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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President
For Immediate Release March 12, 2013


REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
TO THE LEAGUE OF CITIES ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
Washington, D.C.


2:03 P.M. EDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Marie. Thank you all. Please be seated. Please be seated. (Applause.)

I've been coming so long and so often to the National League of Cities, I -- and I said to Marie backstage what I have been saying for the last 400 years that I've been coming. (Laughter.) And that is, I wouldn't take your jobs on a bet. (Laughter.) You guys have real jobs. People know where you live. (Laughter.) You've got to deliver. And the quality of life that people have in their homes, they're depending on all of what you do.

And I want to just thank Marie for taking on the presidency, and I want to thank all of you, before Marie leaves the stage, for the jobs you do. And, Marie, we used to say when I was a senator, I'd like to make a point of personal privilege: There is a guy here who has been attending these meetings almost as long as I have, a former mayor, now the Executive Director of the League of Cities in the state of Delaware -- George Wright. I want to say hello to George here, if you're there. (Applause.) George, I can't see you. But George is a good guy. So be nice to George, will you? He's a Delaware boy. (Laughter.) All right? Thank you very much. I appreciate it. (Applause.)

Madam President, again, thank you. And look, I know your agenda is long and your day has been long, and I don't know how many days you've been doing this. You're covering an awful lot of very important issues that cities are facing. And we know -- I know, as a former local official, a county official, I know that the -- what the state capital does, what your national capital does impacts on you guys and women in a big way. And so I'm not going to open up by saying I'm from the federal government, I'm here to help you. (Laughter.)

But I am here today to ask your help; to ask your help and ask your input on an issue that none of you are any strangers to, and that is the -- and something that has seized the attention of the American people, and that is gun safety. And we need your help. We need your help. (Applause.) And we need -- and I mean this sincerely -- we need your advice.

Because as all of you sense in your bones, the tragedy that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School has had a profound impact on the psyche of the American people. There have been other mass murders, tragic events at Virginia Tech, in Columbine, Aurora, at the Sikh temple, but this -- in my career, this one senseless act at Sandy Hook, this slaughter, senseless slaughter of 20 six and seven-year-olds, children, babies, six brave school staff -- and it's not hyperbole to say brave school staff -- who actually tried to protect these kids, all dead. A senseless act that has not only shocked the American conscience, but has, I think, changed and galvanized the attitude of the American people, demanding some concrete action. We can't remain silent.

I know the deal. I've been around a long time. I know the deal. I know how all of us who are elected have been conditioned over the last decade, two, three or four: My gosh, don't touch this third rail. Don't take on the NRA. Don't take on. Don't talk about anything that can be characterized as having anything to do with the Second Amendment. I remember as a young kid just out of law school, a famous guy -- and friends, for those of you from Pennsylvania, Joe Clark, a United States Senator, a real class act. Joe Clark voted for the amendments that were passed during -- in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. And Joe Clark lost based on, quote, the -- voting for "gun control." And the word went forth in Pennsylvania and throughout all of your states that it's just something you can't deal with without paying the political price.

But, folks, I think we pay an immense political price if we don't become the voices for those 20 beautiful children who died at Sandy Hook 75 days ago. (Applause.) They can't speak for themselves. We have to speak for the more than 2,500 people who in the last 75 days, just since Sandy Hook, have died in your cities and your streets -- 2,500 people in the last 75 days have died at the other end of a gun. They can't speak for themselves anymore: Caitlin Cornett, a 20-year-old Kentucky woman, shot and killed in her college parking lot after class in a domestic dispute; Aydan Perea, a four-year-old boy, probably just learning to tie his shoes, who was caught in a drive-by shooting in Kansas City; Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old Chicago girl who marched by me and the President proudly as a majorette as part of the band sent for the inauguration, on Inauguration Day, shot dead in a park, swinging on a swing -- an honor student, a park just outside her school; swinging in the swing with other kids her age, as if they were little kids, shot dead, because they were in the wrong territory; Janay McFarlane, who was gunned down just hours after her sister joined the President for a gun safety event in Chicago, about a month ago now.

Twenty-five people dead from gun homicides every single day in this country. And that doesn't count the scores of mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, whose lives have been irrevocably altered as a consequence of the loss of their son, their daughter, their brother, their sister.

Folks, let me say this as clearly as I possibly can. There are going to be a lot of voices in this debate, but I am absolutely determined to make sure that the loudest voice will be the voices of those who we've lost. We have to speak for them and their families. Folks, enough is enough is enough. (Applause.)

