It is illegal to threaten violence against another person.

[kentuck]

Why isn't the law upheld?

If someone threatens Sarah Palin, then they should be arrested. If someone threatens Barack Obama, then they should be arrested. Threats of violence is not the same as free speech.

Name-calling and ridicule is not the same as threatening bodily harm. No matter how cruel the name-calling, that is fair game.

But it is not fair game to strap a gun to your leg and take it to a political event. That is threatening. That is not simply showing your support for the 2nd Amendment. Especially when you are carrying a sign or wearing a T-shirt talking about blood and the tree of liberty. Why are not these people arrested?

Isn't it time for both sides to make this distinction? It doesn't matter if the left uses vile language against the right or vice-versa, so long as it does not deteriorate into threats of violence.

There are over 300 million people in this country. There will never be a consensus about anything. That is the reality. But there is the rule of law. If these folks are not held accountable, it will only get worse.

[DCKit]

1. The rules are different for Sharon Angle than peace activists.

Whenever they spew their hate, it's "a metaphor", whenever people call for justice (like in the Holy Bible), it's a call to bloody revolution.

You gotta keep up.

[raccoon]

2. Let's get this on Greatest, yall!

"But it is not fair game to strap a gun to your leg and take it to a political event. That is threatening. That is not simply showing your support for the 2nd Amendment. Especially when you are carrying a sign or wearing a T-shirt talking about blood and the tree of liberty. Why are not these people arrested? "

Amen to that!

[patricia92243]

3. Crud - hit the wrong button - meant to recommend and hit unrecoomend instead :(

[madokie]

5. I fixed it for you

:hi:

[txlibdem]

25. I added mine as well, no harm done

I've done that too. I sometimes wish there was a Homer Simpson smiley: "Doh!"

[Jamastiene]

4. K&R

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

6. The distinction is that, aside from the political gathering, nothing is different...

In many states, open carry is freely allowed.
In most states, concealed carry is permitted or allowed.
In every state, distateful signs of protest are allowed.

Wearing the gun can be described as 100% legal in these areas every day. Generally, the law states if no crimes are being committed then carrying a firearm is not inciting panic or threatening anybody. I agree, that the combination of such acts is certainly potent and intimidating... but since each individual act itself is not a crime then there is no effective charge with which to arrest somebody. Despite how the protests make somebody FEEL threatened the law is quantitative in how defines threats.

Perhaps a new law needs written that forbids such specific combinations. ?

[salinen]

7. Remember Bush rallies?

you could carry a gun, but not the wrong T-shirt.

[txlibdem]

28. Adding my 2 cents in agreement

Remember the G-20 summit? Protesters were kept out of sight and still got roughed up and arrested. Rethugs show their true face.

Toronto Police Sgt. Tim Burrows said before Saturday's protest that authorities were pleased by the demonstrators' orderly behavior. Hundreds of protesters moved through Toronto's streets Friday, but police in riot gear intercepted them, preventing them from getting near the summit security zone downtown.

Ontario's provincial government quietly passed a regulation earlier this month allowing police to arrest anyone who refuses to show identification or submit to searches if they come within five yards of a security fence.

Toronto's downtown resembles a fortress, with a big steel and concrete fence protecting the summit site.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37947986/ns/world_news-americas/

[notesdev]

8. Careful there

a threat needs to be specific (as Loughner's threats apparently were) in order to be legally actionable. Making illegal any perceived threat comes with it a dangerous intrusion on our dwindling First Amendment rights.

That is not to say that what you are talking about isn't in poor taste. But be careful, because whatever laws are passed we will have to live with under a GOP President at some point in the future. Before you advocate a change in the law, ask yourself "What would George Bush have done with this power?"

Hard cases make bad law, and there is a very high danger here that the knee jerk reaction to these killings will be yet another set of security state measures that makes everybody miserable and provides no real security at all, but rather merely political cover for those in office.

Just look at the TSA. If someone competent and determined wants to bring down an airplane in mid-flight, there's really very little we could do about it, and the only real way to stop it is for someone to see the person in the act and physically prevent them from carrying it out. But now we have a routine policy of radiating and/or grope-searching people who would never in a million years do such a thing, which doesn't prevent a damn thing but wastes huge amounts of money and violates the rights of innocents again and again and again.

