Mississippi Senators are working to pass a new bill that contains some much-needed blue teeth.

Senate Bill 2469 would make any crimes against emergency personnel because of their service work officially hate crimes under state law.

The current hate crimes law doubles penalties for criminals who target people based on their race, religion, ethnicity or gender.

The “Blue Lives Matter” law, as it has been dubbed, is aiming to punish anyone targeting police, fire and emergency medical responders.

Across the country, police have been targeted and killed on several occasions; some of the shooters seem to be upset over how they viewed police were treating black Americans.

The cases followed a number of police officer involved shootings.

We applaud the effort of senators.

Certainly our police, fire and emergency medical responders need great protection and toughening up the laws makes sense.

That said, however, we would also applaud an effort to increase penalties for any violent crimes, not just ones that are dubbed “hate crimes.”

In our book, if you pull out a gun and shoot at another person, draw a knife and cut another human being, hate is involved — whether momentary hate caused by rage or deep-seated hate.

Until we begin locking up violent criminals and keeping them locked up, all lives — black, white, brown and blue — will be at risk.