And we have -- with the full knowledge of knowing we cannot solve or prevent every death, we have an obligation to act and act responsibly. The organized opposition is hoping that as time marches on, the urgency to act on gun safety is going to diminish. One of the leading opponents at an organizational meeting said, not long ago, he expected "the Connecticut effect" to fade. Well, that effect isn't going to fade in the memories of the families who lost their children or a loved one. It's not going to fade in my memory. It's not going to fade in the President's memory. And it's not going to fade in the memory of the people of Connecticut, and I would argue not in the memory of the people of the United States. The American people want things to change. (Applause.)

Now, look, the NRA and other organized opponents throw up question after question not because -- in my view, and having dealt with them for a long, long time -- not because they're actually looking for answers, not because they're driven by facts, not because they're looking for a way forward, but because they're looking for a way to build road blocks. They say we're going after law-abiding citizens, law-abiding gun owners. We are not. They say assault weapons like the AR-15 are needed for self-protection. They are not. They say it isn't about guns. They're wrong. It's about guns. (Applause.)

What it's not about is anyone's Second Amendment rights. No law-abiding American's right will be infringed in any way whatsoever. None, period. The facts are these assault weapons and the magazines that hold 30, 50, and -- in the case of Aurora -- 100 rounds of ammunition are unnecessary. They're dangerous and they put law enforcement at risk. (Applause.) And limiting them in no way affects anyone's Second Amendment rights.


We have an obligation to act seriously, responsibly, and I emphasize this, expeditiously. And everything we've proposed, which I will speak to in a second, is completely consistent with four basic principles.


First, our proposals are consistent with the Supreme Court's ruling that responsible, law-abiding individuals have the right to own a weapon to protect themselves in their home.


Secondly, we believe there are certain people who can be prohibited from owning a gun consistent with the Second Amendment, as is the case now: Criminals, people who are found to be a danger to themselves or others are legally, constitutionally able to be prohibited from owning a weapon.


Thirdly, there are certain weapons that can be prohibited consistent with the Second Amendment. Even if you're a billionaire, you can't go out and buy an F-15 with ordnance. There are legal limitations that can be placed, rational limitations, on the type of weapon that can be owned.


And fourth, it isn't only about guns. It's about the coarsening of our culture. It's about school safety. It's about access to mental health.


And with all those points in mind, we met with every possible stakeholder we could find. We met with 229 different groups; considerably more people based on the numbers. We met with governors, mayors, county executives, law enforcement, mental health experts, survivors of gun violence, religious groups, sportsmen's organizations, the NRA, gun-owning groups, representatives from the movie and video game industries. And there emerged a generic consensus that we have to act responsibly, and an emerging consensus on the kind of action we should take.


I prepared for the President, as you now know, at his request, in the first three weeks after the tragedy in Connecticut, a document reflecting that consensus, backed up by the best data available as to how we should act. And this week, the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, which I chaired or ranked on for 17 years, is working on that legislation that covers most of the recommendations the President has put forward.


We proposed that the Congress pass a universal background check requirement -- (applause) -- that every single gun sale must first go through a check to see if the buyer can lawfully have a gun.


And by the way, some of you know in your states as we've gotten into this, there are probably somewhere on the order of 2 million people who have been adjudicated in your home state as not being eligible to own a weapon, yet their names are not in the national information system that people have to check when they sell you a gun at a gun shop. So not only do we have to expand, rationally -- for example, a fugitive from justice can still buy a gun legally unless they cross the state line. The one person I don't want to have a weapon is a fugitive from justice. I'd rather have an ex-felon have access to a weapon than someone fleeing the justice system. So there are other people who should be part of this exclusion. Just today, I'm proud to say, the United States Judiciary Committee passed a strong universal background check change through the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will go to the floor of the United States Senate for a vote on the Senate. (Applause.)


We also proposed that by limiting -- we should limit high-capacity magazines. (Applause.) That vote -- that will get a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee this week as well. As Mark Kelly, the husband of Gabby Giffords, and a person in his own right -- an astronaut -- pointed out in his testimony, if the shooter in Tucson only had 10 rounds in his magazine instead of 30, that little girl who was the granddaughter of a Delawarean and former manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, she'd be alive. And the only reason why not everyone was killed was a woman, as this man tried to change the magazine, hit her arm -- hit his arm, knocked it out of his hand, and in fact subdued the person.

