Xavier Becerra: “Let us make it clear, violence cannot be tolerated in this country. We must prosecute vigorously anyone who commits…”

“Let us make it clear, violence cannot be tolerated in this country. We must prosecute vigorously anyone who commits violence, including terrorism. We must punish them vigorously as well. But in this case, we are talking about crimes where the people convicted were not convicted of terrorism. They are not terrorists. They were, in fact, not even convicted of crimes of violence. They have served more time in jail than anyone in this country probably sitting in jail today has served for crimes of similar character, nonviolent crimes. So what is the issue here? It is guilt by association. Those who vote for this resolution at the end really should be convicted of guilt by association, because what they are doing is they are saying, because they are using the label terrorism for people who are not convicted terrorists, they are trying to make all of us here believe that, if we vote no, we are soft on terrorism. Timothy McVeigh was convicted. Terry Nichols was convicted. Should we now say that every one of the individuals that they associated with even if they should happen to have racist views should now serve time equal to the time of Timothy McVeigh and Nichols? Of course not. We do not convict people here by guilt from association. But that is what this does. Today 13 children will die, most of those as a result of someone who has a firearm.”