Quote:
Originally Posted by pelathais
RC is correct. The proposed law does stipulate a crime which "constitutes a crime of violence under federal law or a felony under state, local, or Indian tribal laws."
Summary of legislation. Text of legislation.
In order to be prosecuted under this proposed law one would have to be committing an act of violence. There are proposed stipulations as well that specify 1st Amendment protected activities like free speech are not even under consideration.
Like most "hate crime" laws I think this law is problematic because it creates protected classes of people. Someone can attack me but it's not a Federal offense if all they wanted was my wallet. Then the local cops don't even investigate.
Someone in one of the protected classes gets mugged and they get the assistance of the FBI to track down their attackers. Where's the justice?
How about laws that simply state it's wrong to violently attack another human being? We don't care what's going on inside your head. We don't care about issues that you had as a child during toilet training. We only want to know, did the cops catch the violent bad guy? Yes, or no.
We got him/her? Good, lock 'em up. |
Those laws already exist...
All these laws do is make it worse if your crime is somehow motivated the gender, race, social class, or sexual orientation of the person you attack...
Murder is still murder, there is just this extra thing tacked on if you murder the person 'cuz they're black and you hate black people...
For instance, let's use what happened with Mathew Shephard...
The two guys who kidnapped him and killed him would still get all the charges they got anyways for what they did, they'd just get an extra charge on top of that for this. The acts they committed are still illegal just like if it was a straight man they randomly picked...
Basically the jist of this legislation is the admittance that killing someone BECAUSE of something is worse than just killing them... and I don't really personally have an issue with that...
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