If the number of rounds used by the shooter in Sandy Hook had been limited to 10, who knows, there may be one, two, 10 more children alive. The police arrived in two and one half minutes. Two and one half minutes, they were on the scene. So it does matter. It does matter. And it does not infringe anyone's constitutional right to possess a weapon. (Applause.)


The Judiciary Committee is also going to vote on whether or not to reinstate and strengthen the assault weapons ban, which is both constitutional and sensible. Thirty-seven percent of police agencies, some in your cities, report seeing an increase in the use of assault weapons after the ban expired in 2004. It's not only the law enforcement agents who are opposed to these weapons being on sale. It's also some of the leading flag officers of the United States military -- General Powell, General McChrystal, Admiral Barnett. I mean, I met with a group of eight of the 12. These guys are real, bad, tough warriors. They're all out campaigning as to why does anybody need -- one of them says -- as my son said, if you want to have an assault weapon, join the military. (Laughter.) You want to learn to shoot it? No problem.

We also called on Congress to pass a gun trafficking statute which has as of last week already passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee led by Senator Leahy and passed on a bipartisan basis.

Today, often the only way to prosecute a so-called straw purchaser, you know what that is, the person who can legally buy a gun but illegally is doing it before someone or a group that is incapable of under the law buying a gun and then selling it to them, a straw purchaser; the only way to do it is to prove that they lied on the background check form, which is hard to prove. They could say I didn't know that was a check. I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to -- not only is it very hard to do, but it usually comes with a sentence of only six months.

Federal gun trafficking statute, if it passes the Senate now, will make it a criminal offense to purchase guns with the intent to transfer them to another person or persons with a common-sense exception as gifts.

The Senate Judiciary Committee also took up the bill we proposed on school safety, Senator Boxer's bill, which includes some of our proposals to increase the physical security in schools. I'm happy to report it passed the committee with overwhelming -- well, with bipartisan support, and it passed today, as well.

We also need to give schools more resources that are more flexible so they can choose to hire a school resource officer or a social worker. For example, when the so-called Biden crime bill passed that put 100,000 cops on the street back in '94, there was a provision that your communities could seek and petition for a school resource officer, either an armed or unarmed shield in a school that's there. It wasn't to prevent mass murderers. It was the same line as community policing. When these officers get to know the students and gain the trust of the students, students are inclined to walk by them and say to them what they wouldn't say to a principal or a teacher for ratting someone out, to say, by the way, when I opened my locker today, I looked down three lockers and there was a butt of a gun hanging out of Johnny Smith's locker. Or there's a drug deal going to go down behind school. Or whatever. Kids need -- need -- somebody they can talk to.

Well, a lot of people said it doesn't have to be an officer. That's fine. What we put in this legislation is to say that here's the deal, if you want not a school resource officer, but you want the help financially from the federal government, you can hire another school psychologist or a counselor or someone who, in fact, is able to be of assistance identifying trouble in schools. (Applause.)

Look, the last thing we think we need to do is to arm teachers. We need to arm teachers with information not guns. (Applause.) Training -- my wife, to the best of my knowledge is the only Second Lady who remains a full-time teacher. She teaches 15 credits a semester with no TA at Northern Virginia Community College, taught for 17 years I believe it was in the public school system. Talk to any teacher. The vast majority of them aren't looking to be armed, but they're looking for some help.

Training teachers and administrators to recognize the warning signs of mental illness where the red flags go up is a useful thing. We train them in first aid. There are certain things the psychiatric community and psychiatric nurses know, certain behaviors signal really aberrant behavior that's dangerous. And it's not for them to write down in their background of the kid, this kid has a problem; it's to get them help. It's to direct them to their -- telling their parents of the problem or getting them to the kind of help they need. These are all things Congress can do. And for our part, we've tasked the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services to develop model emergency management plans and practices.

I'm sure all of you as local officials, the vast majority of you, got a phone call from your school district or a school in your city when it happened up in Sandy Hook saying, what do I do? What do I do if something like that happens in my school -- I got those calls as Vice President of the United States.

Well, the one thing the federal government can do better than local governments is find -- survey the whole country and come up with the best practices. Look at what are the best practices -- that's what we're in the process of -- do we need to make available to every school district in America. We're again making progress with -- these steps the Congress is taking this week show real signs of progress.

But look, we know there's even more has to be done. We think, for example, it's necessary to restore a significant number of police officers on the streets -- on the streets. Because of the recession, you were forced -- (applause) -- you, all local officials, you were forced to put 30,000 shields in a drawer somewhere. That's how many law enforcement officers have been laid off in the great recession.

