Democrats on Capitol Hill are pressing hard to adopt tougher gun laws following a pair of mass shootings this month that horrified the country and rekindled the on-again, off-again push to install higher barriers to owning firearms.
But as Congress prepares to return to Washington next month from the long summer recess, Democrats also want to go a step further to tackle another scourge they consider to be related: the threat of violent white nationalism that, according to federal law enforcers, is on the rise.
The lawmakers’ ultimate goal is to strengthen the nation’s hate crime laws and weed out race-based incidents of domestic terrorism. As a first step, they’re pushing legislation designed to log the frequency of such cases around the country — data they say has gone neglected as the Trump administration has focused more squarely on foreign-based threats to homeland security.
View the complete August 28 article by Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.