Posted on May 17, 2019

Disarm Hate Act Introduced: Would Permanently Revoke 2A Rights for Misdemeanor Hate Crimes

S.H. Blannelberry, GunsAmerica Digest, May 15, 2019

Two Democratic legislators introduced the “Disarm Hate Act” this week, which calls for the permanent revocation of 2A rights for any misdemeanor offense deemed to be a hate crime.

The bill was brought to both chambers, via Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) in the House and Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) in the Senate.

Sponsors believe the bill closes the “Hate Crimes Loophole” by banning the sale and possession of firearms for anyone convicted of committing a crime on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

“Over and over again we have seen what happens when a convicted white supremacist, white nationalist, or neo-Nazi is able to purchase a gun,” said Cicilline, who serves as Vice Chair of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, in a statement obtained by GunsAmerica.

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John Feinblatt, the president of Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety, cheered the measure.

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While the Left would have you believe that hate crimes are skyrocketing in the age of Trump, the data paints a different picture. An analysis by the Bureau of Justice Statistics suggests that while reported hate crimes have increased in recent years, the number of unreported hate crimes have dropped over the same period.

Meanwhile, the overall total of both unreported and reported hate crime victimizations has remained somewhat steady over the past three years but down significantly since 2014 and the previous years when Obama was in office.

Alan Gottlieb, the founder of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, raised an interesting point about the difficulty of defining a misdemeanor hate crime and the potential for anti-gunners to use this legislation to target law-abiding gun owners.

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