Congress Takes Aim At Guns

Both the president and Congress have anti-crime proposals, some old and some new, but all given urgency by the April 20 high school shootings in Littleton, Colo.

Senate debate over how to stop kids from killing is turning into a legislative shootout over gun control.

"We know ultimately it's going to devolve into a gun fight," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told reporters as the Senate took up a $5 billion measure designed to crack down on violent juvenile crime.

CBS News White House Correspondent Bill Plante reports that Wednesday afternoon in the Rose Garden, Mr. Clinton will talk about the still-declining crime rate and, surrounded by police officers, he'll say he finished finding the money to hire the 100,000 new cops he promised back in 1992.

The president also will urge new efforts to punish and prevent juvenile crime, calling for the stricter gun laws he proposed two weeks ago. Those include a new waiting period for handgun purchases, a lifetime ban on gun ownership for juveniles convicted of violent crimes and background checks at gun shows.

On Capitol Hill, Republican and Democrats readied a raft of amendments to tweak or replace the bill, which Hatch introduced long before the April 20 killings in Littleton, Colo.

Hatch said that toughening penalties for gun violations by minors would act as a deterrent. Other Republicans, pointing to statistics showing a sharp decline in prosecutions for gun-related crimes, said enforcing current laws would be deterrent enough.

"Passing a law sounds good, but to really maximize our impact ... we've got to prosecute the laws we've got," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

"This is a bill that has been in the process for some two years," said Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. "It is an important issue to deal with. It is a difficult one to deal with. How do you deal with the growing problem of juvenile crime in this country?"

Democrats will try to amend the bill with new gun controls similar to those proposed by the president, though not even all Democrats believe that's the only answer.

"Some people say Littleton was the result of easy access to guns," said Sen. Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., Senate minority leader. "Others blame parents, the media, the courts, and the list goes on and on. But I think most of us suspect that there isn't one answer. The real answer is bigger and more complex than any one cause."

Hatch's bill would devote $1 billion annually for five years, including:

• $435 million for prevention programs.

• $450 million to states and localities to build detention centers, perform drug testing and improve record-keeping for young offenders.

• $75 million for grants to states to upgrade juvenile felony criminal record-keeping and to make those records available to a national database.

• $40 million for research o the effectiveness of juvenile delinquency prevention programs.

Under Hatch's bill, children 14 and older could be prosecuted under federal laws as adults for serious violent felonies and drug offenses. If convicted, these teens would be required to serve the maximum sentence.

In the House, Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde opens hearings on Thursday into the cultural causes of violence among kids, with some emphasis expected to be placed on violence in entertainment.

Republicans have focused heavily on the role Hollywood plays in the minds of children. During the Senate's weekly GOP policy lunch on Tuesday, senators were shown clips of The Basketball Diaries, a movie in which a student mows down his classmates while his friends laugh.