Planetguy wrote:i wonder how many of these 784 identified hate groups are comprised of Native Americans. Blacks. Latinos. Asians. Gays.
There were 784 active hate groups in the United States in 2014, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The number of such groups surged in response to President Barack Obama's election and the economic downturn — growing from 888 in 2008 to 1,007 in 2012 — before falling to 939 a year later and then the lowest level since 2005, according to Mark Potok, who tracks extremist groups for the SPLC.
"Those numbers may be somewhat deceiving," Potok wrote in the SPLC's "The Year in Hate and Extremism" report. "More than half of the decline in hate groups was of Ku Klux Klan chapters, and many of those have apparently gone underground, ending public communications, rather than disbanding."
Native Americans? Probably none...but plenty of those other groups. Heck, Black Lives Matter is openly showing themselves to be a hate group and nothing is done about it. They are only the latest manifestation of what we used to call ACORN
But hate groups and hate crimes are not necessarily the same thing. If this guy burned down churches, it doesn't matter that he's black and most of the people in those churches are black, because
his hate is not racial, but religious.
My point is that the motivation of a criminal shouldn't matter. A crime is a crime is a crime is a crime. There should be no more emphasis on sentencing a cop killer than someone who murders someone's mother, father, sister, or brother. No levels of degree in the charges brought against a criminal, only in the sentencing after a trial should the degree of violence be considered.
Period.
