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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President
For Immediate Release February 6, 2013


REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
TO THE HOUSE DEMOCRATIC ISSUES CONFERENCE

Lansdowne Resort
Leesburg, Virginia


THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. (Applause.) Please sit down. I have been to -- in 36 years in the Senate to an awful lot of retreats, and I know one of the most exciting things to do is after dinner have the Vice President show up. (Laughter.) So thank you for your hospitality. (Applause.) I hope the dessert was good.

Nancy, thank you very much. And, Steny, you and I have been friends for so long sharing a common border. And, Jim Clyburn, I was saying in the back that -- have any of you ever been to Jim's parking garage? You new members that don't know this, Jim has an event once a year, and he has so many people at that event that he can't handle it all -- the Democratic dinner. And they take I think it's four or five stories of a parking garage, they clear out all the cars, and they still can't fit anybody in. If you haven't been to it, don't miss it. And, Javier, thank you very much for the invitation to be here. And, Joe, I really appreciate your introduction.

Folks, look, I know I've been Vice President for four years, but I was a member of Congress for 36, and I understand this -- there are a separation of powers and equal power, as Nancy keeps reminding the White House all the time with good reason. So I have an inordinate amount of respect for you. And I really am -- (applause) -- no, I really am flattered to be invited back.

And Steve Israel and I have spoken, and we're going to be speaking again soon. As that old joke goes, I'll come and campaign for you or against you, whichever will help the most. (Applause.) But I am -- seriously, the President and I, we stand ready to do anything we can to help the caucus. (Applause.)

And look, there are -- I'd be remiss if as I look out I didn't recognize a woman who has -- is one of the reasons why the President and I were reelected. The way that she ran the DNC was absolutely marvelous. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. (Applause.) It's a pleasure -- it really is a pleasure to work with you. I don't know -- you did close to 700 events. Every place, I was, you were there and doing an ever better job. But thank you, I truly appreciate the help you provided for this campaign.

Look, folks, I know as well as you do there are an awful lot of critical issues that we could spend the whole evening discussing from economic growth to immigration to climate change, violence against women, which is near and dear to my heart, to the looming upcoming budget deadlines we're facing, but I'd like to spend a few minutes at the front end, and then we'll have a chance to talk about anything you want to talk about. I'd like to talk to you tonight for a few minutes about what the President asked me to do that is specifically work on gun violence in America, gun safety in a more rational world that we need.

The image of those beautiful young children six and seven years old, literally, riddled -- riddled with bullet holes, lying in their classroom, all of us 54 days ago watching those families and only imaging we could be in the same spot, in panic running around that parking lot and over that fire house and wondering, my God, my God, am I -- my God. We all watched it and witnessed the profound loss not only to those families, but the profound loss that America suffered.

You know anyone who has lost a child will know the kind of thing that haunts you the most if it was an illness and you weren't there or an accident or a senseless shooting is were they -- was he scared? Was she frightened? Did she know? Did he know?

And I've met and talked with I think all but three of the family members, the parents. And they've demonstrated an incredible, an incredible amount of courage. A lot of us have been through nothing that bad than the loss of a child, and most of us know if whatever the cause of the loss, it's not something you ever want to talk about publicly. It takes so much courage. And these families that I met with and who came to see me and I talk with on the phone, it astounded me the courage they had to -- to hope that we would focus and not let slip our obligation to deal with this tragedy. I can't imagine how they're doing it quite frankly, but I can imagine how we will be judged as individuals, judged as a Congress, judged as a nation if we do nothing. That I can imagine. It's simply unacceptable. It's simply unacceptable for us -- (applause) -- for us to yield to the political concerns or the political -- suggest the political risk is too -- I'm not -- any of you have said that. You haven't. But there are those who talk about the risk is too high, the outcome is too certain. Is it acceptable to say we just have to have a narrow focus, to deal with only those things we can have an overwhelming consensus on, leave the more controversial elements of gun safety aside?

The recommendations the President asked me to draw up for him that he put forward, as I said, it's not acceptable for us to do anything other than try to do all that we have to do, all that's reasonable. It's been 54 days since you all witnessed that god-awful circumstance and watching those parents with white fear dealing with the unknown, but -- what happened to my child? What happened to my wife? Since that day 54 days ago, 1,600 Americans have died at the end of a gun -- 54 days after that tragedy 1,600 additional Americans are dead because of a weapon: a 20-year-old Kentucky woman shot and killed in her car in a college parking lot after a domestic dispute; a four-year-old boy probably just learning how to tie his shoes was caught in a crossfire shooting in Kansas City; a 15-year-old Chicago girl who so proudly marched by me and the President and the rest of you on Inauguration Day leading with pride and promise her high school band gunned down in a park just outside her school in broad daylight. And this was no ordinary child. She was a child who had used social media urging her friends to speak out, don't join gangs, and now she's gone.

