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

[melstra.livejournal.com]

*Nod* I tend to agree with that.
I think in the US, hate crime legislation is aimed more at the rest of society than at the criminals themselves--some sort of weak political way of saying "hey, we REALLY disagree with racisim/homophobia/etc. and we're doing something about it, aren't we great". I'm not sure it really makes any difference, crime-wise.

That said, whether consequences are different or not, I think keeping statistics on the motivation behind the crime is important, just like we note if something is domestic violence.