So we're proposing an additional $4 billion for the COPS grants to support an additional 1,500 local -- excuse me, 15,000 local police on the streets. Why? Because we know it works. (Applause.) The one thing the crime bill has shown is that the more sworn officers on the street, the greater the reduction of crime, including gun violence. The evidence is clear. Since we passed the crime bill in 1994, violent crime has dropped 33 percent in America, including gun crime.

We also know that we needed serious research on gun violence. That's why we ended the decade-long freeze on research. When the assault weapon ban -- when the crime bill had to reauthorized in 2004, they dropped the provision relating to magazines and some other things and they started to attach to the appropriations bills limitations on being able to even garner information.

So for example, the Center for Disease Control was told it cannot keep any statistics on gun violence, on gun crimes. The same with NIH. It reminded me, as a young Senator, as a 30-year-old Senator in 1973, being approached by the major automobile manufacturers. Three different -- General Motors, if my memory serves me, we got General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler -- I don't think AMC, which was still around, came to me. And you know what they wanted? They wanted to make sure that we continued to keep a prohibition on the National Highway Safety Council not to keep statistics. And I couldn't figure out at first why that would be the case, then it became clear.

Everybody thought that the reason most people were dying in automobile accidents in the passenger seat, they were being thrown through front windshields. So all you need to do is a restraint on your stomach. Guess what. That's not why most people were dying. Most people were dying hitting their heads on the crossbar and/or on the bar above the door. What did that mean? A logical solution was a chest harness. And guess what? That cost another -- whatever it is -- hundred and fifty bucks. So they didn't want to have to do that. And then they found out that most people die in a -- I think it's -- don't hold me to the exact percent, it's been a long time -- 70 percent or so of people dying when they were in the driver's seat is because they're impaled on a steering column. Well, that was soluble. You have steering columns that give some in an accident.

A lot more people are living today -- lowest percentage of traffic fatalities that we've had in history, the safest automobiles in the world being built. But guess what; it costs money to do it, and they didn't want to do it. You've got to ask yourself, why. Why would we prevent the CDC from conducting research? Why would we prevent the best minds in America from conducting research? It's simply ridiculous.

And so the President issued a directive to the CDC and scientific agencies to conduct this research. We're calling on Congress to fund $10 million in research on these issues. It's not just to study the impact on gun violence in the community; we need to understand more about the impact of playing violent videos for our kids. (Applause.) We have to figure out whether or not in fact it affects their motor skills.

The truth is there's no serious research. Everybody has their opinion on what these violent video games, and the statistics are kids watch up to six hours a day of these videos. They're marked mature, but kids get a hold of them. What impact does it have on the neuro pathways as a young mind is developing? We all have our prejudice -- we think it does or doesn't affect it -- we should know. We should study it. We should try to figure this out.

In an informed society, we should not be afraid of the facts. And, finally, there's a consensus in the country that we need to make mental health services more available and -- (applause) -- and work like the devil to remove the stigma that is attached to trying to seek mental health. (Applause.)

Now, there's a couple of things a lot of you already know from your experience, whether you have the exact statistic or not, you know it. We know that between the ages of 16 to 25, that cadre of people experience high rates of mental illness compared to other age groups. We also know they're among the least likely to seek assistance. We need to fix that and I believe we can.

We need to make sure that insurance companies provide quality coverage for mental health services. We already have expanded access to mental health care treatment for millions of people through the Affordable Care Act. That health care law will ensure that 62 million Americans get quality mental health coverage that they don't have now. (Applause.)

And, folks, later this year we will put in place the final mental health parity regulation. Remember we passed in 2008 this notion of mental health parity, meaning that if you go to the doctor because you're seeking assistance related to something relating to your mental health, your brain, that that is no less reasonable to cover than if you go for a broken arm. It is an illness. So the mental health parity law said you have to treat mental health like any other health problem you have. And those regulations will ensure that tens of millions of more individuals will have affordable health care, that is mental health care.

And we're also proposing -- one of the things you know from your own schools is the difficulty of having a number of school psychologists that are available -- those of you who are veterans, like my son coming back from Iraq after a year. You also know that although we have -- and I carry a card every single day, I get a list on my daily card, I want to know exactly -- and I've been doing this for the last three years -- daily troop update, the number of U.S. troops that have died in Afghanistan and Iraq combined today it's 6,539. The number of troops wounded in Afghanistan or Iraq -- 50,542. But guess what, there's over 300,000 people coming back with post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury. And we don't have enough mental health professionals out there now.