I haven't even recounted while in the middle of, as Mike and others can tell you, we were meeting with various groups to decide how to proceed, on two occasions in the middle of our meetings, we got word that there had been additional shootings in schools. The fourth day of our meetings in your home state of California in Bakersfield, I got an urgent note, while we're deliberating, another school shooting. Thank God not nearly as extensive.

Folks, you agree with me I'm sure: Enough is enough is enough! (Applause.) We have to stand up. And, folks, look, many of you in this room have been standing up your entire careers, many of you have scars on your back like I do from having acted and attempted to act and continuing to try to act to deal with the senselessness of gun violence in America. We all know there's no single answer to assure this will never happen again, a mass shooting like Newtown or Aurora or Tucson or Oak Creek. Well we've got to act. We have to act rationally to do whatever we can to diminish the possibility of this ever happening again. God forbid if it does, we have to act to reduce the carnage.

Your new congressman from Tucson who is here today I assume -- hey, old buddy. You know what he said in our meeting? He pointed out that after having been shot himself, and Gabby so badly injured, that beautiful little girl who was the granddaughter of a friend of mine, Dallas Green, a great, great high school star and professional star from the Philadelphia Phillies, that the only reason why they're alive is when this kid tried to replace the magazine, he fumbled, and I think you told a woman leaned out and grabbed his arm, knocked it to the ground, prevented him from being able to reload. For had he been able to do it, had he had 20 more rounds in that clip, which he could have, they'd all be dead. So don't tell me because we can't solve it all, we can't act at all.

I don't mean you. I'm not referring to you; I'm using "you" in an editorial sense. When people tell me that you can't prevent these kinds of occurrences, that doesn't mean we can't do something to, God forbid if it happens again, diminish the carnage. It matters. It matters. (Laughter.)

So what I want to discuss with you for a few more minutes is what the President asked me to do, and how I'm going about doing it. And I want to make it clear, it's such a relief to come and speak to you about something that's not done yet that you are going to be the ones to implement, rather than me coming after the fact and saying, by the way, this is the deal. Because this is all up to you.

I've been working on this issue for a long time. I don't whether John Dingell and John Conyers are here, but we spent an awful lot of time in the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill, which included, as you well know, an assault weapons ban, a limit on magazines, et cetera, and it was tough. It was really tough. We lost the Congress immediately after that; some attributed it to the difficult stands people had to take, particularly on the assault weapons ban.

People have walked away learning the wrong lesson from that, saying, you know what, it's demonstrable that it's too risky to take on some of this stuff because look what happened last time we did this. And that's the reason, in part, why it didn't get reauthorized in 2004 in the Bush administration.

Well, I'm here to tell you the world has changed. The world has changed since 1994. Public attitudes have changed since 1994. Social media has changed. The ability to misrepresent our positions has changed. In my two campaigns after that, I literally had to wander through the rural parts of my state, walking up and down streambeds to get to wildlife guys, fishermen and people who were out there hunting legitimately, because all the talk was, "Biden didn't deny them assault weapons." It said, "Biden acted to take away their shotguns." Well, the ability, because of all that's happened, to misrepresent our positions no longer exists as it did in 1994. And I know you -- most of you -- all of you, I hope, agree with me that voting on what you believe -- and I'm not asking you to vote for something you don't believe. But I don't want to hear about, well, we can't take it on because it's too politically dangerous. The world has changed. The American public has changed.

So I saw this work as putting together these recommendations as an obligation to go out, even though a lot of us in this room have done an awful lot of work in this subject. We met with 229 different groups -- 229, including the task force Nancy put together, led by Mike and Carolyn. I met with governors, mayors, county executives, law enforcement, mental health experts, religious groups, sportsmen's groups, sportsmen's organizations, NRA, gun owners. I met with them all, and I said things are different now than they were in 1994. There's an overwhelming consensus about the need to act that didn't exist in '94, and a generic consensus around the kinds of things we have to do.

I'll give you an example. I met with religious leaders -- Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, evangelicals, mainstream Protestant churches. They ranged from the National Council of Churches to the Progressive National Baptist Convention to the National Association of Evangelicals. Back in '94, when I had these meetings as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the National Council of Churches and the Catholic Conference of Bishops automatically supported -- not automatic, were supportive. But this time, religious groups from areas where there's a longstanding, legitimate position of gun culture in our rural communities, they didn't want to participate before, but they participated this time.

Across the board, law enforcement in the past -- I'm going to say something outrageous -- of all the Democrats out there, I may be one of -- at least in the Senate, was the only one that every single year that I ran, I got support and endorsement from every law enforcement agency in the country. But they weren't all on the same page in '94. Those who represented rural communities, particularly the sheriffs, they didn't want any part of being engaged in what they -- was then referred to as gun control, not gun safety.

