is hate crime legislation necessary if killing someone is already a felony?

Question

does this legislation strengthen state laws??

Answer 1

no it basically makes u a thought criminal ... its not a good thing ..

Answer 2

Crimes that are codified by 'hate crimes legislation' are already on the books. Crimes like assault, murder, etc. are already written to provide a definition of what constitutes the crime and provides a penalty for that crime.

For instance, if you get into a fight with someone else for whatever reason, chances are, you'll get arrested, maybe go to court, and depending on the severity of the injuries inflicted, or the circumstances involved, you might pull some jail time. But with anything involving law, there's always an exception or a caveat.

Now imagine the same scenario, but with one twist. The dude you got into a fight with just happens to be gay (An aside here, I'm not bashing gays, just using them as an example for this instance). The same rules apply, but now you add the hate crime aspect of it, you just increased the severity of your crime and added years to your potential sentence.

I wouldn't go so far as to say they strengthen the law. The prosecutor still has to prove that you did the crime 'because' of hate. The kind of hate that you directed at this person because of what this person represents that you hate. Be it ethnic, sexual orientation, race, religion, or whatever.

Answer 3

Yes it does strengthen the law by adding additional penalties.

The rationale for hate crime legislation, as I see it, is that it declares something to be a crime against a class of people done in a way to intimidate that class of people. Groups of people might be going around beating up gays in a particular neighborhood, for example. If someone is arrested for such an act, normally the law could only prosecute them for a single act of assault. Hate crimes take into account the fact that the person was part of a group that was in effect terrorising a larger group of people. The punishment is greater because the harm is greater than a single assault.

I think such laws are legitimate, however they shouldn't be over used. There should be a high bar for establishing that the assault was part of a pattern of hate and intimidation.

Answer 4

It is a feel good measure that Liberals have initiated.

Every murder is a hate crime. By associating higher penalties for killing gays or minorities or anyone you are implicitly saying that their life was more valuable than everyone else's based on their particular class. This is inherently flawed and highly hypocritical.

Murder is murder, period.

Answer 5

Technically, no. But how else can Liberals pursue their social engineering experiments? Thought control has been a goal of theirs for decades.

Answer 6

Some subsidaries of a law are to be precatious. To make sure that there isn't a huge loop hole that people can get around.