Content
| At Work in Congress |
| Keeping Americans Safe: |
Over
the past several years, the crime rate has decreased dramatically throughout
the United States. Yet in far too many communities, Americans do not
feel much safer. Children go to school afraid, people feel unsafe walking
in their neighborhoods at night, and parents carefully secure their homes.
Having run the Middlesex County district attorney
offices -- one of the 10 largest counties in the country -- I learned
firsthand that administering tough sentences is not sufficient to deal
with violent criminals. Making our communities safe requires enforcing
laws and punishing criminals, but it also requires addressing the root
causes of crime. We must also build strong communities, ensure that
our children are safe in their schools, focus on rehabilitating criminals,
and provide meaningful opportunities for all young people to contribute
to and succeed in society.
Senator Kerry believes that putting police officers on our streets is an
indispensable asset to our communities, to our families, and especially
to our children. Statistics reveal that more officers on the street help
to prevent crimes from occurring. Senator Kerry has been a strong supporter
of the Community Oriented Policing program (COPS) and offered the original
amendment that provided funding so that 100,000 police officers could be
placed in community policing assignments.
Senator Kerry is deeply troubled by the numbers of people - and particularly
the number of children - that are wounded or killed by gunfire each year
and he supports stricter gun control measures in order to prevent children
and adults from misusing any of the approximately 192 million firearms
currently in circulation in the United States. He believes that we need
to close the gun show loophole, which permits sales at gun shows without
a background check, require the provision of a child safety lock on all
handguns, and increase controls on assault weapons and handguns.
Greatly concerned by the numbers of children who are victims of handgun
violence every day, Senator Kerry authored the Gun Lock Consumer Protection
Act, which requires the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to formulate
minimum safety standards for gun safety locks and to ensure that only such
locks that meet the minimal standard are available for purchase by consumers.
The use of gun safety locks is increasing in the United States, but despite
the growing use of these locks, they are not subject to any minimal safety
standards. The CPSC has participated in the voluntary recall of hundreds
of thousands of locks over the past couple of years.
Senator Kerry believes that in order to deal with the problem of illegal
drugs in this country, efforts must be focused on keeping drugs out of
the country and our communities, as well as reducing demand for illegal
drugs. He supports aggressively targeting traffickers and dealers, and
at the same time, aggressively pursuing drug prevention and treatment programs.
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