Missing the mark (Or not)

[pyat]

There was a shooting at a Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville on the weekend. Two people died. The suspected attacker was, apparently, frustrated by Christianity. He was normal fairly peaceful, but sometimes had religious disagreements with his neighbors, one of whom is a King James literalist. If his attack was inspired by his frustration with Fundamentalist Christianity, then he picked a really bad target. Not that any target would have been a good one.

Edit: Though, apparently he was mostly mad at those darn liberals...

Comments

Well...

[pxtl.livejournal.com]

The term "hate" crime is kinda vague, but my understanding is that it refers to a crime where the motive is simply hatred for a race or class or religion or affiliation or whatever, not a specific person or act. That is, he didn't kill so-and-so because he hated them, but that he hated liberals, and so-and-so happened to be liberal.

Re: Well...

[kianir.livejournal.com]

Correct. A hate crime is effectively a second crime -- you have done something (assault, murder, whatever) which is already against the law, AND you have done so in a way intended to terrorize a part of society.

So, you might kill somebody because they owe you money, or they had sex with your pig (Tennessee, after all!), or because they put their seed in your daughter's bellah. And that is obviously a crime, murder. However, if you kill somebody because they're a UU congregant, and do so specifically because they're liberals, that is not just murder, but also a crime against society's fabric by terrorizing UU members and liberals in general.

Confer: http://kianir.livejournal.com/155099.html