Political Quotes

“I thank the chair for yielding and for all his hard work in working together with us to address the issue of gun crime in this country. As everyone knows, over the last several years especially, high- profile shootings and violent crime have caught the attention of Americans all across this country and sparked a debate about what should be done to reduce gang violence and gun crime in the United States. Well, the truth is, there is an answer and a proven solution that actually worked for many years when I was the sheriff in King County in Seattle, Washington. It is a program called Project Safe Neighborhoods. It was first the Safe Cities Initiative by the Clinton-Gore administration and then changed to Project Safe Neighborhoods under George Bush. Through strong partnerships, Federal, State, and local governments created local gun crime reduction task forces and form coalitions with other agencies, community groups, and citizens committed to reducing gun crime. Between 2001 and 2009, when data was collected on the program, cities that were first to implement the program achieved a significant decline in violent crime. We need to fund this program. The data and the statistics that were collected that show this is a proven solution was ignored by the previous administration. Despite the high rates of success for cities that have implemented the program, funding for the program has steadily decreased.…”