CAIR urge congress to support disarm hate act

WASHINGTON Sep 22, (APP/IINA): Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, is calling on all Americans to urge their congressional representatives to co-sponsor and support the Disarm Hate Act.
The act is sponsored by Congressman David Cicilline (D-RI)
and Senator Robert Casey (D-PA). Introduced in June, one week before the Congressional baseball practice shooting and two months before the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, the act would ban gun sales to people who have been convicted of a hate crime or a misdemeanor committed out of hatred of a person’s race, religion, gender, gender identity or disability from attaining a firearm.
“CAIR urges Congress to support the Disarm Hate Act and better protect minority community members from gun violence by disarming those convicted of violent hate crimes,” said CAIR Director of Government Affairs Department Robert S. McCaw.
Although convicted felons are currently prohibited from owning a gun under Federal law, only six states prohibit individuals with a misdemeanor hate crime from buying one.
Disarm Hate Act addresses the loophole by amending the federal criminal code to include those convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime or an enhanced sentence crime because it was partially motivated by hate.
According to research completed by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, “hate crimes are up about 20 percent in the nation’s largest cities so far in 2017.”