President Clinton decries Michigan school shooting

MIAMI -- Seizing on a first-grade shooting that killed a 6-year-old girl, President Clinton said Tuesday "we just don't have any excuses" for failing to require child safety locks on guns and background checks on gun show purchases.

Expressing outrage that a child could get a gun, Clinton said Americans should demand that stricter gun controls be an issue in the presidential campaign.

"The accidental gun death rate of children in America is nine times higher than that in the other 25 biggest countries combined," Clinton said. "Combined," he repeated to emphasize the numbers. "So we know what to do. We just don't have any excuses."

The president spoke on a campaign fund-raising foray in Florida that was expected to net $1.3 million, most of it for the Democratic National Committee. Talking with reporters after a luncheon at an oceanfront home in West Palm Beach, the president called for more research on guns that could be fired only by adult owners.

Earlier in Michigan, a 6-year-old boy brought a handgun to Buell Elementary School in Mount Morris Township and shot a 6-year-old classmate. She died a half hour later. The president had planned to focus on Medicare in his remarks but shifted to the shooting.

"Today is a day for grieving and regret, sympathy and support for the family and the community and the other kids and the people in that school," Clinton said. "This must be an agony for all of them."

Clinton rhetorically asked whether his stand on guns was liberal or conservative. "The NRA crowd says that's liberal," he said. "I think that I'm trying to conserve life. I think it's conservative in the best sense. And I think it's the right thing to do."

The president noted it has been about a year since a massacre at Colorado's Columbine High School left 12 students and a teacher dead, as well as the two student gunmen.

"I'm still waiting for Congress to close the gun show loophole. To stop the importation of these large capacity ammunition clips and to require child safety locks on guns," the president said.

Referring to the Michigan shooting, Clinton said, "The child was 6 years old. How'd that child get that gun? Why could the child fire the gun? If we have technology today to put in these child safety locks, why don't we do it?"

"Is that going to be a subject of this election or not? You have to decide that," the president said. He said he did not know the facts of the shooting and "I don't want to prejudge it or condemn anyone."

His appearances included a $10,000-a-person luncheon in West Palm Beach featuring stone crabs and rack of lamb and a $25,000-a-couple dinner in Miami Beach offering beef tenderloin, stuffed chicken breast and yellow fin tuna. The president also was the star of a $250,000 fund-raiser for state Rep. Elaine Bloom, who is trying to win the congressional seat of Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fla.

The president spoke of his oft-repeated theme that America's booming economy presents a unique opportunity to address the nation's problems.

"What do you want? What are we to do with this enormous amount of prosperity, this historic moment when we can make peace?" the president said.

"Very often democracies mishandle good times because people are under the illusion that it's just sort of an automatic and it goes on forever," he said.

He urged attention to problems in education and the environment, health care, trade and foreign policy.