Bill Clinton: “Well, I think people are worried about--I think the most important thing on that is what happened, the shattering effect…”

“Well, I think people are worried about--I think the most important thing on that is what happened, the shattering effect that Littleton had. In terms of what happened to me in the impeachment issue, I did what I could by telling the American people what I was going to do, that I was going to go back to work being the best President I could be, and I was going to go back to work to try to repair my family life. I have worked very hard for a year to do that, and the public, at the time, had a strong response to that. That's all I can do, and that's what I have done. I've done that very faithfully. So I don't think that's what's going on. I think people are worried when they see the fabric of life still under great strain in spite of the fact that we have quite a large amount of prosperity. And I think what we all have to do is to ask ourselves: What can we do to reinforce the ability of families to raise their children, to teach them right from wrong, to increase the chances that they'll be able to live strong, whole lives? And I believe, therefore, that there is, in that sense, a moral component to the debate we're having over guns. I mean, basically, we know--let me just give you one example. We know from the experience of the Brady bill that if we do background checks, thousands of people--at gun shows--thousands of people who shouldn't buy guns won't get them. Now we know that. I think that's a positive moral value. The people on the other side essentially say, ``Yeah, but we don't want to be inconvenienced.'' And when people see inconvenienced elevated over the life of a child in this context, I think that causes them problems. We know that in the case of the Patients' Bill of Rights, that people think it's a moral issue if they need to see a specialist or they need--if they get hurt in an accident and they can't go to the nearest emergency room. They know that. And when they see, in effect, someone else's convenience elevated over that, I think that's a problem for them. So I think that there are lots--this is a complicated thing. But my own view of that is, what we have to do is not pretend that the Government can solve all the moral questions, not evade what people have to do personally in their own lives with their own families, but neither can we take the dodge that the Government has no responsibility. That's why I tried so hard after that Littleton incident. That's why I'm so disappointed in what Congress did in the House on this gun issue, because I tried so hard after that Littleton incident not to play politics, not to point the finger at anybody, not to say, ``Oh well, it's this, that, or the other thing.'' You know, I went to Hollywood, I challenged the entertainment community, even though they had done far more to try to move the ball forward than anybody in the gun community until the gun manufacturers started helping, and they've done a good job, too, a lot of them. I still believe that people think that there is too much ``everybody for himself,'' and if people can get away with what they do because of their position, they'll do it. And I think what I tried to do was to acknowledge it to whatever extent I had done, that it was dead wrong, and I was going to spend the rest of my life trying to rectify that, which is all anybody can do. And I think most people accept that. They'd rather have somebody do that than go around trying to give a lot of speeches about how good they are and then open the door for the gun lobby to run the Congress. So you'll just have to make up your own mind about that. But I think that--what I think is important is that we stop trying to figure out how to make points against one another by saying, ``I'm better than you are.'' You know, I was raised in a family that would have given me a whipping if I had done that as a boy. I was raised to believe that we were suppose to try to be humble in our personal search but aggressive in trying to help our neighbors. That's the religious tradition I was raised in. Now, I get the feeling that people say, ``Well, what we should do is be arrogant about how good we are, and the heck with our neighbors.'' I don't agree with that. I think we'd be better off with the former tradition, and I think it has deeper roots in American life and is more consistent with what we should be doing. George [George Condon, Copley News Service]. Lessons From Kosovo and Bosnia”