FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Thank you for very much for that kind introduction. I want to thank the leadership of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) for their contributions to law enforcement and for their support of law enforcement policies that will lead us into the new millennium. Bob Ward, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, please express my appreciation to Nancy Gist, Director of BJA, for having the vision to fund a program that will provide training and assistance for State and local law enforcement to develop gun interdiction strategies in partnership with federal law enforcement.

A key mission of the Department of Treasury is ensuring economic security for the American taxpayer. Equally important in Treasury's mission and just as fundamental for the health of our nation is security of a different order - ensuring the safety of our communities, schools, and workplaces.

This is why I am pleased to be here today to discuss the Treasury Department's efforts, and those of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, to support effective federal, State, and local partnerships to develop gun enforcement strategies.

Since 1992, the rate of violent crime in our nation has dropped by 20 percent. During the same period, violent crime with guns fell by more than 35 percent. Homicides with guns have dropped an average of 7 percent annually since 1993. From 1997 to 1998, the drop in the number of homicides with guns was greater than the decline in homicides overall. This means we are gaining on the gun problem faster than on the overall homicide problem. And we believe this trend shows that federal, State, and local law enforcement are on the right track.

But the arrest rates for young people for both murder and weapons offenses are still well above the rates in the years before the rise of the crack cocaine markets. In 1997, firearms were

related to more than 42,000 deaths, and firearms remained the second leading cause of injury-related death in the United States behind motor vehicles. An average of 265 persons per day sustained gunshot wounds in 1997. Gun violence is still at an intolerable level in our country. We must do more and we are committed to doing more.

Let's begin by looking at how far we have come on this issue in the last few years. When the Administration began, felons could walk into gun stores and buy guns, because there was no system in place to check a purchaser's criminal history record. Gun store owners had no obligation to notify authorities of gun thefts, or to respond immediately to gun trace requests by law enforcement. Assault weapons could be manufactured and sold. It was legal under federal law for young people to possess handguns, and for anyone to give guns to children.

In the mid-1990s, Congress agreed with the Administration that, in order to reduce violent crime, something needed to be done about easy access to guns. The Brady law in 1993 and the Crime Act in 1994 made major improvements in the gun laws. Under the Brady law, we established the National Instant Check System to conduct background checks on gun buyers. Congress also reformed the gun dealer licensing system. Licensees have to pay more for licenses now, and they have to comply with all State and local laws, in addition to federal law, in order to obtain a license. Congress for the first time required dealers to report stolen guns and to cooperate with police in tracing guns. Congress increased penalties for possessing stolen guns, and prohibited juvenile gun possession and transferring guns to minors. Congress also banned certain semiautomatic weapons and magazines with more than ten rounds.

To continue moving forward in our efforts to reduce violent crime, we need a multi-tracked approach. Today, I will talk about three areas: crime gun tracing, enforcement of the gun laws, and legislative proposals.

Overview. Tracing is an area in which we've made enormous strides, but still have work to do. In 1996, President Clinton asked ATF to make a systematic effort to find out how young people were obtaining guns and to work with police departments and prosecutors to shut down illegal channels of supply. We found there was surprisingly little information on how young people obtained guns. In fact, there was surprisingly little information about how criminals obtained their crime guns.

So the first thing that was needed was to fill the information gap. ATF began working with police departments to use the tracing of guns recovered by police to find out where the guns used in crime were first sold, and how juveniles and criminals obtained their guns. ATF developed a software system, Project LEAD, to help analyze the crime gun information and develop leads for cases from it. ATF also began working with police and prosecutors to begin questioning young people arrested with guns about how they got them.

ATF's Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative, which uses all these methods, is now underway in 37 cities, with many other police departments joining in gun tracing. By working together to trace crime guns, ATF and police have learned a great deal about where guns used in crime are coming from, and have produced real enforcement results.

What have they accomplished? Law enforcement officials have arrested hundreds of illegal suppliers to young people. Gun tracing led law enforcement authorities to the 18-year-old who provided the Columbine shooters with one of the guns they used. Law enforcement agencies have identified numerous illegal channels, including straw purchases through knowing adults. They are fighting off-the-books sales by corrupt gun dealers. They have made arrests from smash and grab thefts from gun stores. They have prosecuted unlicensed dealers on the street and at gun shows. They have blocked drug-gun swaps, and stopped fences selling guns stolen from stores, trucks, and homes.

The most important result of this factfinding and enforcement effort has been the end of the myth that there is nothing that State and city officials, gun store owners, federal agents, and police can do to stop the illegal flow of guns into our inner cities and into young people's hands.

ATF continues to work with State and local law enforcement agencies to expand the tracing system, to facilitate tracing, and to deliver more analytical products to State and local agencies. Indeed, Treasury's primary focus is actions to provide the men and women on the front lines of law enforcement, including our State and local law enforcement partners, with the best possible tools to combat firearms violence.

The National Tracing Center now has information from over 1 million crime gun trace requests, with the yearly number of traces increasing from about 50,000 in 1993 to about 200,000 last year. Just last month, we launched Online LEAD, which allows investigators to access all this information within 24 hours of ATF adding new traces to the Firearms Tracing System. State and local investigators will be able to access this information through ATF field offices throughout the country.

