It's all a question of what you are trying to accomplish with the law.
I happen to like your 3rd paragraph. And I already said that there are some decent reasons to be against stiffer penalties for gun involvement in other crimes.
I'd like to hear your argument against hate crimes. Or, if you are up to the challenge, why not make the argument for added hate crime penalties?
Fundamentally hate crimes are absurd designations, because all crime involves a level of "hate" or whatever term you so choose, they aren't committed against a victim out of love. Also, they are attempting to solely legislate intent, as opposed to the action itself. And intent,
separated from the action, should be inherently protected, because it is basically speech/association/religion/whatever. Combining it with the action shouldn't rid that protection.
Crime 1: Assault, a general intent crime (some states label as battery or a/b) of placing another person in reasonable fear of being harmed with the ability to do so. Or, more simply, hitting/pushing/kicking someone.
We don't want people to be assaulted so we legislate against it.
Crime 2: Same as 1, but with the added sub of "because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person". So now we go from assault, which we don't want, to determining the reason for the assault, something that should be a sentencing aspect, not a conviction aspect. The crime isn't not liking the person of another race, the crime is the assault. This is evidenced by lack of laws outlawing discrimination without accompanying criminal action. In sentencing a judge should consider mitigating and aggravating circumstances. i.e. you punched the guy in the bar because he was groping your wife - light sentence vs. you punched the guy in the bar because he asked you to stop motorboating his wife - heavier sentence vs. punched a guy because he was black - even heavier sentence. See the "hate" part of should already be built right in, in the sentencing discretion.
Now in reality the "hate crime" statutes attempt to specifically legislate the punishment higher to override the discretion of a judge. (see above post in general). So a hate crime, for example, might elevate a misdemeanor (jail) assault directly to felony (prison). And the question, fundamentally, is always for what purpose? Is it really more important to stop a person from hitting a person because they are black as opposed to because they are ugly, or smug, or smelly, or annoying, or tall, or smart, or dumb, or hairy, or whatever? The end result is the same, the victim is punched, all you do with this is create levels of classifying victims, and needlessly so.
This is different from other classifications of victims, such as domestic assault. These laws don't protect inherent characteristics they protect relationships, sexual, familial, parental, etc. Those relationships require extra protection because they are more likely to be abused, more likely to be hidden from the public eye, and more prone to recidivism.
In a larger sense I am simply arguing against legislative enhancements. IMO they are simply confirmations that society "knows best" and we don't trust our appointed judges. If that is, in fact, the case then let's move on without them (although I think that even worse). Almost always they are rooted in an extreme overreaction. Using Kadyn's law for example, and just going off of the top of my head and memory, it was passed as a reaction to someone driving around a school bus and hitting a child exiting the bus, therefore we legislated much harsher, no discretion sentences. But, iirc, Kadyn was hit by a person who crossed a double yellow to pass the bus at 60 mph....and received 15 years in prison. This overreactionary law turned out to punish minor technicalities of the law, people who, even by the various prosecutions admission's, never passed the bus or created any danger. But the law was rigid, because we desperately need to stop the less than 10 deaths per year nationally by fining/revoking/imprisoning thousands of people. Here is the first article I googled discussing the rigidity:
http://www.thegazette.com/subject/n...ns-law-doesnt-stop-dangerous-drivers-20140811
Now is that a hate crime example? No, it is just to demonstrate the overreaction of our society in legislation. We hear that someone was killed for being X race/religion/whatever and think, he only got 2 years?!?!?!? That needs to be 30! All while ignoring the fact that 99% of all similar cases have even lesser sentences.
But to simplify after writing this pointless drivel: The crime is assault, punish the crime, use discretion in doing so. Discretion should be for judges. Designating "hate" as a qualifier is extremely subjective, nearly impossible to correctly, objectively, determine and fundamentally pointless.
