Buttigieg releases $1B plan to address mass shooting 'national security crisis'

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) released a plan to combat domestic terrorism on Monday that would invest $1 billion to combat and prevent extremism and radicalization in the U.S.

Buttigieg, who is running for president, would put more resources toward law enforcement, including increasing the FBI’s domestic counterterrorism field staff and training law enforcement about the connection between gender-based violence and domestic terrorism.

The plan would also devote more resources toward tracking hate groups across the U.S.

The legislation would also enforce universal background checks on gun sales, ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and establishing a country-wide gun licensing system.

The presidential candidate's campaign said the public would need to be mobilized to put pressure on the Senate to pass gun control measures, in addition to ending the Senate filibuster "as we know it."

Because of the filibuster, it now takes 60 votes to pass legislation by overcoming procedural hurdles that can be put in place by the minority.

Buttigieg is releasing his plan days after 31 people were killed in two mass shootings over the weekend.

The killings have sparked a familiar discussion of measures to curb gun violence, though previous incidents, from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut to the nation's largest mass shooting at a country music concert in Las Vegas, have resulted in little action.

President Tump on Monday suggested linking stricter background checks on gun buyers to immigration reform legislation, but in a later speech also targeted a number of other possibilities, including tackling violent video games.

Democrats have called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to reconvene the upper chamber over the August recess to take action on gun control.

McConnell announced on Monday that he tapped three Republican committee chairmen, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), to brainstorm potential solutions.

Source: The Hill, Julia Manchester, August 6, 2019

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

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