Now that I'm back, I thought I'd look at two disturbing murders -- one local and one national. Here's what they have in common:

Both were committed by teenagers

Both are being called "hate crimes" by supporters of the victims.

Anyway, it's still a local story, despite a headline saying "Subway attack upsets even out-of-towners":

[Sean Patrick] Conroy, 36, was headed to the Starbucks he managed at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, at 12th and Market streets, shortly before 3 p.m. on Wednesday.

He had just finished visiting with his fiancee - they got engaged on Easter Sunday - when five teens snuck up behind him in an underground SEPTA platform near 13th and Market streets.

Police officials said one of the teens punched Conroy in the back of the head. The force of the blow dropped him to the ground.

The young predators - four of whom were Simon Gratz High School students - commenced with a merciless beating, kicking and punching Conroy, causing him to have a fatal asthma attack, according to the medical examiner's office.

A SEPTA police sergeant who was on foot patrol on the opposite side of the tracks tried unsuccessfully to revive Conroy, police said.

The teens didn't bother robbing Conroy. Investigators determined that the attack had been a random, pointless explosion of violence.

For that matter, suppose that only an adult male would have satisfied the feral mob. Wouldn't it be a sex-based crime to attack a man instead of a woman? Or ageist to attack a younger man instead of an older man? Or a clean-cut man on his way to work as opposed to a disheveled wino?

These are not idle distinctions, for there are advocacy groups which want to add "homeless" to the list. Once they do that, wouldn't it also be fair to add "the affluent" as well?

It is never clear to me what criteria determine what is "hate" in hate crime cases, and for the umpteenth time, I think such laws create enormous possibilities for mischief. However, I think what drives people to support hate crime legislation is that there are always people who want to go easy on the perpetrators. Who defend and excuse them. Or at least minimize the evil nature of their crimes.

This unprovoked attack on a total stranger who was by all accounts minding his own business was outrageous, and evil. Yet Michael Nutter called the crime "stupid," and a local expert from the University of Pennsylvania calls it "senseless":

Only one of the attackers - identified by police at Kinta Stanton, 16, a 10th-grader at Simon Gratz - has been arrested. He's facing murder charges and has been charged as an adult.

"It's beyond tragic. It's very senseless that this ignorant behavior could yield such tragic results,"said Chad Dion Lassiter, a youth-violence expert and adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice.

Lassiter, who provides violence-prevention training in local schools, said the attacks underscored a need for parents, schools and community members to seriously invest in the lives of children and teen who may be troubled.

"It's something we have to be committed to do and look at it from a mental-health perspective. Something is missing here. There's a lack of moral imperative within the young person," Lassiter said.

"There's a hopelessness, despair, hurt and pain that they're not able to express in manageable actions."

Lassiter said the teens won't realize the magnitude of their actions "until they're sitting in court, and a judge says you're being tried as an adult. They'll never get that moment back, and that family will never get that young man [Conroy] back."

Jennifer Edwards, a 20-year SEPTA cashier who works at the Fern Rock subway station, said she was saddened to hear of Conroy's death but not totally surprised.

"I've seen kids - young kids - attack people on trains for no reason at all," Edwards said. "I try to help people the best I can because I don't want anyone to get hurt." *

And a couple of letter-to-the-editor reactions:

To conclude, without evidence, that this attack was perpetrated "for no reason" is to dismiss the possibility of this being a racial hate crime. Why do we presume that white people can only be perpetrators of racial hate crimes, and not also their victims?

It is amazing how several black youths jumped a white male, and it is not a hate crime. If it were white teens who jumped a black male, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would have been on the first plane to Killadelphia.

I think these punks should be tried as adults when caught, and also seek the death penalty. But I'm sure they will get off because they come from a broken home.

Anyway, regardless of what happens to the feral juvenile they've charged (who so far has refused to rat on the members of his pack), the story is bad for local business, and will die a local death. No national politician will touch it, even though we have two of them right here looking for votes in the presidential race.

I see the Conroy shooting as an excellent argument for concealed carry. But then, I like to shoot off my mouth.

Instead of being glibly smug about how potential victims should "carry a gun," let's hypothesize for a moment, and suppose that Mr. Conroy had been armed, and that once the blows started, had managed to draw and fire. I think it's very likely that he'd have been arrested, and that there would have been howls and protests on the left, as well as demands that he face prison time.

Seriously. A 36 year old white man guns down black "school children" (which is a technically correct term for the thugs involved). At minimum, he'd have been called a "subway vigilante," and it would not surprise me to see certain activists demand that he be charged with a hate crime. There would be calls to do something to stop gun violence against children.

Oh, the hypocrisy.

Every time I look at anything closely, I see politically charged double standards involving activists.

