The Most Effective Way to Reduce Hate Crimes
The regular mechanisms of the criminal-justice system can also be used to combat abhorrent acts.
Late this summer, a white man opened fire in a Jacksonville, Florida, Dollar General, killing Angela Michelle Carr, Anolt Joseph “A.J.” Laguerre Jr., and Jerrald De’Shaun Gallion. Police are quite certain the attack was a hate crime. All three victims were Black; the killer reportedly used a swastika-emblazoned handgun and rifle and left hate-filled writings. “He hated Blacks, and I think he hated just about everyone that wasn’t white,” Jacksonville Sheriff T. K. Waters told CNN. “He made that very clear.”
The Jacksonville rampage is just the latest bias-motivated mass murder to make headlines. Last year, another white supremacist attacked a Buffalo, New York, grocery store, killing 10 people. In 2019, a man killed 23 people in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart, deliberately targeting Latino immigrants. That same year, a gunman assaulted a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one woman and wounding three others.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Atlantic (paywall)
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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Based on a recent MI report.
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