Seeking to enhance his claim to law-and-order issues, President Clinton traveled Friday to gang-scarred west Chicago to demand a ban on any handgun ammunition able to pierce bulletproof vests or other body armor.

Standing on ground recently stained with the blood of fallen police officers, Clinton told an audience in the Austin neighborhood that “clever people” have figured out ways to make powerful ammunition that circumvents current laws to ban “cop killer” handgun ammunition.

But “if a bullet can rip through a bulletproof vest like a knife through hot butter, then it ought to be history,” Clinton said. “We should ban it.”

The President’s campaign-like appearance came at a time when he is talking about anti-crime issues to strengthen his hold on the political middle and to preempt the attempts of his GOP presidential rivals. This month, in a striking break with tradition, the White House is spending $2.4 million to televise two campaign-style advertisements that emphasize Clinton’s anti-crime credentials to audiences in California and other key electoral states.


Clinton appeared behind a brown-brick police precinct headquarters, only steps from the spot where a rookie policeman was killed March 5 in a gun battle with a teen-age gang.

Officer Daniel Doffyn, wearing a bulletproof vest and trying to apprehend one gang member, was hit repeatedly in the neck by bullets from another teen-ager’s TEC-9 assault weapon. Another officer was badly wounded in the same shootout.

No manufacturer is now producing the kind of handgun ammunition that the law is designed to prohibit, officials acknowledged. But they asserted that history suggests there is every reason to believe manufacturers eventually will make such ammunition unless Congress acts to prevent it.

Current laws on “cop killer” bullets outlaw ammunition made of certain materials or having other specifications. But federal officials said that such “specification standards” are not sufficient, now that manufacturers are finding ways to make ammunition from other, more commonly found materials. As a result, they said, new standards, based on bullet performance, are needed.


“We’re trying to think ahead,” said Ronald K. Noble, Treasury undersecretary for enforcement, noting that manufacturers already have tried to find loopholes in the law banning “cop killer” ammunition by varying the design of their products.

Legislation drafted by the Clinton Administration calls on the Treasury secretary to try to develop performance standards that would ban any ammunition capable of piercing body armor.

Gun-control opponents are likely to fight the effort. They have argued that it will not be possible to develop standards that are uniform and clear.

A National Rifle Assn. spokesman said that there is no need to supplement the ban on “cop killer” bullets that has been in effect since 1986. Tom Wyld said that the ban “works flawlessly” and noted that FBI reports indicate no police officer has been killed since 1986 with a bullet capable of piercing protective armor.


Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) sought in June to amend the then-pending anti-terrorism legislation to extend the ban on armor-piercing ammunition to cover any product that could pierce body armor. His amendment initially passed a House Judiciary subcommittee on a 16-14 vote but stalled when two GOP members switched their position.

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Clinton also faces challenges from congressional Republicans to the 1994 ban on certain assault weapons that he backed and to his plans to have the federal government help fund the hiring of 100,000 additional police officers across the nation.

The Friday event, sponsored by the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, was arranged to underscore the toll inflicted by guns.


Michael Robbins, a Chicago police officer and a veteran of both the Vietnam and the Persian Gulf wars, spoke before the President. Robbins had been shot 11 times in a gun battle while serving as a policeman.

“Never in the world did I ever think anything like this would happen to me,” Robbins said. He told the audience that he had become a gun-control volunteer because of his anger at the NRA’s anti-government rhetoric.

In his remarks, Clinton noted that slain officer Doffyn had an 8-year-old daughter “who will now have to live with his sacrifice.”

He asserted that his commitment to slowing gun violence is greater than those of his two predecessors. But, he said, Americans “should applaud” the efforts of former President Ronald Reagan, who expressed his support for a waiting period for handgun purchases after leaving office, and George Bush, who recently gave up his NRA membership after the organization denounced “jackbooted government thugs.”


Clinton said that he had decided to take on these issues because he was “tired of reading” about teen-agers who had been gunned down in tough neighborhoods. And, he said, he thought that he had special insight into gun owners’ fears that their weapons would be taken away because of his rural Arkansas background.

He insisted that the issue is not about the right to bear arms but about whether Americans are willing to “undergo some minor inconveniences so we can solve our problems together.”

He compared recent gun-control steps to the security restrictions added at airports in the 1970s to end a rash of airplane hijackings.

“Even though most of us would never consider carrying a gun on an airplane, much less a bomb, we go through the metal detectors and don’t think anything about it,” Clinton said. “Why? Because it is a minor sacrifice to get on a safe airplane.”


And, he said in a remark aimed jokingly at hunters, “I’m almost 50 years old [but] I have never seen a deer, a duck, or a wild turkey wearing a Kevlar [bulletproof] vest in my life.”

Clinton also brought an issue on which he differs with some members of his own party, saying that he supports the Supreme Court decision handed down Monday that school districts may perform random drug tests on student athletes. “It is a minor inconvenience for young people to take a stand to help to get drugs out of our schools,” he said.

The President flew Friday evening to Miami to visit his brother-in-law, Tony Hugh Rodham, and his wife, Nicole Boxer Rodham, and their new baby, Zachary.