Waiting on Answers in Sikh Temple Shooting

Crimes against Sikhs — like the shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin — are not tracked as hate crimes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the Sikh Coalition.

More than two dozen senators have sent a letter to the Jusice Department and FBI asking it to change that practice, and include crimes against Sikhs, Arab- and Hindu-Americans in its hate crime tracking records. Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin was among the 26 Senators who signed the letter.

The FBI is expected to make a decision about this in June. 

Membership in radical right-wing groups is at an all-time high, according to Salon.com political reporter Alex Seitz-Wald, who wrote about the issue this month.

He said there is a fear that membership and activity in these groups could lead to more violence, and that the federal government is "poorly equipped to deal with the threat." From the Salon piece: 

“DHS is scoffing at the mission of doing domestic counterterrorism, as is Congress,” Daryl Johnson, the man who led that task force, told Wired last year. “There’ve been no hearings about the rising white supremacist threat, but there’s been a long list of attacks over the last few years. But they still hold hearings about Muslim extremism. It’s out of balance.”

American Turban reports that there is a belief by some that "domestic terrorist groups, including white supremacy groups, are not being taken seriously enough by the FBI and/or federal agencies. Even our lawmakers appear to be more interested in targeting groups such as those who suffer from mental illness though these individuals have not shown high rates of violence compared to right-wing extremists and hate groups in the United States."

FBI report still held

And while this debate goes on, families of Sikh Temple shooting victims are waiting for information from the FBI on what happened inside the temple when a gunman opened fire on Aug. 5. 

FOX 6 reported this month that the final FBI report hasn't been released, and families are looking for more about what happened inside the temple when a gunman opened fire the morning of Aug. 5.

The FBI has said there are "200 investigative leads, 300 interviews and 200 pieces of evidence" in the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin file, FOX 6 reported.