(applause). >> remember this so years later, some years ago i got this award, congressional -- freedom award, i got it from the then-speaker of the house, a guy named dick army. i went back there, i went into his office and in walks nancy pelosi, she says mr. leader, i

believe this is the first time i've been in your office. i said, it takes joe marshal to bring democrats and republicans together. here she is. >> thank you very much, joe. ordinarily i wouldn't mind hearing joe marshal say some nice things that are on this piece of paper but the fact is we've come to hear from all of you. it's an honor to be here at the omega boy's club. it started right about the time i went to congress, about 26 years ago, over 25 years ago. joe marshal is way up there on mount olympus, one of the gods, one of the real people who does the most important work, help young people reach their aspirations, their fulfillment to reduce the violence in the communities in which they live. so joe marshal, thank you for your on-going and well recognized nationally and locally and every way globally,

really, for the effectiveness of your leadership. thank you, joe marshal, for your hospitality and for your friendship and most of all for your leadership for america's children. just a few weeks ago and actually one week ago, the president took his and all of us who are engaged in any aspect of public life take an oath to protect and defend. protect and defense. that's the oath we take, to protect and defend the constitution, the constitution and all the rights contained therein, the right to assemble, the right to worship, the right to be in our country. prrp we have really got to do more. i think what we saw in new town drove home how urgent and necessary it is for us to act. no more words, we need

action. but this has gone on in cities across america and places across america every single day. >> amen. >> joe, amos, reverend brown, i am never going to a child care center, day care center in san francisco a number of years ago and we were playing, little 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds and a balloon popped and one of the children said, drop. drop. imagine that a little child would think that. what does that say about the community and our need to do more to honor that oath to proat the -- protect and defend. this is it. we have to measure up. measure up. and we cannot accept anything less than success. the president has said he would give it his all. the vice president has called upon you as intellectual resource and social innovators to get

your suggestions about how we should go forward, how we should proceed. but proceed we must and succeed we must. our purpose today is to hear from you, as many as as we can, and from the leadership of our city, i am honored to welcome the chair of our house task force on gun violence protection, my colleague, congressman mike thompson. i will say later about him but i wanted you it hear from him. i was so proud the mayor is here and we salute him for his leadership and his effectiveness and his action on this very important issue. the police chief is here, we thank the chief for your leadership as well and look forward to hearing from you and of course i have the privilege,

i have the privilege of sharing representation of san francisco with jackie and will share her experience as a member of the task force, as a member of congress. so we all have, the president has been great, he's put by executive order what he can do, we have the most effective backgrounds here, we have to address the mental health issues but 99 percent of people with mental problems are more likely to be a victim of violence than to be a perpetrator of violence. ak 47's or high capacity, as mr. thompson tends to say, assault magazines, these high capacity

weaponry to cause more damage to do so in a way that really does help us protect and defend. i'll have more to say in this limited amount of say so i am going to yield with great respect it my colleague who has spoken out on this so mag 95 sently in the congress of the united states and is a respected voice on the subject, congress woman jackie spears. >> thank you for your leadership and your powerful comments this afternoon and dr. marshal for hosting us to my great colleague and friend and sharer of the chairmanship of the task force who is walking a very delicate line but doing so very ably and effectively, to our great mayor of our great city, thank you and to our great police chief who i really enjoy the opportunity to work with. i am pleased to be here. i am

honored to be here. i tell you that this is personal for me, it's also professional for me. i realized after new town that in many ways i had failed. i had failed to do my part. we all failed to do our part when there is yet another homicide that takes place. and it's no longer good enough to say, well, that's someone else's problem. it's really our collective problem. and i think the tragedy, the unspeakable tragedy that occurred in new town, has awakened in americans across this great country that we have not -- we have to do so much more; that we have allowed the laws in this country to erode, a menace to have taken place in

the (inaudible) congress have taken authority away from organizations like the cdc to do studies, taken away the authority of the atf to do its job to go after the bad gun dealers, only 1 percent of them, but they are responsible for 57 percent of the crime guns in this country, so much that has to be done. now last saturday we had a gun buy back in san mateo county. with we today is captain sam gallagher. if you want to talk to him about the success of that buy back, i'm sure he will be happy to accommodate. it opened at 10 am, there were people lining up at 8 am. they waited in line from 10 am to