So we're doing everything from looking at telepathic medicine, all the way to how do we get more people engaged in the health professions in the mental health field. So as a small down payment, we're proposing to train more than 5,000 mental health professionals with the special skills they need to serve this young population in our schools and our communities. (Applause.) These are the contours of the plan. These are the things that Congress must act on. And they're online to act on them all now.

But there's one thing in particular I want to ask all of you in this room that I believe can help reduce gun violence, especially among young people. Homicide is the second leading cause of death for people in ages 15 to 24. And we know that in a lot of cities, the summer months are especially deadly. Last year, 140 companies and organizations -- five cities and seven federal agencies -- partnered with the White House through the administration's Summer Jobs+ initiative to provide 300,000 employment opportunities for youth for 2012. I want to especially thank Mayors Emanuel, Coleman, Hancock and Nutter, and Lee for partnering with us on this effort -- an initiative that not only provided paid employment opportunities to low-income and disconnected youth, but also provided pathways to employment through resume writing workshops, mentoring programs and job-shadow days.


After the success of last year's effort, this year we're asking you to step up and lead this national effort because we can provide our youth with life and work skills and help make communities safer by keeping our kids off the street and on the job.


I'm asking you to work with employers and nonprofits in your community to develop programs to provide at-risk youth with paid, meaningful work experience, mentoring opportunities and other support. I know a lot of you are doing this already. We'll make sure you'll have the technical assistance which you'll get -- in contact with you all and the tools you'll need to build these programs in your cities. Modeled off the efforts of last year and at the end of this summer, we're going to take a look at what worked and what skill -- what worked to provide skills to our kids and keeping our communities safe, and we're going to ask you to come back to the White House to lift up our efforts and utilize them as a model for communities to adopt across the country because some of what we'll do will not work. Some of it will not turn out to be useful. Much of it will.


We got to figure out how we deal with at-risk youth in a more aggressive way than we have now, and not just by passing new laws to incarcerate them. (Applause.)


Look, let me conclude by getting back specifically to the issue of gun safety. You know -- you don't know, but I have like maybe some of you, I have spoken and spent literally hours with a majority of the parents of the victims of Sandy Hook. And when I think about the courage it takes for some of these parents to come forward, having had a loss like they had through an accident, not a gun violence early in my career, I know every time they talk about what happens, it forces them to relive the moment as if it happened that very moment. And they've shown incredible courage just by talking about what happened.


And it's not too much to ask our political establishment in this country to show the same kind of courage, some political courage. (Applause.)


I'll end where I began. People say that the -- Democrats and Republicans say the political risks are unacceptable to take on. I respectfully suggest it's unacceptable not to take on these risks. (Applause.) I say to those in Congress who are concerned about their political survival, they should think about the survival of our children and the price that will be paid for doing nothing -- the political price that will be paid for doing nothing.


They should know the American people are with them. Look at the polling data. Overwhelmingly on every one of the areas I suggested to you, it runs from 55 percent to 89 percent support from the American people. I don't believe the American people are going to let us go quietly into the night and not act without there being political repercussions.


So I'd respectfully suggest that this time around, the political repercussions for not acting are more dangerous -- just purely politically -- than the political repercussions from acting. And they should know that there's also a moral price to be paid for inaction. We have to act.


The American people are with us. Not in any way infringing on anyone's constitutional right. And now is the time, and you all are incredibly influential in your communities. I'm not being solicitous. You're the people like when I represented Delaware, which is a small state, and went home every single night, I got off the train the shoe shine guy, the ticker taker, the taxi cab driver, I stop on the way home at the 7-Eleven, everybody knows me as Joe, like everyone knows you as Harry or Mary or Charlie. They know who you are. You have significant influence. Significant influence. Because the people who represent your state in the Congress and in the Senate -- the House and the Senate, they know you're in touch with people. If you share our view, the President's view and mine, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, if you share our view that these are sensible, rational policies that impose on no right of a hunter, no right of anyone to protect themselves, then speak up. Speak up in your communities. Because if you do, I really think we have a chance to make rational progress on a problem that's real, that has not an absolute solution -- if we do everything the President and I are suggesting, it doesn't mean there will never be another mass shooting. It doesn't mean there's not going to be gang bangers on a street corner with stolen weapons that are going to do bad things. But it means there will be less of everything that's bad and more kids -- more kids will live into their old age.


Thank you for listening to me. May God bless you and may God protect our troops. Thank you very, very much. (Applause.)


END 2:38 P.M. EDT