OK, so much for the local murder that no one wants to see as a hate crime and the powers that be would like to see go away.

The national story (involving a murderous California teen who shot an effeminate gay schoolmate) now has its own Wiki entry. Both presidential candidates have weighed in on it.

Hillary:

I was deeply saddened by the recent death of 15-year-old Lawrence King who was killed at his school in Oxnard, CA. No one should face intimidation or violence, particularly at school, because of their sexual orientation or the way they express their gender identity.

We must finally enact a federal hate crimes law to ensure that gay, lesbian and transgender Americans are protected against violent, bias-motivated crimes. We must send a unified message that hate-based crime will not be tolerated.

It was heartbreaking to learn about Lawrence King's death, and my thoughts and prayers go out to his family. King's senseless death is a tragic example of the corrosive effect that bigotry and fear can have in our society. It's also an urgent reminder that we need to do more in our schools to foster tolerance and an acceptance of diversity; that we must enact a federal hate crimes law that protects all LGBT Americans; and that we must recommit ourselves to becoming active and engaged parents, citizens and neighbors, so that bias and bigotry cannot take hold in the first place. We all have a responsibility to help this nation live up to its founding promise of equality for all.

Isn't it as stupid and senseless to murder an apparently amorous classmate for wearing makeup and high heels as it is to jump an anonymous man and beat him to death?

I mean, suppose Conroy had been wearing makeup and heels and the same thing happened to him. Would that have made his death more of a hate crime?

Why? Because he looked like someone's idea of "gay" in addition to being white?

The main difference between these two killings is that the gay victim was well known to his killer. So well known that the killer seems to have had a twisted belief that by killing King, he was saving his honor:

Earlier this year, some of Brandon's classmates say, Larry began "hitting" on him and remarking for all to hear that he thought Brandon was "cute." Other boys then ribbed Brandon by saying he must be gay himself.

Brandon dismissed Larry with an obscenity, the students say, but it didn't stop there. They say the kid wearing eye shadow had gotten under the skin of the Young Marine.

Michael Sweeney, an eighth-grader at E.O. Green, picked up on the whispering that followed -- the rumors that were so extreme, so out there, that they had to be bogus.

"Brandon told this one girl that he was going to kill Larry," Michael said. "She didn't tell the principal. I didn't, either, after I heard about it. I thought it was a joke."

Larry was shot the next day.

The actual events leading up to King's death involved weeks of tension between the perp and victim; McInerney couldn't tolerate King's open homosexuality, and King couldn't pass up the opportunity to respond to McInerney's bullying by hitting on McInerney (in what way, or to what extent, has not been particularly well-reported).

Of course, there is no advance that King could have made, in jest or otherwise, that would justify his murder. However, evidence surrounding the case suggests that King's homosexuality was not the core issue behind his eventual demise; rather, it was McInerney's profound fear of being labeled a homosexual combined with his willingness to resolve problems with violence.

Fascinatingly, if the boy does suffer from true homophobia, the question is raised whether charging him with a hate crime isn't essentially punishing him for having a mental disease. This is not to say that his fear of homosexuality should be a defense, but enhancing criminal punishment for having a mental disease is hardly the way our legal system has traditionally operated.

Sean Kinsell notes the difficulties of this case:

In a free society, the authorities aren't policing everywhere you go and everything you do. You can go about your business as a law-abiding citizen without being watched all the time, but the trade-off is that you can get yourself into dangerous situations when no one is in a position to help you. It only takes minutes to get beaten up, and less than that to get stabbed or shot. (In this particular case, one of the issues is how McInerney managed to get a gun onto school property undetected; but then, if he was that much bigger and stronger than King, he could probably have broken his neck or banged his head hard enough to kill him without a weapon.) Eliminating the real dangers gays face is not going to be achieved by griping that they shouldn't exist and teaching young people to pretend they don't.

It's a troubling case, and so is the unprovoked murder of a man on his way to work.

But again, would the wearing of heels and makeup have been considered "provocation"?

Not enough to justify a murder.

Murder is murder, and legal system should punish murderers, whether their victims are murdered for being white, for being gay, for wearing makeup, for being "homeless," or for going to work at Starbucks.

Unless the goal is to breed resentment and inject dishonesty and double standards into the process, I don't think the hate crime approach is helpful in any of these cases.

MORE: Glenn Reynolds links this report about a Pizza Hut employee who violated corporate policy in carrying a gun he used to defend himself.

This makes me wonder about Starbucks' policy, with which I am unfamiliar. But suppose that Mr. Conroy would have been fired for carrying a gun and that he never carried a gun for that reason. It could be argued that such a policy has the opposite effect of that intended.

(It's not as if they don't have armed robberies at Starbucks.)