But this time when I met, they were all supportive of the need to act, all willing to take positions. This time -- so when the President asked me to do this, I decided we should have just -- what basic premise we were going to base our recommendation on. And there were six. And they've changed since '94. First one was the Supreme Court has acted. We used to have a debate about whether gun control was a corporate right based on a standing militia -- I mean, excuse me, a militia, or an individual right. Well, like it or not, the Court has ruled. The Second Amendment means you have an individual right to bear a weapon, own a weapon, for not only recreation but for self-defense. Two, it's recognized without a doubt now, from the last time -- it is clearly within the power of the government to determine what type of weapons can be owned by the public. Three, it's clearly undisputed -- no dispute any longer, government can disqualify certain American citizens from being able to own a weapon. Fourth, there is a need to examine the coarsening of American culture. We have no serious studies about the impact of violence -- violent video games, television, movies -- on our young children. I don't have a judgment. I don't know the answer. But I know failure to get together the best minds in the world to take a good hard look would be a mistake. Fifth, we need to more closely examine the mental health aspects of this epidemic. And sixth, the safety of our children in school has to be examined. They're the premises upon which we -- that we started and based our recommendation. That's how we arrived at the proposals that you're all familiar with at this point.

Our conclusions were simple, and I'm going to be very brief. First, we believe -- the President and I, we believe there's a need for a universal background check -- universal background check. (Applause.) Not closing the gun loophole -- universal background check.

Second, we believe we should limit high-capacity magazines. (Applause.) It makes a difference and does not at all impede on anyone's constitutional right.

Third, we believe -- and this is controversial -- but we believe we should reinstate and strengthen the assault weapons ban. (Applause.)

And fourth, we believe there's a need for a federal gun trafficking statute. One does not exist now. (Applause.)

And fifth, we believe that the epidemic of violence in our streets is impacted upon by the number of police on our streets. That's the reason why the violent crime was down in the '80s, and because in part -- because of additional police in the street. And that's why we're calling for a $4 billion commitment to hire 15,000 additional law enforcement officers. (Applause.) It matters in our view.

Sixth, there's an urgent need to end a decade-long freeze on research relating to gun violence. (Applause.) It is crazy. An informed society should not be afraid of the facts.

And seventh, we believe, as your former colleague, Rahm Emmanuel said, the truth is most schools are safe. As he said, it's going to and from school where young people are in the most danger. But that having been said, we still believe we can help make our schools safer. But let me be crystal clear, and I think most of you share this view. We do not believe that arming teachers and administrators makes any sense. We do not believe that. (Applause.) But we do think that the federal government has a role to play in coming up with best practices for emergency responses. I'll bet you every one of you have been contacted by a school principal or a school district in your constituency saying, what should I do? What should I prepare for? That's what the federal government can do well -- synthesize that which works best around the nation, and make it available as a model for these schools. And we also believe that there's a rational basis for federal support for school resource officers, but we've heard your voice, but make it much more flexible for communities.

Let me be more specific. We do not, under any circumstances, as I said, support arming school personnel, but we believe communities should have the option to have a sworn officer in a school, or, if they don't want to use matching funds for that, to be able to use those funds for the purpose of hiring a school psychiatrist, school counselor or other resource officer. (Applause.) Let the community make that judgment.

We also believe that there's benefit in training teachers and administrators to recognize the warning signs of mental illness in the same way we train them in first aid. That's not going to make them experts, but just to train them what to look for so they can alert parents, they can alert authorities, they can make a sound judgment without in any way compromising the privacy of that child, or putting a mark on that child's career background -- not career, but on their school record.

And we also think that mental health, more broadly, should be much more available. In 2008, with the help of most of you in here, I was still in the Senate, we passed the Mental Health Parity Act -- legislation. And in 2010, through the courage of an awful lot of you here, we passed the Affordable Care Act, combined, represents the single largest expansion of mental health access in our entire history. And we believe it's possible to make those services more available to communities and more beneficial to communities.

For God knows, if it's only one or two parents who know they have access to expertise, they know they have a problem with their child, they know if they seek the help it's available to them, just maybe, maybe, maybe we can improve things.

These are the contours of our plan. So let me end by thanking Nancy for putting together the first task force, led by Mike and Carolyn. And I want to say to Mike and Carolyn, I hope we've given you all the resources available through the Justice Department, HHS and any other vehicle that you needed in order to come up with your recommendations. It's up to you. It's up to you in the House and the Senate, and I know notwithstanding the fact that we're in the minority in the House, there are more powerful voices in the House than any other location in the country to speak to this issue.

And I intend on, and I'm prepared to -- any of you, if I'm in your districts or go to your district, prepared to have you join me. I have an extensive schedule going all around the country making this case. And I'm also going to be going into the areas where there is a legitimate gun culture, like in the southern part of my state, to make people understand there is no threat to that legitimate culture -- that culture by what we're proposing, and also to demonstrate to people, you can go into areas where we're told you can't go and politically survive. I'm telling you, times have changed. Never tell another man or woman what's in their political interest, but I promise you, times have changed.

In the interest of time, I left out a lot of the detail of our proposal, but I hope we'll get to talk about it in more detail now on this and any other subjects you'd like to talk about.

Let me conclude by saying, Joe, thank you very much for having me and I'm available to answer any question you all have. (Applause.)


END 8:15 P.M. EST