(RoyalPatriot.com )- Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have established domestic terrorism bureaus in federal law enforcement agencies in the wake of a mass shooting that killed ten people in Buffalo, New York.
Charles Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, hoped that Republicans would approve his modifications to the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act so that the Senate could begin a debate on ways to minimize gun violence.
Schumer said on the floor before the vote that this bill is so important because the mass shooting in Buffalo was an act of domestic terrorism. We have to call it what it is: terrorism at home. Conspiracy theories like the white replacement theory fed terrorism.
With no Republicans in favor of the bill, the vote was 47-47.
According to the plan, federal law enforcement organizations such as the military and the FBI would have worked with the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to figure out how white supremacists get into these institutions and prevent it from happening again.
There is no need for new federal laws and agencies to detect and punish domestic terrorism, according to Republican senators, because there are existing statutes that encompass violence motivated by politics in the United States.’
Moreover, they were concerned that the measure would make it easier to eavesdrop on political parties without a valid justification. It would treat extreme right and left political groups differently.
A week after the House passed the measure 222 to 203, primarily along party lines, the Senate failed to pass the bill. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois was the only Republican to vote for it.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) called the bill an “insult” to police officers and military personnel.
Paul predicted that the Democratic strategy would be to accuse our police force of siding with white supremacists and neo-Nazis in the event of a protest. There hasn’t been a single cop he’s talked to in his travels across Kentucky who has been motivated or consumed by racial animus.
It’s an insult to our Marines, Paul added, to bring a measure before the House that claims they’re preoccupied with white supremacy and neo-Nazism.