3pm to turn in their guns. there were more than 680 guns turned over, 338 handguns, 371 long guns, 24 assault weapons. one of the assault weapons that was turned over was called a street sweeper. i saw a street sweeper in action today. it is devastating what that instrumentality can do. it mows down people. that was collected in a county that has the second lowest crime rate in the state. so i, for one, think there is much, much more we must do to address this issue and i think the american people are ready to do it. thank you.

(applause). >> and this is truly one of those things, none of the people need any -- next we hear from our mayor. when we have some violence in the bayview between asians and blacks mayor lee met with me on a weekly basis, so i know he wants to do -- i saw it first hand up close and personal something else that he does to end the violence that goes on. >> thank you, joe. thank you very much, congress woman pelosi for being here and congressman thompson, both of you taking such swift action to have a dialogue. it's appreciated, and congress woman spear for just your own personal experience and what you are doing now. we're really grateful. i'm just one of many mayors. i want you to know that being part of the u.s. conference of mayors i had a lot of

discussions with other mayors who are faced with tremendous challenges in their cities and if i've learned anything in the last couple of years being both interim mayor and the new mayor and many of you know i'm not a lifelong politician so i learned the politics of this job somewhat on the job. but one of the things i do know at heart is that we all struggle with this and we know it can never be an answer only that the police can solve or law enforcement in general. that we quickly learn that mental health, that preventing ammunition and guns from getting on the street, that education, job training, paying attention to housing, poverty, isolation, all of those elements lead to the uptick in violence. that's actually quite a strong lesson for all of us mayors to

learn as we ask each other for help in solving this. and i want to thank all of you in this audience from adult provaition, juvie probation, our interfaith council, community-based organizations, for helping me carve what we can do in this city. as many of you know i've been a champion for jobs and i truly believe that job creation and better economics is going to be a big answer. but it isn't the only answer because i quickly realized i can't give a dead kid a job in this city. there is no answer for that. we've got to find better answers for people who are confronted with decisions they have to make to not take the violent road for that decision. and it starts early and many of you reminded me, start now, mayor, start investing in education. start investing in community-based

ways in which we can reduce the attitude that violence can resolve something. and then make sure we work with our health departments and our medical experts to get to the things that people can't control among themselves. these are all things that i'm learning quickly and i asked for help and i'm getting it and that no mayor of any city should ever faced with these kinds of gun violence and so forth should stop asking for help because the answers will come forward with everybody participating and everybody contributing in all these aspects. many of you know that i struggled with the uptick in gun violence this past summer. the chief and i were on the telephone and on the texting every morning finding out which of our children died the previous night. and it isn't a good thing, it isn't good to

wake up to this. you know that. many of you who work in this community know that that is not what you want to either wake up to or go into the night on. and so i've always tried to picture who that youth was and what he or she may have been had they had a chance to get past this and that then i have to go over in my head, have i done everything that i could as a mayor? and this is something where i think the national dialogue has to take us. it's not about so much politics, although there's a heavy dose of that. all of us in addition to what happened at sandy hook or what happens every single day we're reminded about, have to take this personally. we have to personalize this for ourselves. if it means even picturing our own kids walking down third street or tennessee street or

in chinatown or in the mission, what can they be confronted with? how can we improve conditions for this not to happen? so all of us have to make sure that when it comes to the national and the regional and the local discussion about guns and about ammunition that we've got to make this personal to ourselves. we've got to really talk to everybody about this so that we can keep pushing for the reforms, getting these automatic weapons and munitions off our streets. there is no place for that. there is no place for these kinds of weapons to be on our streets. at the same time recommitting ourselves to the things that we do have control over, that we must do. the local gun buy backs and joe, again, thank you for you and omega boys club working with police and all the other law enforcements to get the gun buy backs now in planning now an additional 4 events, 4 gun buy back events