Project LEAD can search crime gun data contributed from around the country, and make connections that investigators could not have made before. Joint task forces will be able to mount new enforcement initiatives, intercept straw purchases, stop corrupt gun dealers, and arrest firearms traffickers. This is preventive enforcement that interdicts illegally supplied guns before criminals can use them in violent crimes. It complements enforcement initiatives that target armed criminals.

Role of Gun Dealers. Because so many law enforcement agencies are now tracing all recovered firearms, we now know a great deal more about the role of retail gun stores--both gun dealers and pawnbrokers--in the availability of guns to criminals and juveniles. We have a much clearer picture of which retail outlets are associated with crime guns. It is important to remember that just because a gun is traced to a particular retail transaction does not mean that the dealer was associated with the supply of the gun to a prohibited person. However, crime gun traces provide an indicator of illegal trafficking that agents and inspectors can further investigate. This trafficking may involve straw purchasing by individuals or rings, or illegal dealing by the gun dealer itself.

While most gun dealers are not associated with crime guns, there are many hundreds that do constitute a source of supply to criminals and are causing serious problems. This is an important area of focus for federal, State and local law enforcement. In addition, we believe that the gun industry itself needs to take more action to address the problem of leakage from the legal to the illegal market in firearms. This leakage can be off the production line, during transportation of the guns, or from the retail outlets. At each step of the way, more precautions, more monitoring, and more intervention are needed.

Ballistics Imaging. A next step in our tracing capacity is ballistics imaging. Many gun crimes do not result in the recovery of a firearm. ATF and the FBI have both worked to develop ballistics imaging systems that assist in solving crimes and tracing guns when the gun itself is not recovered at the scene of a crime. Ballistics imaging works by recording the pattern of bullet casings into a database. The bullet casings from every semiautomatic weapon make a unique marking. If that marking is entered into the system, then bullets or casing recovered from a crime scene can be traced to the gun.

The story of a crime gun is often a story of many crimes -- multiple owners involved in multiple crimes. By combining the use of ballistics imaging and crime gun tracing, law enforcement officials can solve many more crimes than are now being solved. Over the next several years, we will be working hard to deploy these tools as widely as possible throughout the country for as many law enforcement agencies as possible.

Along with passing and implementing the 1994 gun legislation and developing new tools for law enforcement to use, the Administration has focused on vigorous, smarter and more community-based enforcement of the gun laws. Our enforcement strategy has four critical and interlocking components: first, prosecution and imprisonment of those who use a gun illegally; second, deterrence; third, illegal supply reduction; and fourth, prevention.

The intentional misuse of a firearm must receive swift, certain and severe punishment. To this end, Treasury and the Department of Justice have worked with State and local law enforcement to closely coordinate our enforcement efforts to ensure the most effective use of available sanctions. By bringing together our enforcement efforts, we set clear standards of behavior for violent offenders and potential violent offenders, heightening deterrence.

In addition to targeting illegal users of guns, we must focus efforts on illegal suppliers of guns. We must make it as difficult as possible for criminals, unauthorized juveniles, and other prohibited persons to get their hands on guns by shutting them out of the legal firearms market and closing down the illegal markets. To this mix, we must add prevention. An enforcement strategy aimed at illegal suppliers is becoming part of local programs that combine law enforcement with involvement by community institutions to help young people avoid or leave behind violent activity. When Boston put in place this type of strategy, there was a decrease of more than 60 percent in juvenile and youth homicide, and a reduction in weapon carrying. We are impressed by Boston's achievement. We are working hard on adopting enforcement strategies like Boston's that combine vigorous prosecution with measures to strengthen communities and police-community relations.

Smarter, collaborative law enforcement has highlighted the fact that law enforcement can make communities substantially safer. But current law does not allow us to do all that we could do to keep young people and others who should not have them from getting guns. Many guns are sold at gun shows and elsewhere where there are no background checks and no tracing records. This means that under-age buyers and felons can buy guns easily, and the gun sellers are not held accountable. Young people can easily take guns from homes where parents keep a loaded and unlocked handgun.

To begin addressing these problems, the President last spring proposed legislation to strengthen the gun laws. The legislation as adopted in Senate and House bills would close a number of loopholes and toughen penalties on illegal traffickers. It would also require that guns be sold with safety locks so that owners at least are presented with the option of securing them. And it would limit the importation of ammunition feeding devices used in semiautomatic assault weapons that contain more than 10 rounds. This gun legislation, which awaits action in Congress, will help reduce gun violence. We will continue to call on Congress to pass rational gun legislation.

It took the assassinations of Senator Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King to persuade Congress to pass the 1968 Gun Control Act. A terrible increase in youth gun deaths, and tragedy at several high schools, brought the issue back into national focus after a quarter century. We have succeeded in making guns a part of the national agenda. But community by community, and in national legislation, we have to keep working hard on new gun interdiction strategies, promoting comprehensive strategies. And, we have to propose, and win passage of, new laws that will reduce the easy availability of guns in our society.