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A Hmong hunter committed a hate crime on November 21 when he slaughtered six white people. Based on the facts I’ve seen, he had a problem with white deer hunters. Whatever sentence he gets, they should tack on two more years because of his thoughts about white people. Not only did this man show disregard for human life; he did so with racial hatred in his heart/head. How appalling!
I’m being facetious, of course. If you don’t know what I think of “hate crime” you should read this post. The very idea of a “thought crime” is the dumbest thing since the dinosaur-like NAACP’s so-called report on the return of Jim Crow at the voting booths (for which they should be embarrassed). But for the sake of consistency, I’ll play along.
I’m confused, however. Where is the ACLU and all the homosexual organizations that so vehemently (and loudly) denounce hate crimes when committed against “people of color” or other homosexuals? It’s like a ghost town around here.
The facts: Chai Vang, a Hmong immigrant (who’s actually an American) is accused of shooting eight people and killing six of them. He claims he shot the white people because they called him bad names and fired a shot at him, but the two survivors of the slaughter said Vang shot first. And get this: four of the people he murdered were shot in the back. One was shot four times in the back. Vang was trespassing, hunting on someone else’s property, and he’d been warned before by these same hunters. Vang also has a history of trespassing on private property and getting into “confrontations” with other hunters.
Let’s see. A so-called hate crime is one motivated by someone’s race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, gender, age, blah, blah, blah. Based on all the stories I’ve read about this massacre, it looks and smells like a hate crime, given the fact that all the victims were white and Vang may have expressed hatred of whites. If so, will the prosecutor charge him with a hate crime?
By the way, the “immigrant” was an experienced hunter and a former marksman in the U.S. Army. Those might be important facts. Fortunately for Vang, Wisconsin doesn’t have the death penalty.
I’ve linked to several stories about the shootings at the end of this post. As you read, notice how most play down the racial element when it comes to the dead white people but play it up when it comes to the alleged slaughterer and other Hmongs. From TIME Magazine:
The accused shooter is Chai Soua Vang, a Hmong refugee from Laos who lives in nearby St. Paul, Minn. Vang, 36, is in custody in Hayward, Wis., and was expected to be charged formally this week by the state’s attorney general. In a statement to police the day after the shootings, Vang admitted to killing the hunters after being confronted when he trespassed on property owned by two of them. In fact, much of his statement matches the one given by Lauren Hesebeck, 48, a wounded hunter who survived and the first victim to talk about the incident. Both men agree that Vang was asked to leave the area. They also agree that during the shooting spree, Vang chased down and shot two of the hunters as they fled. There is, however, one crucial discrepancy: Hesebeck says Vang opened fire without provocation; Vang says he began shooting only after the group peppered him with ethnic slurs and took a shot at him. Now whites and Hmong in the area, who have lived side by side for years, are wondering whether, by invoking race, Vang exposed ethnic tensions simmering in the community or created new ones.
The case against Vang looks rock solid from my vantage point, but while they’re throwing the book at him, they should criminalize his thoughts, too, and tack on a few more years for his hatred of…white people in general? White hunters? Or only white hunters with private property? Do I sound like a lunatic? Don’t blame me. Blame the idiotic hate crime laws on the books. A good lawyer could have a field day with this mess.
Here’s some trivia. Vang may have killed a white hunter before. In other words, he might be a serial “hunter” of white people. More fodder for hate crime proponents to chew on. As I said, fortunately for Vang, Wisconsin doesn’t have the death penalty.
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Links: MSNBC and a lot of Yahoo! news links.
