Bill Clinton: “I don't know. You know, I don't think--all those kids, the reason they know that and the only reason they know that is…”

“I don't know. You know, I don't think--all those kids, the reason they know that and the only reason they know that is that since I've been President, we instituted a zero tolerance for guns in schools, so the kids were sent home if they had the guns. Now, it's up to the local prosecutors to decide whether to prosecute them. But you should know that the general argument that prosecutions are down is simply not true. And Federal prosecutions are up by 30 percent, of serious crimes; and overall gun prosecutions, State and Federal, are up. And gun-related crimes are down. This is a special problem--problems of violence against children by guns is a special problem that, in my view, you can make the prosecution argument. We ought to make it harder to get guns. We ought to deal with the culture, and we ought to deal with the schools and the communities and help the parents and the kids do more. [A student asked the President why it was not mandatory to have metal detectors and police in every school.]”