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Schumer wants funds to go to fighting gun violence instead of to the border wall

In this July 30 photo, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., takes questions from reporters at the Capitol in Washington. More than 200 mayors, including the mayors of El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, are urging Senate leaders to call senators back to the Capitol to act on bipartisan gun safety legislation. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
By Niels Lesniewski Tribune News Service

WASHINGTON – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is preparing to formally request that the $5 billion Trump’s administration would like spent on a border wall instead go to countering gun violence.

“The dual scourges of gun violence and violent white supremacist extremism in this country are a national security threat plain and simple, and it’s time the Trump administration and Republicans in congress starting treating them as such,” the New York Democrat said in a statement. “Now Republicans and this administration need to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to addressing gun violence and stopping the rise of domestic terrorism, especially stemming from white supremacy.”

Schumer said that he was going to make the push in response to what he had called a “clarion call” from FBI Director Christopher Wray for more support to go after extremist threats at home. Wray briefed the Senate Democratic caucus by phone last week, following the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.

The minority leader’s office cited plans that the Republican-led Senate Appropriations Committee was preparing to provide less funding for a variety of domestic programs including health and education in order to get the resources needed for the wall.

Schumer wants the money to go to a variety of programs including CDC research on gun violence, as well as Homeland Security and FBI programs, his office said.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard C. Shelby, an Alabama Republican, has drafted an allocation for the fiscal 2020 Labor-HHS-Education spending bill that would provide about $5 billion lower than it would have been to provide funding for the wall.