We're fighting with a strategy that is coordinated and unrelenting, that does rely upon national, state and local prosecutors and politicians and, above all, on citizens working with us. Today, President Clinton is announcing a seventeen city crackdown on crime gun traffickers, specifically targeted at those who peddle their arms to kids.
Firearms violence is a scourge on our society.
Homicides committed by young people with firearms have nearly tripled since 1985, and other types of gun-related violence have been on the rise. Too many guns are in the hands of our nation's children. Working in cooperation with state and local law enforcement in unprecedented fashion, federal law enforcement has successfully disrupted numerous illicit gun markets across the country over the last three years. This new initiative will strengthen those ongoing efforts to clamp down on these illegal markets, especially those that provide crime guns to kids. In these seventeen cities, for the first time, every time a gun is used in a crime and seized by law enforcement, it will be tracked through a national tracing system.