Opinion ID: 588159
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Gun Control and the Legislative Process in 1967, 1968

Text: 38 The genesis of § 924 was in the firearms regulation legislation introduced in the House in 1967, H.R. 5384. A subcommittee of the House Committee on the Judiciary conducted lengthy hearings on this bill and other anti-crime measures proposed by the Johnson administration, 8 and reported several bills during the course of 1967. The House passed one of these as an omnibus crime act in August of that year. 9 39 The gun control provisions of H.R. 5384 were taken up by the Senate as part of its own omnibus crime legislation, S. 917. 10 They comprised Title IV, State Firearms Control Assistance. 11 Title IV contained a declaration of congressional findings and the introduction to title 18 of the U.S.Code of a new chapter entitled Firearms. 12 Section 924 provided Penalties for violations of the provisions of the new chapter. 13 These penalties, having originated in a House bill in 1967 and made their way into the Senate's omnibus crime legislation, were enacted into law June 6, 1968, in the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. 14 It was Title IV of this act, § 924, into which § 924(c) was inserted later by the Gun Control Act as an amendment. 15 40 On June 6, 1968, the day the Omnibus Act passed, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated and the demand to enhance penalties for crimes committed with firearms became more urgent. Even though the Omnibus Act was only four days old, the Gun Control Act, H.R. 17735, was introduced in the House at the request of the Department of Justice on June 10, 1968, to amend Title IV of the Omnibus Act. 16 The Senate introduced a similar measure. Justice Rehnquist, construing § 924(c) in this historical context, later remarked: 41 Several different bills dealing with firearms control, which had been bottled up in various stages of the legislative process prior to June 1968, were brought to the floor and enacted with dramatic swiftness following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the early part of that month. Senator Kennedy's assassination, following by less than three months the similar killing of Reverend Martin Luther King, obviously focused the attention of Congress on the problem of firearms control. It seems to me not only permissible but irresistible, in reading the language of the two statutes, to conclude that Congress intended when it enacted § 924(c) to authorize the enhancement of the sentence already imposed by virtue of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(d). 42 Simpson v. United States, 435 U.S. 6, 18, 98 S.Ct. 909, 915, 55 L.Ed.2d 70 (1978) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (emphasis added). Both houses passed bills essentially in the form of H.R. 17735, which became public law number 90-618. 17 43 Section 924(c) was added as a floor amendment in the House during passage of the Gun Control Act. I discuss the passage of the Gun Control Act further below. One observation on its confused evolution is in order, however. The dramatic increases in crimes committed with firearms in 1967 and 1968, 18 the lengthy and intensive legislative attention to firearms control, and the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Medgar Evers all underscore a congressional purpose to increase federal regulation of firearms and enhance penalties for those who would use firearms in the commission of felonies. Section 924 was the manifestation of this intent to increase penalties, both in the Omnibus Act and its later amendment by the Gun Control Act. This extrinsic evidence of congressional purpose is further strengthened by an analysis of the internal structure of Title IV and § 924 in the Omnibus Act, and the placement of § 924(c) within this structure in the Gun Control Act. 44