On Monday, a shooter opened fire at the Covenant School in Nashville, killing six people, including three children. On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced a congressional resolution condemning the slayings “as a hate crime.”
To be sure, there may yet be evidence to support such a claim, but the investigation has just begun — it’s only been two days since the shooting — and as Attorney General Merrick Garland reminded senators yesterday, the shooter’s motive “hasn’t been identified.”
It appears Hawley isn’t inclined to wait for the factual details to come into sharper focus. NBC News reported:
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., on Tuesday called on federal law enforcement agencies to investigate the shooting at The Covenant School as a religious hate crime. … “It is commonplace to call such horrors ‘senseless violence,’” Hawley wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “But properly speaking, that is false. Police report that the attack here was ‘targeted’ — targeted, that is, against Christians.”
Again, it’s entirely possible that the killings were the result of religious animus, but given the circumstances, it hardly seems outlandish to wait for investigators to collect evidence and share their findings. At least, that is, unless political grandstanding is deemed the higher priority.
It’s also an open question as to why a senator from Missouri, who lives in Virginia, is trying to make snap judgments about a case in Tennessee.
But there’s also a disconnect between the message and the messenger. Remember this NPR report from two years ago?
Capping nearly two weeks of talks between Democrats and Republicans, the Senate approved legislation on Thursday to ramp up law enforcement efforts to better protect the Asian American and Pacific Islander community from hate crimes. The move marks a rare moment of bipartisan unity needed to approve the Senate…
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