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Today, President Clinton will meet with over 80 high school students
from Littleton, Colorado and the Denver area to discuss the importance
of enacting common sense gun legislation. The President will insist
that Congress send to his desk for signature - without further delay --
the reasonable gun measures already passed by the Senate.
Last month, House leaders, bowing to the gun lobby, tried to pass a bill
that would have weakened current gun laws instead of strengthening them.
Since then, House and Senate leaders have failed to name conferees to
resolve issues surrounding the juvenile crime bill - allowing the gun
lobby even more time to try and stop common sense gun legislation from
becoming law.
After the meeting, the President will urge Congress to listen to these
students - instead of the gun lobby -- and to act to strengthen our gun
laws before the start of the next school year. Specifically, the
President will ask Congress to send him legislation that will:
Close the gun show loophole. To stop firearms from being sold at
gun shows on a "no questions asked" basis, we must extend the same Brady
background checks that have proven effective in keeping guns out of the
hands of many thousands of felons to all sales at gun shows.
Require child safety locks with every handgun sold. To reduce the
unauthorized use of handguns by a curious child or a teen looking to
commit a crime, federally-licensed firearms dealers should be required
to provide a child safety lock or device with every handgun they sell.
Ban violent juveniles from owning guns as adults. There is simply
no reason for youths convicted of a violent crime in juvenile court to
be able to purchase a gun on their 21st birthday.
Ban the importation of all large capacity ammunition magazines. We
should close the loophole in current law that allows the continued
importation of large numbers of high capacity ammunition clips that were
generally banned by the 1994 assault weapons ban.
Keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and children has been a key
priority of the Clinton Administration. Since the President took
office, gun-related crime has dropped by over 25 percent. Administration
accomplishments include:
Blocking over 400,000 illegal gun sales with Brady background
checks;
Banning the juvenile possession of handguns;
Enforcing zero tolerance for guns in schools;
Combating illegal gun trafficking by tracing more crime guns to
their source; and
Banning the 19 deadliest assault weapons and their copies.