Most of you have probably heard about the shooting at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, over the weekend, which left two dead and seven wounded.

The shooter, Jim D. Adkisson, entered the church during a children’s play and opened fire with a 12-gauge shotgun:

The man apparently walked up to another man in the back of the church, shot him “point blank, right there” and then opened fire on the crowd, she said.

The man was tackled when he paused to reload.

I noticed this line in the Knoxville News story:

The FBI is assisting in the investigation, Owen said, “In the event it turns out to be a hate crime.“

And later in the story:

[Witness Barbara Kemper] said the gunman was yelling “hateful things” and was wearing a red, white and blue T-shirt.

“He looked like bad guy.” Kemper said.

Another Knoxville News story about the shooter highlights his apparently long-standing hostility towards Christianity and Christians.

The man accused of a mass church shooting this morning was described by his Powell neighbors as a helpful and kind man, but one who had issues with Christianity.

[...]“He had his own sense of belief about religion, that’s the impression I got of him,” said neighbor Karen Massey. “We were talking one day when my daughter graduated from Bible college, and I told him I was a Christian, then he almost turned angry.

“He seemed to get angry at that.”

According to Massey, Adkisson talked frequently about his parents who “made him go to church all his life … he was forced to do that.”

Yet an NBC story says Adkisson held a “stated hatred of the liberal movement,” which the story claims could have motivated his attack against this particular church, which has advocated women’s and gay rights and founded an American Civil Liberties Union chapter.

The FBI’s website has a “hate crimes” section, which includes this definition of the term:

A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, Congress has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” Hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.

The idea behind this classification is that crimes (such as murder, arson, and vandalism) that are motivated by “hate” should result in stiffer penalties for the offenders than the same crimes motivated by “traditional” reasons. This was codified as U.S. law in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

Yet you’ll note that “political beliefs” are not covered under the above definition of a “hate crime.” Therefore Mr. Adkisson’s crime could be classified as a hate crime only if he “hated” the victims because they were Christians — but not if he “hated” them because they represented the “liberal movement.”

There is no rational way to explain this discrepancy. Unlike race or ethnic origin, religious and political beliefs are both individual choices. Both, to a certain extent, rely on faith in certain values or ideals. Both can be “inherited” from a person’s parents. Yet crimes committed because of “hatred” of a person’s religion can get you a harsher sentence than those committed because of “hatred” of a person’s political beliefs.

The entire notion of determining punishment for a federal crime based on the defendant’s supposed motivation of “hatred” seems illogical. If a man burns down another man’s house or torches his business, he should be punished because he committed arson, no matter whether he did it because the man was of another race or because he cut him off on the highway the week before.

If a criminal vandalizes someone’s garage, their punishment should not be determined by whether they spray-painted a common profane word or a racial slur.

Similarly, if someone commits murder, they should be punished because they took another person’s life in cold blood. A murderer should not get a lesser sentence because they killed someone over a financial dispute rather than because the victim was a Hindu.

In the Knoxville case above, Mr. Adkisson planned out his crime in advance (”he had been plotting the attack for at least a week”): he made sure to do it when he knew the church would be packed for a children’s play so as to maximize casualties; he hid his gun in a guitar case so as to enter the building unnoticed; and he even brought an extra bag full of ammunition with him to allow him to reload and kill as many innocent people as possible.

Maybe he did it because he hated Christians. Maybe he did it for political reasons because he hated the “liberal movement” he thought the church represented. Determining his true motive is important for the judicial process and for closure for the families of the victims, but it shouldn’t determine his sentence. If he is found guilty, the facts alone should be enough for a jury to give Mr. Adkisson the punishment he deserves. (Note: Tennessee does allow the death penalty.)

Murder is murder.

**UPDATE: Police have announced the discovery of a 4-page “manifesto” written by Adkisson describing his hatred of “liberals in general, as well as gays.”

Therefore it looks less likely that religious hatred was a motive, but this again presents a problem: only half of the self-described motive can qualify this shooting as a “hate crime.” It’s not difficult to imagine that sentencing in this case could turn on an absurd debate about “which group Adkisson hated more” — gays or liberals.