Jonathan Zimmerman: Shootings in Sikh Temple and Arizona: Which Crime is Worse?

Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press).

Last Sunday, Wade Michael Page killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin before being wounded by a police officer and taking his own life. Two days later, Jared Lee Loughner pleaded guilty to killing exactly the same number of people at an Arizona shopping mall last year.

Who committed a worse crime? At first glance, it seems like a ridiculous question: One murderer’s victims are as dead as the other’s. But under US state and federal “hate crime” laws, the answer is probably Page. And that might be the most ridiculous thing of all.

An avowed white supremacist, Page most likely targeted his victims because they were of a different color or perhaps mistook them as Muslims. All but three states now have laws providing for enhanced penalties when a crime is motivated by racial, ethnic, or religious prejudice. So does the federal government, which broadened its hate-crime law in 2009 to include attacks based on sexual orientation.

Page, then, would be judged more harshly than Mr. Loughner – whose goal was to murder former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords – and possibly than James Holmes, who allegedly killed 12 moviegoers at a Colorado theater last month....