House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Friday introduced a bill that would criminalize domestic terrorism attacks.

The bill would create a federal domestic terrorism crime and could be applied to attacks like mass shootings in El Paso, Texas; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Charleston, South Carolina, Schiff said in a statement.

Even though Americans today are more likely to be killed by white-supremacists than international terrorism organizations while on American soil, treating these terrorist acts, including racist or anti-Semitic shootings, differently than other acts of terrorism makes the public take it less seriously, he said.

Domestic terrorism is defined under federal law, but there are currently no criminal penalties associated with the definition. Federal law defines domestic terrorism as actions dangerous to human life that:

• violate federal or state criminal law

• appear intended to intimidate or coerce civilians; to influence government policy by intimidation or coercion; or to impact government conduct by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping, and

• occur within the U.S.

That means that, with the exception of about 50 hyperspecific situations such as destroying an airplane, taking a hostage, or attacking a mass transportation system most acts of domestic extremism are not prosecuted as terrorism.

In order to bring domestic terrorism charges under Schiffs bill, the attorney general or their deputy would have to provide a written certification that the offender intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or to influence government policy through intimidation, the congressman said. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board would be required to create a public report on the civil liberties implications of the statute but not until four years after the bills passage.

Unlike the international terrorism regime, Schiffs domestic terrorism bill would not establish a list of domestic terrorism organizations a provision that has made it easy for the feds to prosecute individuals with even minimal ties to groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS. Creating a similar list for domestic groups would almost certainly be challenged in court as a violation of the First Amendment.

As HuffPost first reported after the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, two years ago, Justice Department officials have long discussed whether to push Congress to pass new domestic terrorism legislation. The FBI Agents Association has lobbied Congress to pass such a bill, and most Americans once informed that theres no criminal federal statute that broadly outlaws domestic terrorism say that should change .