The Democratic-led U.S. House Judiciary Committee will consider fresh laws to tackle increasing concerns about a convergence of mass shootings and hate crimes a month after a white gunman targeting Latinos murdered 22 individuals in El Paso, Texas.
Democrats controlling the House of Representatives enacted gun bills in February to tighten background checks, but the law in the Republican-led Senate stalled.
Shorting their summer recess to consider the fresh measure following back-to-back shootings at the U.S.-Mexico frontier in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, Democrats hope to restart the gun-control discussion before Congress returns on September 9. The committee will consider several bills including a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines and “red flag” laws that would encourage countries to confiscate firearms from individuals considered to be a risk to themselves or others.
But only one bill, called the Disarm Hate Act, would try to reduce gun violence by using hate crime laws. The measure, which already mirrors book legislation in three U.S. states, would ban the possession of a weapon by persons accused of some violent hate crime misdemeanors.
Currently, only those convicted of more severe hate crime felony crimes due to weapons are barred by federal law.
Seventy-two percent of U.S. voters want Congress to do more to decrease gun violence, while a majority regard immigrant prejudice as a very severe issue, according to a survey published on Thursday by Quinnipiac University.
But if approved by the commission and adopted by the entire House, it could be difficult for the measure to take place in the Senate, where Republican aids say debates concentrated on background checks and red flag laws.
The strong National Rifle Association, which opposes most gun constraints, said Congress sees no reason to alter gun control criminal law.
“Under current law, our legal and criminal justice systems have the tools to keep firearms out the hands of all dangerous criminals – whatever the motivation for their crime,” NRA spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen said in a statement.
But even if it became law, it could be little more than symbolic than the Disarm Hate Act. Experts estimate that in any given year there are no more than 1,000 convictions of hate crime and that misdemeanors involve only a tiny fraction. And while 45 of the 50 countries in the U.S. have some kind of hate crime law on the books, only about 30 have hate crime wrongdoing crimes.
However, proponents of the bill claim that expanding the firearm possession ban from hate crime felonies to misdemeanors would close a significant gap at a moment of increasing hate crime activity.
According to FBI information showing a 17 percent jump to 7,175 incidents in 2017, hate crime incidents have risen to their greatest level since 2014 in nearly a century. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the amount of hate crime organizations increased by 30 percent from 2014 to 2018.
Meanwhile, experts say a increasing amount of mass shootings involving hate bias may suggest that weapons play an increasingly lethal role in hate crime activity.
“If we start to see more people using guns targeting others because of race, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, it’s going to really change the game for hate crimes,” said Jack McDevitt, a leading expert on hate crimes at Northeastern University’s Institute on Race and Justice.
Advocates claim extending the ban to misdemeanors involving physical force or a credible threat to private security may allow police to intervene early on against people who may continue to carry out lethal assaults.
“We know that an early precursor to many of these mass shootings is some hate crime activity,” said U.S. Representative David Cicilline, who introduced the bill, which has 136 Democratic co-sponsors.
“If you look at communities of color, religious minorities or the LGBTQ community, hate crimes against each of these groups have increased,” Cicilline told Reuters.
Despite repeated queries, several Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee were unable to comment on gun legislation. However, they are anticipated at the meeting where consideration will be given to the new legislation.
Republicans advocate legislation that would establish a Justice Department Mass Violence Prevention Center to coordinate reactions to prospective violence by law enforcement. It would allow more federal attorneys to tackle violent crimes and attempt to decrease the flow of firearms from licensed dealers to the black market by stepping up penalties for gun thefts.
“If we’re going to help prevent mass tragedy, we need to keep guns off the black market. We need to help local, state and federal law enforcement better coordinate responses to potential threats of mass violence,” said a Republican committee aide, who requested anonymity.