Sen. Bernie Sanders doesn’t regret his vote for a major 1994 anti-crime bill that he now criticizes for causing mass incarceration and doing nothing to stem drug abuse.
“It’s a big bill and had a lot of stuff in it,” the Vermont senator said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday. “It had the ban on assault weapons, something that I believed firmly.”
Sanders noted the massive 1994 legislation had beneficial provisions targeting domestic violence.
But he brought up long-held criticism of the bill that has led to mass incarceration and disproportionally affected minorites.
“People are in jail who should not be in jail,” he said.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton supported the bill, which was signed into law by her husband Bill Clinton when he was president.
Sanders’ comments comes a few weeks after Bill Clinton got into a heated exchange with a protestor over the law and his wife’s use of the term “superpredator.” Clinton said that the bill helped lower crime rates in the ’90s.
“I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them on the street to murder other African-American children,” Clinton said at the event. “You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter.”
