Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 10, 1993 TAG: 9312100140
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From Newsday and the Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Grimly declaring that violence is "tearing the heart out of our country," Clinton said he senses greater societal support for anti-crime laws going beyond the recently signed Brady gun-control law.
His audience, a task force from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, was at the White House to give him a report urging strong federal action, including gun registration, a ban on semiautomatic assault weapons, waiting periods on purchases of all firearms and significant tax increases on ammunition and firearm sales.
"I think the American people are tired of hurting, and tired of feeling insecure, and tired of the violence," Clinton said. "It's changing everyone's life in ways that are quite destructive. We have to move. And I think we're prepared to move."
In his new calls for more aggressive restrictions on guns, Clinton has abruptly leaped beyond his administration's regular policy-making machinery and followed his own political hunches and convictions about where the volatile issue is headed.
For several months, officials at the White House, Justice Department and other agencies have been weighing how to follow up the recently approved Brady handgun-control bill and have come up with mostly incremental plans for further legislation next year.
In recent days Clinton has bypassed usual study-and-comment procedures - surprising aides and rattling some gun-rights advocates - with encouraging words about such controversial proposals as federal licensing of handguns and expansion of police "stop and frisk" powers. Aides believe those measures are further from reach than others that are being developed.
Newly released polls have indicated substantial public approval of efforts to curtail the use of guns. In a survey of 1,479 respondents by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press last weekend, Clinton's support of the Brady law's five-day waiting period for handgun purchases drew a 57 percent favorable response while 29 percent disapproved.
A substantial minority favor an outright ban on handgun sales. A recent CBS News poll found 49 percent favored banning handgun sales, with 49 percent opposed. The Times Mirror poll showed 51 percent against and 49 percent in favor of such a ban.
Other administration officials echoed Clinton's concerns, turning gun control into perhaps the capital's prime topic at news conferences. Attorney General Janet Reno, asked earlier by Clinton to evaluate a proposal by New York City Mayor-elect Rudolph Giuliani for licensing firearms purchasers, endorsed the idea Thursday.
"I think it should be at least as hard to get a license to possess a gun as it is to drive an automobile," Reno said. She has long called for licensing of gun owners to make certain they can use weapons safely and lawfully.
Reno was less enthusiastic about a national registry of newly purchased or transferred guns, which the mayors' task force proposed. She has said in the past she believes it would be ineffective.
Donna Shalala, health and human services secretary, said in a television interview that Tuesday's train shootings, which killed five commuters, showed "violence affects all of us," not just inner cities. Violence should be treated "as a public health crisis that requires public health solutions," she said.
by CNB