Democrats have come up with a creative way of selectively confiscating guns from certain residents, and several Second Amendment watchdogs say the strategy could soon be coming to a state near you.

A state legislator from Manhattan has introduced a bill that would nullify gun rights from those convicted of hate crimes, even those involving nonviolent, misdemeanor offenses.

If successful, New York would become the seventh state to implement such a law.

The FBI defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”

TRENDING: Franklin Graham to lead prayer march in D.C.: 'Only hope for our country is God'

But, as Guns America News and Reviews reminds New Yorkers, the FBI makes it clear that "hate itself is not a crime" and that the agency is "mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties."

Since the vast majority of hate crimes fall into the misdemeanor category, those offenders do not lose their Second Amendment rights.

Enter Sen. Daniel Squadron, a Democrat from Manhattan. He wants to expand the state's hate-crime law to include gun confiscation from those convicted of even nonviolent misdemeanors.

Squadron said he was motivated to introduce Senate Bill S5569 because hate crimes are "one the rise" in New York since the election of President Trump.

Squadron’s bill would add misdemeanor hate crimes to the list of "serious offenses" that prohibit an individual from owning a firearm.

The example he gave the New York Daily News was spray-painting a swastika on a synagogue wall. Under current law, that hate crime wouldn’t lead to the revocation of the offender’s Second Amendment rights. If SB S5569 were to pass, it would.

"New York has a duty to take actions that reject acts of bigotry, hatred, misogyny, homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and discrimination in any form because they violate the nation's core values," said Squadron in the bill memo.

Alan Gottleib, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, said Americans need to be aware of this latest attack on gun rights.

"If it were up to the gun grabbers, just owning a gun would be a hate crime. The intolerance and rhetoric of the gun control crowd is what should be a hate crime," Gottlieb told WND.

Pamela Geller, editor of the Geller Report and president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, called the legislation "scary" because hate crimes by their very nature are selectively enforced.

For instance, when a Somali Muslim woman attacked a mother and her daughter at their home last year and beat the mother with her own American flag pole, the FBI said no hate crime was committed and did not file charges.

When a gang of Somali youths invaded an upscale neighborhood on Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis for three straight days last summer, threatening to rape one woman and injuring another homeowner's dog, the FBI and local police again failed to act.

Yet, if a Somali refugee gets injured in an altercation with an American and words are exchanged, that American can rest assured that hate crime violations will be part of the prosecution's lineup of charges. (See Google search that turns up dozens of such cases.)

To make nonviolent hate crimes a reason to disarm someone means Americans criticizing Islam could be targeted, Geller said.

"This is very scary. The left is intent on disarming voices of truth and freedom," Geller said. "This bill proves what I have maintained all along: that hate crime legislation was thought crime criminalization."

Robert Spencer, author of the Jihad Watch blog and several best-selling books on Islam, agrees that Pandora's box has been opened for the left.

"This is insidious," he said. "First, the left falsely characterizes all perspectives that dissent from its own as 'hate.' Then, the next step is legislation against hate crimes, and then the disarming of hate-crime offenders. Leftists could easily use this legislation to silence, marginalize and then disarm and terrorize conservative Americans who refuse to go along with their globalist, internationalist agenda.

"This is a significant step toward the totalitarian left shutting down all dissent and imposing the concept of thought crime upon the American body politic."

At least one gun-rights advocate was quick to point out the redundancy of the bill.

If a hate crime is serious or violent, laws already on the books would prohibit the offender from owning a firearm, said Gottlieb.

"Liberal anti-gun fanatics want to make everything they don’t agree with a hate crime. Some even want to make owning a firearm a hate crime," Gottlieb added.

According to the Center for American Progress, Minnesota, Oregon and New Jersey already have laws on the books denying gun ownership to those convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes. Another three states, -- Delaware, Maryland and Massachusetts -- deny gun ownership to those convicted of certain misdemeanor hate crimes but not all lower level hate crimes.

The New York bill now sits in a state Senate committee. There is a companion bill also in the Assembly sponsored by Assemblyman Charles Lavine, D-North Shore Long Island.

If passed, the bill "shall take effect on the first of November next succeeding the date on which it shall have become law."

“Allowing those who commit and are convicted of hate crimes to possess guns only gives them a fatal tool to spread their hate,” Squadron said in presenting his bill.