Barney Frank: “Not until I finish. I urge the gentleman to have a little patience. He has asked the question; it is a little…”

“Not until I finish. I urge the gentleman to have a little patience. He has asked the question; it is a little complicated. The answer will take awhile. There was a situation in Pennsylvania, where a particular bar was the subject of a great deal of violence, and I believe there was initially an insufficient response. The point is that this legislation is written to take into account the fact that most crimes of violence are, in fact, prosecuted at the State and local level. Part of what it does is to offer aid to people at the State level and that, by the way, we have had people, for instance, the local law enforcement officials in Wyoming who prosecuted the Matthew Shepherd murder, welcomed that, because they can be overburdened by it. They can have hate groups that show up; and they can overburden, in some areas, the local resources. But we are saying there will be some cases in this vast country where a particular group will be subject to a particular prejudice, and in those exceptional cases the Federal Government can intervene. So I can think of a couple right recently that we have had. There was some others, I do not remember exactly which came up in the hearing. But, yes, there are cases where there are particular prejudices against particular groups. Transgendered people happen to be in many cases the objects of violence. And in many cases, they are protected; but in some cases, because of the prejudice that they face, they have not been protected.”