to try to take them out of our public housing, out of our communities, our streets, doing the best we can to prevent this from happening. as a mayor i'm going to continue speaking out with representative pelosi and congressman thompson and senator feinstein and guess what, whatever we do locally, when i work with melia cohen making illegal hollow point munitions that have no place in our society here, we know that if the next county over doesn't do the same thing or the next region, it will come in very easily. we have to work locally, regionally and nationally. so as we do these things i'm going to continue talking about the support, snore feinstein's national support for the assault weapons ban she had in

the 90's that (inaudible) in 2004, it's going to be aupb uphill fight as president obama has reminded us, but we have to keep talking about it. we have to keep the pictures of our youth in front of us in everything that we do. so this is what i am willing to do and again continue asking everybody for help in the city because the more i do that, the more of the graciousness of our community comes out because this is not something that just law enforcement can do, it's got to be our whole society acting together. thank you. (applause). >> i will take this opportunity to present our chief who has been working very closely with me and reminding me of both the do's and the don't's, but also working in strong collaboration and i'm glad that he's helping me head up, increase in officers but also the increase in training

our residents to work with the police officers and work together in collaboration, chief grayson. >> i know we want to get to the questions but i wanted to thank leader pelosi and congressman thompson for your leadership on this and of course our own mayor and dr. joe, one of our own police commissioners, for hosting. violence from semiautomatic rifles is no stranger to san francisco. everybody is talking that 18 years ago is the last time the 49ers won the superbowl but also it was when jim gelf was killed with a national 223 semi auto when he yelled out -- now this is the amazing part, this is the capacity of this gun, he held off 120 police officers for half an hour, firing over 500 rounds before we were able to neutralize him.

just a few blocks from here was murdered with an ak 47 and just in the fall chief zefferman of juvenile probation took on a gang member bound to do homicide, those officers with a mini mac-10 pistol and now he's gone. there were 45 homicides last year in san francisco by gun fire. 25 percent of those happened right here in the bayview district and that's an annual phenomenon. none of this is worse than what happened in new town. i was in washington yesterday and we heard from the city chiefs more detail than i wanted to know about that will probably come out in time, but if there was anybody who should

not have a weapon it was that kid, who wasn't actually a kid, he was 29 years old. if we can just go with president obama's recommendations, senator feinstein asking for the assault weapons ban again, i think it's critical that some of the recommendations of the major city police chiefs in this whole country are to impose legislation that would require states to recognize any and all concealed carry permits, that sounds far-fetched but it made it to the floor and made it last year. in arizona you can walk around like a western cowboy with your gun on your hip, oppose legislation that furlts erodes atf authority, require unlicensed private pack ground dealers to do background checks at gun shows, reinstate the assault weapons ban and impose penalties for illegal guns and ban internet sales, require all

firearm sales to be person to person with licensing of all ammo vendors. we would also like to see a couple of the provisions that went into law in new york, anyone who contemplates use of a fire in any criminal way has to be roerted by a therapist. the person who keeps the house that that person lives in wouldn't be allowed to have a gun in that home, which would have kept guns out of the hands of adam lanta and also there's a provision that would take into account the person in new york who shot the fire fighters, if you shot a first responder there would be an extra enhancement. obviously i could go on and on and the leadership is so much appreciated by law enforcement in this country i can't begin to say. (applause). >> thanks very much, chief.

the mayor and the chief have mentioned the tremendous leadership of senator feinstein. i told her of this meeting today, she is in washington, the judiciary committee had its own meeting this morning, but she sends her resolved. she's determined and you know when diane is determined. (applause). >> supervisor cohen, leadership, we chatted with her yet and she talked about violence in the community and what that means to children who have to experience it, even if you are not personally apparently injured but that they are traumatickly injured and we thank melia for her leadership as well. now we come to the part of the program that goes to the core of the matter. the mayor is against illegal guns and that

