Democrats pledge to push through domestic terrorism legislation to improve intelligence sharing and coordination among law enforcement agencies after the mass shooting in Buffalo — despite growing Republican opposition that could stifle even those modest efforts.
On Sunday, California Chair Nancy Pelosi described events in western New York as “domestic terrorism,” echoing comments from many others in her party who see the massacre as an avoidable, catastrophic convergence of racist extremism and easy access to weapons capable of causing mass casualties.
In response to the killings, the House would soon pass legislation that would “strengthen efforts to combat domestic terrorism,” she said in a statement.
Mrs. Pelosi gave no details. But in April, the Democrats on the House Judiciary passed a bill that would create permanent offices within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the FBI “to monitor, investigate, and prosecute domestic terrorism cases.” The proposal would also increase training for local police forces to detect, deter and investigate homegrown terrorism.
A nearly identical bill passed the House without opposition a year ago. This year, the measure passed the objection of all 17 Republicans on the commission who argued that the measure could be misused to launch investigations against conservatives for exercising their freedom of expression.
The bill is likely to take an even steeper path in the evenly divided Senate, where it takes 60 votes to pass legislation.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who chairs the committee, said in an email “Buffalo is a clarion call.” “The Republicans feel they owe something to the white nationalist, extremist, far-right margins of their party,” he added.
The domestic terrorism bill sponsored by Mr. Nadler is a much weaker version of a bill introduced by Democrats in 2019 that would have created a new class of criminal domestic terrorism offenses to help prosecutors prepare cases against extremists.
That proposal met fierce opposition from Republicans and from the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued that the bill would have harmed the color of communities by expanding “unnecessary” law enforcement authorities to target and discriminate against the communities Congress seeks to protect. .
The Democrats’ prospects of getting some sort of domestic terrorism bill ahead of the 2020 midterm elections — small though they may be — far outweighs advancing their gun control agenda, which includes passing universal background checks and limiting gun control. access to the type of semi-automatic weapons used by the Buffalo suspect.
“In the wake of this Buffalo shooting, we may have to vote in the Senate or the House to show the American people where the people stand,” said Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, a gun control advocate. . , speaking on MSNBC on Sundays.
Democrats have already won two failed votes in the Senate — one earlier this year on voting rights and one Wednesday to codify abortion rights.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who doesn’t want reelection, proposed raising the long gun buying age, now 18 in most states, to 21, the threshold for buying a gun.
“Can we all at least agree that we should raise the age for ARs to 21”? he asked on Twitterreferring to AR-15s, the collective name for semi-automatic rifles.
Even on rare occasions, there is a bipartisan agreement to address an issue, the Democrats have had to drop some restrictions on who can buy guns.
In March, Congress repealed the Violence Against Women Act, a law designed to combat stalking, domestic violence and sexual assault, after Democrats agreed to remove a provision that would have barred any dating partner, not just spouses, who had been convicted of domestic violence. violence through possession of a weapon.
