The bills that eventually became the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (VCCLEA) were originally proposed as amendments to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. The VCCLEA is directly linked to its historical predecessor, the 1968 legislation that was the first in a series of omnibus legislative packages whose provisions were aimed at street and violent crime. With the 1968 enactment, President Lyndon Johnson moved the subject of violent local crime onto the front burner of national politics, where it has remained ever since. In the intervening thirty-five years Congress enacted a number of lengthy legislative packages, each containing a potpourri of provisions dealing with crime, law enforcement, and crime prevention subjects. Between 1984 and 1990, for example, four such omnibus bills were enacted; the VCCLEA continued that tradition.
Described by President Bill Clinton as "the toughest, largest and smartest federal attack on crime in the history of...[the country]," the VCCLEA contained both provisions supported by liberals and attacked by conservatives (e.g., gun control) and provisions where the liberal-conservative perspectives were reversed (e.g. death penalty). It also contained provisions dealing with such varied subjects as violence against women, drug courts, marketing scams that victimized the elderly, crimes against children, and criminal street gangs. Among its most controversial and/or widely noted provisions were those establishing a ban on assault weapons; a federal mandatory life term three-strikes law; a federal grant program to fund more police at the local level and to help build more prisons; and additions to the Federal Rules of Evidence dealing with the admissibility of evidence in sexual assault and child molestation cases.
The congressional and lobbying infighting that preceded the final enactment of the act was classic in its Byzantine complexity. During the first President George Bush's administration, different versions of a comprehensive bill were passed by the two Houses of Congress, but died because of their inability to bridge the liberal-conservative divide on some key issues, such as habeas corpus and exclusionary rule reform. Early in his administration, President Clinton set forth the elements of a crime bill he would support, including a ban on assault weapons, federal grants for more police, and habeas corpus reform. Putting more police on the street at the local level became the centerpiece of his anticrime program.
Later, after a series of notorious violent crimes in different parts of the country, the State of Washington enacted a three strikes-mandatory life provision, and soon other states began introducing similar legislation. Three strikes, which had originally been a Republican proposal, was soon endorsed by the President and added to his priorities for the Violent Crime bill.
The House version of the crime bill also contained a "Racial Justice Act" which would have allowed individuals sentenced to death to challenge their sentence based on a statistical showing that race had affected the imposition of death sentences in the jurisdiction. Strongly supported by the Congressional Black Caucus and Democrats and opposed with equal fervor by Republicans who believed it would effectively block the use of the death penalty, it was dropped in conference. Similarly, habeas corpus reform did not make it into the final bill.
The most hotly contested issue in this legislation, however, involved the ban on assault weapons. Because the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee was a strong opponent of gun control, the Senate initially became the main arena for including an assault weapons ban in the crime bill. Eventually, compromise provisions were crafted. The conference bill (the product of a second conference) was almost immediately approved by a close vote in the House. After a short-lived Republican filibuster in the Senate was broken by a cloture vote, the crime bill was approved and subsequently signed into law by President Clinton on September 13, 1994.
The main elements of the assault weapons provisions were a listing of named banned weapons, a ban on copies of the listed banned weapons, a ban on weapons that fell within a definition containing specific criteria, and a ban on large capacity ammunition magazines. The legislation also contained a ten-year sunset provision and a listing of 670 hunting and sport weapons exempted from the prohibition.
Effect of the Legislation
What has been the effect of the VCCLEA? Has it had an impact on crime? Through grants made under its COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) program the act had as one of its goals putting 100,000 additional police on the streets during a five year period through hiring and redeployment. Reportedly, the total number of sworn officers grew during that period by about 87,000, but historic rates of growth might have significantly increased the number of officers, possibly by an almost similar number, so it is difficult to determine how much difference the program made.
Other grant programs have also been implemented: For example, by the year 2000, the Justice Department made grants of more than $700 million through its Violence Against Women office, to support programs for computer tracking, mandatory training for police, and the creation of community coalitions. In 1998 the General Accounting Office did a study to determine the impact of the grant program in support of "truth-in-sentencing" (TIS) laws that provided incentive grants to states with laws requiring violent offenders to serve at least 85 percent of their imposed sentences. A survey showed that twenty-seven states had TIS laws; in twelve of these states, the availability of the federal grant was not a factor contributing to the enactment of the TIS law and in eleven other states, it was only a partial factor; only in four states was the cause-effect relationship clear.
The provisions banning assault weapons had some impact but also proved fairly easy for gun manufacturers to evade. In the year 2002 for example, the person charged as the Washington D.C. area sniper, John Allen Muhammad, allegedly used an assault weapon the manufacturer had modified by removing two military-type components, thus escaping the ban.
Five years and more after enactment of the legislation, President Clinton still viewed the VCCLEA as "landmark legislation...[that] put thousands of new police officers into America's communities,...[gave] crime victims a greater voice in the criminal justice process...and protected women and children from violence and abuse in their homes and communities..." Further, it "helped reduce the violent crime rate in the United States to its lowest level in nearly a quarter century." The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 undoubtedly did some of these things and more, and did have some impact on the crime rate; precisely how much is indeterminable.
