WASHINGTON, DC - A bipartisan group of more than 80 mayors and police chiefs from around the nation joined Wellington E. Webb, President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington today to urge Congress to pass sensible gun safety reform measures.

President Clinton Tells Mayors, "You've Got to Walk The Beat"

Mayors and police chiefs from every region of the country were on hand to stand with President Clinton this morning as he again urged Congress to act quickly in passing meaningful gun safety legislation. "We need legislation that will strengthen our current gun laws, not weaken them," Clinton said in a speech at the White House, flanked by forty or more chiefs of police, and speaking to an audience of mayors and county officials. "Working together, we have created, I believe, all across the country, across party lines and jurisdictional lines a new consensus on how to fight crime and violence on what works. But, as Mayor Webb said [in an earlier address], we have been reminded in recent months from Los Angeles to Littleton, to Atlanta, to what happened in Illinois and Indiana, gun violence is still too much a part of America's life."

President Clinton also announced $147 million in federal community policing grants to help hire 1,600 new police officers nationwide, part of a continuing Administration push to provide federal funds for more local police officers, and a $15 million federal government program to buy back guns in urban areas. President Clinton said that the gun buyback program was designed to help mostly inner-city neighborhoods take guns out of circulation. The program will give local police departments up to $500,000 to buy guns in and around public housing projects for a "suggested price" of $50. All guns that are obtained through the program will be destroyed, the White House said. The program is modeled after similar buyback plans already in place in several cities, including Washington.

"It is not just through crime that guns lead to tragedy," he said. Clinton said accidental shooting deaths for children under 15 in the United States are nine times higher than the combined total of such deaths in the world's other 25 major industrialized nations.

A congressional conference committee soon will take up conflicting House and Senate juvenile crime legislation, passed in the wake of a series of school shootings and other gun incidents over the past few months. The USCM supports key provisions of the Senate bill, including:

• requiring background checks to be conducted at all gun show events prior to approving gun sales,
• closing loopholes that permit importation of high-capacity ammunition clips and allow teens to legally possess assault weapons, and
• requiring that child safety locks be sold with handguns.

In an exclusive with USA Today, The Conference today released a survey which documented least 556 deaths in 44 cities in gun-related incidents from April 20, when 12 students and a teacher were shot to death at the high school in Littleton (CO), through September 1st.

The survey is the result of requests by the Conference of Mayors to hundreds of its members to track the statistics. A total of 68 cities responded. Among the findings:

• 24 cities had no gun-related deaths.
• 61 of the dead were 18 or younger.
• Seven deaths were accidental.

The cities that responded ranged in size from Detroit, with a population of about 1 million, to Superior (WI), with a population of 27,500.

In an interview with USA Today, Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, President of the Conference of Mayors, said the number of deaths would be "much more astronomical" had the nation's largest cities participated. "In effect, what we are doing is building a Vietnam Wall with these (victims') names. We're adding to it every day. . .No one in this country is dying in a drive-by knifing or drive-by fight. They've been dying in drive-by shootings. The more guns you have, the more people die ," Webb said.

Following the White House event, a delegation of inter-faith leaders representing the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths gathered with the Mayors and Police Chiefs for a rally on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to call national attention to the gun safety issue. Dozens of members Congress stood with the Mayors, including Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (SD) and gun safety champion Senator Ted Kennedy (MA).