Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Brady, a Democrat from Philadelphia, told CNN that he also plans to take legislative action. He will introduce a bill that would make it a crime for anyone to use language or symbols that could be seen as threatening or violent against a federal official, including a member of Congress.Really? I gather that pesty First Amendment is too much of a bother for you. Would "we need to remove Congressman Goomer from Congress" be enough of a threat for you?
Then there is Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, who is nothing if not unrelenting in her quest to remove firearms from the hands of Americans. She is smoking crack if she thinks that any gun control bill that she sponsors will go anywhere. There are enough Democrats in Congress who remember what happened the last time that they rammed through a gun control measure, let alone the fact that the Republicans control the House and have enough votes in the Senate to block a gun control bil.
The chances are greater that I'll fit into a size four dress and replace Cote d'Pablo on NCIS than any gun-control bill drafted by Rep. McCarthy has of making it into law.
8 comments:
I don't think that anyone can shoot 19 innocent people and not be crazy. Some in the media are trying to turn this into a blame game already, hypothesizing different motives, as if there is a rational cause for an irrational effect. In the end, there is only mental illness to explain what is otherwise inexplicable.
I would be interested in your ideas on preventing gun sales to those who are unstable.
John, if someone is unstable (as you put it), but has never been diagnosed as such, then I don't see how a sale can be prevented. The gunshops I frequent won't sell to someone who appears to be a few bricks short of a full hod, but they would be within their rights to complete such a sale.
The First Amendment was written to protect political speech, not to protect thugs threatening violence. Or as one early Supreme Court justice put it, "the First Amendment does not protect the right to yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theatre". All (every single one) of our Western allies has laws prohibiting speech that threatens violence. Only the United States allows speech that threatens violence, due to U.S. Supreme Court rulings that state that only threats that target a specific person for a specific act of violence are actionable under current laws prohibiting threats of violence.
In short, Rep. Brady is an idiot, but he's an idiot only because he doesn't realize that a) specific threats of violence are *already* illegal, and b) a more general law outlawing general threats of violence has already been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court and thus attempting to pass a new law of that type is futile.
Of course, given that this shooter killed a member of the U.S. Judiciary and the Supremes are members of said judiciary, perhaps that would change their mind if they danced on Rep. Brady's law, but anyhow...
As for whether a law prohibiting general threats of violence is "tyranny" -- is Australia a tyranny? Is Canada a tyranny? Uhm, no. As long as a jury decides what is a threat of violence, tyranny is not possible.
My own blog has always complied with Canadian laws regarding threats of violence (not so with Canadian laws regarding libel, but that's another issue). I haven't noticed that it has curtailed my ability to express myself politically...
- Badtux the Free Speech Penguin
BadTux, there was a case of a soldier in the Long Bihn Jail during the Vietnam War who was asked if he had any bad thoughts towards the chain of command. He said something like "hell, if LBJ we here, I'd punch him" and he then got to spend a few years in prison for uttering a threat against the president.
I agree with the idea that only specific threats should be illegal.
In most nations, saying "Kill the Jews" is illegal. As far as I know, this is the only Western nation where it's legal to make that threat against a class of people. What is your opinion of that fact? Should it be illegal? When Ann Coulter says that liberals should be exterminated, what is the difference between her saying that, and Hitler saying that the Jews should be exterminated? Other than the gender of the person making the statement, and the group being targeted for extermination?
My point is that threats of violence against entire classes of people are just as much threats of violence as a threat against a specific person, and are treated as such in civilized nations -- even civilized nations that have guarantees of free speech *far* stricter than here in America. For example, in most of Europe, if you are fired for criticizing your boss on your personal blog outside company time, it is a violation of your right of free speech and you are re-instated. Americans have no such right of free speech...
- Badtux the Non-threatening Penguin
Our right of free speech is that the government cannot stop us from speaking our minds.
No such guarantee exists with regards to any other parties, with some exceptions that come under retaliation provisions of other laws.
I don't much care for the fact that Coulter can call for exterminating liberals (and I can call for her to be hunted down and flayed alive). But, for example, would I trust the government to regulate that? I think it is obvious that even referring to Bush as "Chimpy" would have subjected people to sanctions during his administration, while Coulter's screeds would have been untouched.
So given that, I'll take my chances.
So you're saying that in France, Britain, the UK, Canada, people cannot speak their minds about things political? Uhm, have you ever even *read* the Independent(UK) or Guardian(UK)?! They regularly criticize their government in ways that would send the editors of the Washington Post to their fainting couch, and that's in the nation with the strictest libel laws and official secrets laws on the planet!
Or are you saying that a document that the Chimperor derided as "just a piece of paper" somehow stopped him from jailing his opponents? And how, exactly, did it do that -- via black magic? The chimperor didn't jail his opponents because he didn't think he could get away with it without widespread revulsion that would lead to Republicans being swept from office and his own impeachment -- not because of a piece of paper that he regularly derided and ignored.
The above, BTW, is why the Australian constitution *explicitly* has no Bill of Rights. Their notion is that an unpopular item in a Bill of Rights would simply be ignored (sort of like the 2nd Amendment, or like the entire Bill of Rights if you happen to be a swarthy heathen furriner), and a popular item would be complied with just because, so what's the point? I haven't noticed that this lack of a Bill of Rights has turned Australia into a hellhole of repression, but maybe you have information I don't have?
- Badtux the Snarky Bottom Line Penguin
BadTux, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree about this one.
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