORK

The V-Chip is a device that allows parents to block television programming they consider inappropriate for their children. President Clinton and Vice President Gore led the successful fight for legislation that requires that the V-Chip be installed in all new television sets sold beginning January 1, 2000. At today's strategy session, the President will announce two new initiatives to make sure the V-Chip becomes a useful tool for parents.

A NATIONAL CAMPAIGN TO PREVENT YOUTH VIOLENCE

Recognizing that youth violence is a problem that government cannot solve alone, the President, the First Lady, the Vice President and Mrs. Gore will call for a national campaign to reduce youth violence. This campaign will work with all sectors of our society - the media, education groups, parents, religious leaders, and young people - to focus on this problem, find what is working, and spread it to new communities, while also helping to ensure that the media sends the right message to our children.

This campaign is modeled after two extremely successful efforts launched by the Clinton Administration. Four years ago, the President asked for a national campaign to reduce teen pregnancy. Today, under the leadership of Governor Tom Kean, former governor of New Jersey and now the President of Drew University, that campaign is playing an important role in reducing teen pregnancy rates nationwide. Two years ago, the President called for a national effort by businesses to hire people off welfare, to make sure the welfare reform effort would work. Today, under the leadership of Eli Segal, the Welfare to Work Partnership has grown to 10,000 companies that have helped move more than 40,000 people from the welfare rolls to the job rolls.

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