Should threats toward a set of persons be punished more harshly because that set of persons is more likely to be threatened?
That question could be applied to this, but also to laws against threatening/murdering judges, or cops, or the President of the United States.
From an equal-justice perspective, it seems that all people should have the same protection. But that is not the way our laws are oriented.
The laws seem to express a different principal: that people with legitimate roles in our society should be able to perform those roles without threat, and that those especially susceptible to threat should be protected by additional levels of deterrence.
I believe in equal protection under the law. But the people who pass these laws aren’t operating under abstract notions or justice; they are responding to a judge murdered by a mobster or a cop gunned down in the street.
The tragedy being that if you start treating them like they are move valuable than you, pretty soon they start to think they are better than you.
And acting accordingly.