Antonio Basco cries beside a cross at a makeshift memorial near the scene of a mass shooting at a shopping complex in El Paso, Texas, earlier this month. Basco’s wife was among 22 people fatally shot on Aug. 3. Photo: John Locher/AP

Last week, in the anguishing fallout from the most recent mass slaughter of innocents by a white supremacist gunman in El Paso, Texas, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo showed some much-needed leadership. He forcefully acknowledged that terrorism “is now a two-front war,” fed by “hate from abroad and hate from right here at home.”

The greatest internal threat, Cuomo said, comes from “[w]hite supremacists, anti-Semites, and anti-LGBTQ white nationalists” who are “committing mass hate crimes against other Americans.” And because federal law does not criminalize domestic terrorism as a distinct offense, Cuomo called for New York State to enact its own, new domestic terrorism law that punishes mass violence motivated by hate. The proposed law would also create a task force to study and confront this evil.

Without a doubt, a coordinated law-enforcement effort to defang these deadly hate mongers should be an urgent priority. Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, has told the public that white supremacist hate groups pose a “persistent, pervasive threat” to the country. That threat is growing in our own backyard. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, New York is home to 47 hate groups of varying stripes, placing New York among the top five states most greatly infected by such organizations.

Mr. Governor, you don’t have to wait for new legislation to act. New York law already gives you all the tools you need to fight back now.

To start, New York has the necessary criminal laws in place. Following 9/11, New York passed a very powerful anti-terrorism statute. Unlike its federal counterpart, however, New York’s law reaches both foreign and homegrown actors who commit violence to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to affect government policy, or to disrupt government functions.

We also know that New York’s law reaches the very type of hate-inspired bloodshed recently witnessed in El Paso, Gilroy, Poway, Pittsburgh, Charlottesville, Orlando, Charleston and Oak Creek (just to name a few victim cities). This past January, the Manhattan District Attorney used that law to convict a white supremacist of terrorism-related murder. The terrorist traveled from Maryland to New York and–in hopes of starting a race war–randomly stabbed an elderly African-American man to death.

There is another very effective weapon in New York’s arsenal. Section 63 of the New York Executive Law, enacted in 1917, empowers the governor to direct the New York attorney general, to “inquire into matters concerning the public peace, public safety and public justice.”  To that end, the law authorizes the attorney general to hire “deputies, officers, and other persons as [s]he deems necessary,” and it permits those appointees to issue subpoenas for documents and witness testimony.

In the 1950s, Governor Dewey successfully used this provision to establish the New York State Crime Commission, which battled the influence of organized crime in government. Through public hearings, it also exposed pervasive mob involvement in New York City’s waterfront operations. Today, Governor Cuomo could use the executive law once again to create another expert commission–-this time to combat domestic terrorism systemically.

Such efforts would likely have a curative impact that extends far beyond New York. The deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, two years ago, and the civil litigation against rally organizers that has followed have revealed a national network of hate groups that use the Internet both to coordinate and orchestrate acts of violence.  A New York State-sponsored inquiry into that conduct would likely help further expose and dismantle that network. It would surely assist in the prosecution by New York authorities of those who not only commit terrorist crimes in New York but also those who solicit or provide support for terrorist acts both within and outside the state.

New York law may have a very long reach.

It is important to note that some reasonable people have generally opposed the adoption of domestic terrorism laws. Their arguments tend to make two points. Ultimately, neither is persuasive.

First, civil libertarians express the important concern that these laws should not be used by the government to harass those who hold repugnant beliefs. The First Amendment, they correctly insist, protects the free expression of all views, even the most offensive ones. And it, therefore, protects the rights of bigots to associate peacefully.

But although the Constitution most certainly ensures that like-minded people may soak together in a cesspool of hate, it gives no comfort to groups that are motivated by their beliefs to commit crimes. Punishing conduct rather than speech has always been the touchstone of constitutionality. Lawfully enforced, domestic terrorism laws target violent actions not ideas.

The second objection is more pragmatic. Some say that there are already adequate criminal laws on the books to prosecute domestic terrorists for the murder and mayhem they inflict – especially considering that hate crimes carry enhanced punishments. This argument falls short in a couple of ways.

For instance, as Arizona Senator Martha McSally said when she recently proposed a federal domestic terrorism bill, “[f]or too long we have allowed those who commit heinous acts of domestic terrorism to be charged with related crimes that don’t portray the full scope of their hateful actions.” The senator makes a weighty point. Domestic terrorists use deadly violence against individuals to attack the very structure of our democracy. That broader purpose makes domestic terrorism categorically different from individual hate crimes and thus demands a broader response.

Ordinary criminal laws cannot effectively fight domestic terrorism for another reason. They are essentially reactive.  They punish people mostly after the damage is done.

We urgently need to get ahead of domestic terrorists, though, to disrupt their plans for mass violence and prevent more dreadful carnage. That challenge requires tailored laws that better support proactive interdiction–-such as Governor Cuomo’s proposed bill.

Time is of the essence, however.  There is a lethal illness spreading in our society that is taking more and more victims at a quickening pace. New York has had a powerful remedy on the shelf for years–a legal cocktail that would help stop the progression of domestic terror. Do we wait for the state legislature to formulate something new, or does New York start administering a national recovery now?

Daniel S. Alter was formerly a senior adviser and special counsel to the New York State Attorney General, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director for civil rights and an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.