President Blasts Ruling on Firearms : Judiciary: Clinton, who is 'terribly disappointed' by high court's decision to strike down law banning guns near schools, vows to find a way around it.

President Blasts Ruling on Firearms : Judiciary: Clinton, who is ‘terribly disappointed’ by high court’s decision to strike down law banning guns near schools, vows to find a way around it.

By JOHN M. BRODER

April 30, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON — President Clinton, in an unusual breach of constitutional etiquette, on Saturday criticized the Supreme Court for its decision this week to strike down a law banning possession of a gun near a school.

Clinton said he was “terribly disappointed” by the ruling, which was delivered Wednesday by a court sharply split along ideological lines.

In a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that the “gun-free school zone law” of 1990 was an unconstitutional infringement on state power by the federal government. Justices said school safety is a purely local concern that is beyond the authority of Congress to regulate.

“This Supreme Court decision could condemn more of our children to going to schools where there are guns,” Clinton said in his weekly radio address. “And our job is to help our children learn everything they need to get ahead in safety, not to send them to school and put them in harm’s way.”

It is unusual, although not unprecedented, for a President to criticize the independent Supreme Court. Clinton aides said the President feels strongly about guns in schools and children’s issues, and thus felt compelled to speak out about the decision and vow to find a way around it.

Clinton said one way to deal with the court’s objections to the 1990 law is to specifically tie federal financing to efforts to keep guns away from schools. The courts have in the past found such uses of the federal power of the purse to be constitutional.

Clinton said he has directed U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to report to him within a week on how to redraft the law to address the court’s concerns.

“I want the action to be constitutional, but I am determined to keep guns away from schools,” Clinton said of his order to find a way to ban guns from school zones nationwide. “We must reverse the practical impact of the court’s decision.”

A White House official said Clinton’s remarks were not intended as criticism of the court’s decision, but rather expressed his determination to find a way to keep guns out of the hands of schoolchildren.

“This doesn’t come out of nowhere,” said the aide, who works on education and violence issues at the White House. “He has spoken on it frequently and passed landmark anti-gun legislation. He wants to put the government’s rhetorical and financial resources behind the cause of violence-free schools.”

The sponsor of the 1990 law, Democratic Sen. Herbert Kohl of Wisconsin, has already promised to reintroduce the bill in a form designed to withstand judicial scrutiny.

In its opinion in the United States vs. Lopez case, the court said Congress overstepped its bounds by declaring schoolyard security a matter of federal concern under the commerce clause of the Constitution.

The Administration and the court minority argued that the federal government has the right to regulate firearms because most guns travel in interstate commerce. They also contended that the commerce clause applies because school safety affects the quality of education and its work force, which in turn affects economic competitiveness.

But the court’s conservative majority disagreed, saying that Congress had gone too far. Possessing a gun in a school zone “is in no sense an economic activity that might, through repetition elsewhere, have . . . a substantial effect on interstate commerce,” the majority ruling said.

To bolster its attack on the court ruling, the White House issued a fact sheet citing a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that said nearly one in 25 pupils missed a day of school because they felt unsafe. The report also said that more than one in 10 students carried a weapon on school property in the 30 days before the survey was conducted.

Clinton said in his radio address that the study identified 105 violent school-related deaths in just the last two years.

“This is certainly a national crisis and we must have a national effort to fight it,” Clinton concluded. “We need a seamless web of safety that keeps guns out of the hands of our children and out of our schools.”