While overall crime rates are down, gun violence still devastates too many American families and communities. Over the past seven years, President Clinton and Vice President Gore have pursued a series of common-sense measures to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and children.

Those measures have included: putting 100,000 new police on our streets, banning assault weapons and passing the Brady Bill, which itself has prevented nearly half a million felons, fugitives and domestic abusers from buying guns. This strategy has helped lead to a 35 percent decline in gun crime since 1993.

The President believes we need to build on this progress. That is why the President will urge Congress to act on common-sense gun legislation that stalled in the Congress last year. The bill would keep guns out of the hands of criminals and children by, among other things, closing the gun show loophole (requiring background checks and records at gun shows) and requiring child safety locks for handguns.

And that is why the President proposed a new National Gun Enforcement Initiative - to crack down on violent criminals who use guns and illegal gun traffickers.