COLUMBIA, S.C. (WSPA) - A hate crime bill named for Reverend and Senator Clementa C. Pinckney will soon be in front of lawmakers again. South Carolina is one of two states in the country without a hate crime law. Representative Wendell Gilliard has pre-filed the hate crime bill for the third time. The bill passed through the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2021 and 2023, but not the Senate. Gilliard said South Carolina sees hate crimes more often than people think and that people must stand together to put this into law. "There are hate crimes of all types. We're not just pegging this on one incident, even though one of them was a national tragedy, and always will be, but we don't want those type of incidents in the state of South Carolina." The bill was named after Pinckney who died at the hands of a white supremacist in the 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston. Representative Gilliard said there were two senators who were against the bill the last time around. "Those two senators have to understand, sad to say, in one of these hate crimes acts, we had lost one of our own soldiers," Gilliard said. Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey believes the bill should not pass for a number of reasons, one being everyone should be treated the same. "I've got a real problem with treating people differently in the law, and that's exactly what the bill does. I mean, it treats victims differently. It says that some people are more important than others, and that the same type of crime against you may be a lot different than the same type of crime against me," Massey said. Massey said he also worries that the bill will forbid freedom of speech. "Folks who were concerned that the language in the bill could be so broad that it could get into, for instance, pastors preaching and just other speech-related issues." "I don't think the 48 states would even pass a bill to make it law if that was a question of concern," said Gilliard, responding to criticism over freedom of speech. "So the same thing here. Now, that's just rumors. Is just not going to happen." Gilliard said the bill will be the exact same as the one filed previously.