While House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appeared to support the president’s unsubstantiated claim that violent video games play a role in influencing mass shooters, his office said the congressman favors “having the authorities gather all the facts, so we can stop tragedies from happening again in the future.”
Those facts include data on white supremacist domestic terrorism requested by Congress, which the Department of Justice has failed to produce. Last week, news broke of a document distributed in April to state, local and federal law enforcement, entitled, “Domestic Terrorism in 2018.” This document, sent throughout the Department of Homeland Security fusion center network, as well as federal agencies, including the FBI, was produced by New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security Preparedness, a main conduit of security information sharing, and concludes that alleged white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terrorism incidents in 2018.
The DOJ has withheld this information from Congress, despite requests for relevant information and statistics.
This seems an attempt by the administration to substantially block progress in addressing the issue of mass shooters. Congress must demand an investigation into the failure of the DOJ to provide requested information to Congress for months, during which time multiple mass shootings took place.