initiative, which is a national and very strong initiative, the chief talks about being part of the police chiefs who spoke from a congressional perspective, joe has worked with the vice president on this subject. all of our focus in the house and the leadership of congressman mike thompson, a gun owner, a hunter, a vietnam vet, a wounded vietnam vet, a person who understands these issues in a very, very important way but i won't talk about how he understands it, let him tell us. we thank you for your leadership and your courage in undertaking this as you meet with us today. thank you. (applause). >>. >> thank you very much, speaker pelosi, for all you have done and the leadership you have shown in making sure we are able to address these very serious issues. all the

speakers spoke eloquently about how important this is and leader pelosi just stepped right to the forefront on this and i appreciate that. i appreciate your leadership and appreciate your invitation down here. as i said the other night, i think i appreciate you appointing me to the task force and also thanks to all of you for being here. it's incredibly important that folks come out in every community and make their voices known, share wuls the ideas that you might have and ways we can figure out how to minimize gun violence and how to make our areas safer. a few weeks ago i held a series of town hall meetings in my district very similar to this forum, and heard from folks at home ideas that they had and there were some pretty good ideas if you could clear the ends of the people who want to take all the guns versus the people who didn't want any restrictions.

in the middle, the reasonable responsible people in the middle had some good ideas and they spoke up forcefully in support of some of the things we have to do in order to have a comprehensive solution to this very, very serious problem. and that's what i hope happens today, that we hear some good ideas. as the speaker stated, i'm a gun owner. i've been a gun owner for as long as i can remember. i'm a hunter, i've hunted all of my life. and i also believe strongly in the second amendment, that individuals have a right to own a firearm. and i'm not interested in giving up my guns and i wouldn't ask any other law-abiding responsible citizen to give up their guns. but it's more than what i believe in, it's the law. and the u.s. supreme court just ruled in the hiller decision that individuals do have a right to own firearms and we need to

recognize that right up front. but at the same time i'm a father and i'm a grand father and i want to make sure that my kids and their kids and their kids grow up in a safe community, are able to go to school in a safe school and they are able to work and recreate in safe areas. and i know we can do boat. we can address this in a responsible way where we make our communities safer, we make the individuals in our communities safer and we still protect a lawful individual's right to own a firearm. as the chair of this task force i'm working with my colleagues and outside experts from every imaginable walk of life to make sure that we can do this, that we can reduce gun violence with full respect for the second amendment. i've met with everybody. i've met with democrats, i've met with republicans, i've met with gun

rights advocates, i've met with gun control advocates, mental health, educators, educational administrators, video game producers, movie industry, hunting and sportsman's groups, law enforcement, the vice president and as i mentioned even folks throughout my community, my town hall meetings turned out about 300 people in each one of them. so it's something that really what do you say gets the juices flowing. people are interested in this subject. the task force in washington has already held a series of hearings. we had a hearing on juvenile justice and ideas that our colleague, bobby scott from virginia, who has been a long leader in the area of juvenile justice, to talk about some of his concerns and some of the ideas he has. we had a hearing on mental health issues which another one of our task force issues, a

california task force member, grace natalitano from sonoma county, they have an early intervention program. they trained community volunteers, they trained school interns and they are very, very active and it's been very productive. we had law enforcement, we had hunters, we had one hunter who came from the other side of the political spectrum who was invited by our colleague, a florida contractor who made all of his money or a lot of his money building schools and told us not only how ridiculous it is to suggest that you arm every school teacher, it's just not going to work in a school, but he also said he had 150 guns and has hunted all around

the world. but he believed there were some things we can do that responsible reasonable gun owners believed in, like universal background checks, like an end to these assault magazines, 30 shots at a time. he said of his 150 guns, wasn't a single one that held more than 4 bullets. and we also heard terrible tales from victims and the families of victims which just drives home the point that we have to do something. now is the time to do something. just by the number of communities of interest that i talked about, education, law enforcement, mental health, we know that this is a very, very complex issue and it's got a lot of moving parts. and it's going to take a lot of moving parts and a very comprehensive solution to minimize gun violence and to make our communities safer and that's why i think everybody needs to be at the ta