There’s a shocking and sad story in the news, of a man who killed three other people, for no real reason. He didn’t like them. He was a jerk, biased and closed-minded.

These murders are being called hate crimes. I wonder sometimes why all murders aren’t considered hate crimes? In this particular case, the killer was a KKK member, and the people he killed were Jewish. But, when I think about it, if a person is going to take a weapon to any particular place filled with people and then kill people, isn’t that a hateful crime? Isn’t murder hateful in and of itself? There have been plenty of murders carried out that weren’t based on KKK or Nazi rhetoric, but definitely fueled by hate. Why weren’t those crimes nationally publicized as hate crimes?

These are the sorts of things that make we wonder why we label certain actions as “xyz” but other seemingly similar actions as “abc.” Do they really need any sort of distinction other than horrible?