18-year-old, walk in, a 20-year-old, and buy an ar-15. that s why back in 1994, i took on the nra and passed the assault weapons ban. for ten years, mass shootings were down. ten years in a row since i passed that legislation in 1994 as a senator. but in 2004, republicans let that ban expire. what happened? mass shootings in america tripled. tripled. it s time to ban these. it s time to ban these weapons. we did it before. we can do it again. [ applause ] time to hold every elected official s feet to the fire and ask them are you for banning assault weapons, yes or no? ask them. if the answer is no, vote against them. look, i m proud that after seven years, we finally have a senate confirmed director of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms responsible for any gun crimes. for seven years, the other team would not let us appoint anyone to that job. incredibly important job, to help local law enforcement, federal law enforcement. identify the ballistics. a whole range of things. for s
crime prevention programs that help keep young people from getting in trouble in the first place. under my plan, communities can provide after school and summer job programs. they can get paid for it. more access to mental health and drug counseling. more social workers and housing to keep people off the streets instead of when they get out of jail, they get $25 and a bus ticket and end up under the same bridge that they re under before. this will help prevent crime, get young people to pick up paychecks instead of a pistol. the same time, we need to help people getting out of prison successfully re-enter society so they don t get in trouble again. if you served your time, you shouldn t be deprived of being able to if you served it, you shont be deprived of being able to get a pell grant to go to
cities and municipalities, and one of the things we urged them to do is to use that money to beef up law enforcement, to do community violence intervention, to think out the box in terms of after school programs, summer job programs, that we could fight crime in a comp henrehens manner. today the president is going to lay out what cities are doing where it s working and things he s encouraging people to do with the $10 million that s out there to make communities safer. there s billions more going to these cities and states throughout the year, and it s flex money. the white house can t tell them what to do with it. this is only encouraging the cities and states to do it. if the white house is asking congress for billions more on covid, you have covid money that s approved, why not urge the cities and states to focus on covid mitigation with that money? well, part of the american rescue plan, we knew we wanted to make communities safer and every community should be a safe
we ve heard politicians say over and over again over the years that they re serious about combatting gun violence only for the american people to see little change actually happen in washington. tell any viewers who might be skeptical why they should believe this time is going to be different. because most of the time when you hear politicians talk about it, they re only talking about the end of a system where the police are involved or a prosecutor is involved. the unique thing about this proposal and why the biden plan, i think, is the right solution is that it looks at the root cause and it offers different solutions in terms of community violence intervention, substance abuse, mental health, after school programs, summer job programs, using actual community violence interrupters that will actually help diffuse problems before they ever happen. and president biden has never been shy about saying that he thinks we need more police in our communities, but they should be out of their
i mean, the british tabloids have been having these problems for a long time. maybe it s harder now. they can t tap phones as much as they used to. but, you know, i think this kind of back and forth, we are seeing celebrities step up more than they used to, right? we re seeing they had to ignore it, they ll get a lot of negative attention if they push back a lot on this stuff but now it seems to be what you re supposed to do is turn and say this is not that said, everything george clooney does is absolutely correct. what is novel to me is britain has much stronger libel laws than the u.s. right. in the u.s. basically you can publish something and say honestly i thought it was true. that is a good defense. in britain you have to prove you were right. somehow they have a much more irresponsible press than we do on these sorts of celebrity gossip issues. they get sued and sometimes lose but it sells so many papers i guess it s worth it. but the last question i asked, is this