Should the Nashville shooting be classified as a hate crime?

Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley is calling for federal authorities to investigate the deadly Covenant School shooting as a federal hate crime.

“Yesterday the nation witnessed the vicious murder of small schoolchildren in Nashville, Tennessee,” the senator wrote in a letter to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “It is commonplace to call such horrors ‘senseless violence.’ But properly speaking, that is false. Police report that the attack here was ‘targeted’—targeted, that is, against Christians.”

“The full resources of the federal government must be brought to bear to determine how this crime occurred, and who may have influenced the deranged shooter to carry out these horrific crimes,” Hawley continued. “Hate that leads to violence must be condemned. And hate crimes must be prosecuted.”