Louie Gohmert: “this bill starts off with a preamble that makes it faulty to begin with. There are all kinds of recitations in the…”

“this bill starts off with a preamble that makes it faulty to begin with. There are all kinds of recitations in the beginning, factual, so-called findings that were not supported and are not supported by any evidence. That is a major problem here. First of all, people want to talk about how desperately this is needed to stop hate-based crimes. However, there are laws that protect every man, woman, and child from violent acts. In fact, I have heard my colleague across the aisle reference that the Matthew Shepard case shows how desperately we need hate crime legislation. Those perpetrators that did that horrible act both got life sentences under regular murder laws. This was not necessary. People in committee threw up the Byrd case, a horrible tragedy where a man was dragged to his death simply because he was African American. Those two main perpetrators got the death penalty, and no hate crime that has been passed would address that. Now, these statistics, if you really want to look at the facts before we pass bad legislation that is not justified by the facts, and I do take issue with the preamble's fact findings. There is no evidence to support them. But let's look. Since 1995, the FBI statistics show that we have gone from 9,500 to 12,400 agencies reporting, more of the country is being covered, and yet a steady decline has gone from right at 8,000 to 7,100 incidents.”