My fear is that these killings will result in more of the same. More security, which just helps to move the point of vulnerability to just outside the security perimeter rather than within it, is only truly effective as an ass-covering measure for law enforcement, so they can disclaim responsibility, say they were doing something. It will cost us money - and if history is any guide, an obscene amount - and make life less pleasant for regular people. Let's not go down that road.

[kentuck]

9. I heard George W Bush called every name in the book...

But I never heard anyone here say they were going to kill him or personally threaten to do bodily harm to him. That is specific and not that difficult to discern, in my opinion. Bush was a moronic, beady-eyed, asshat and worse. I understand your concerns but I do not think they are real.

[notesdev]

10. I have

Having been to quite a few anti-war rallies I've heard some pretty heated rhetoric and seen some very direct signs, including those advocating killing Bush in various ways (shooting, hanging, guillotine, etc.)

There's a big difference between someone blowing off steam by saying such things, and someone saying such things as a prelude to action. You and I can tell the difference, but an ass-covering security state cannot and would not exercise good judgment on a matter of this type, as clearly demonstrated by the excesses of the "war on terror".

A no-fly list for suspected terrorists is a good thing, right? Keeps us safe, prevents people who want to do us harm, yadda yadda. Except in practice, we find journalists on the list whose crime was nothing more than offending someone in power, we have 9-year-olds being denied visas to go visit Disneyland because they share a name with someone on the list - hell, even Ted Kennedy ended up on that list.

Security measures sound good - and are crafted specifically to sound good - but in practice it's a whole different ball of wax.

Isn't the security-surveillance state big enough? If it can't do the job with the tools already available, maybe the job just can't be done.

A civilization can't function if all its rules are designed around what crazy people might do. Crazy people do crazy things and that is an immutable fact of life.

[kentuck]

11. There is a law on the books.

You cannot threaten violence on another person. People should be aware.

[notesdev]

12. Right

and in the case of Loughner, he made clear and repeated specific threats on which the law could have and should have acted.

Instead of proposing new laws, we need to ask why the existing ones weren't enforced.

[kentuck]

14. Yep.

There has to be a lot of room for name calling etc. But there has to be a distinction made between name calling and threats. They are not the same.

[Mark Maker]

13. Does that apply to internet forums?

I can think of an interesting test case.

[kentuck]

15. The Internet does not allow you to threaten violence on another person.

Yes, we are responsible for our words. For example, saying something like, "I hope that son of a bitch chokes to death on a pretzel" is not the same as saying you are going to kill or hurt someone. You have inserted yourself into an act of violence.

[Mark Maker]

19. I see your point, and you've explained the difference well.

What if an individual member of a forum repeatedly threatened another member with physical violence and even after the moderators deleted those messages that individual sent the threats again to the member via private message.

Would the individual making such threats at least qualify for a permanent ban from that forum, or can you envision an extenuating circumstance that would excuse it?

[kentuck]

22. That would not be my call.

There are personal differences between individuals that are settled in fistfights and other ways every day in our society. This is not usually because of political differences as much as personal animosities. There is a distinction. However, it is not civil or acceptable to threaten another individual. It is unfortunate that it is such a part of our society.

[notesdev]

23. If you have documented, personal threats, take it to law enforcement

That's an issue that goes beyond the confines of a forum, and a ban or other forum-based sanction is insufficient. If the person is threatening you, chances are they threaten others as well, so do your part to put a stop to it by putting the lawful process in motion.

[progressiveinaction]

29. Is this a reference

to the William Pitt, bobbolink incident where he wanted to pound her face in?

[kestrel91316]

16. I often advocated the guillotine for the RW fascists, including Bush.

But it was always merely MY OPINION that they deserved that punishment after the trials they so richly deserved, and the convictions that would surely result.

Free speech. Period. NOT death threats.

[kentuck]

17. It is a death threat when you personalize it...

...and threaten to do something violent on your own. Not when you say they deserve the guillotine. There is a distinction.

[Riftaxe]

20. Obviously you meant the Gullitone

made by NERF, it doesn't decapitate just really chafes? :P

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. There's a big difference between hating someone and wishing them dead

I was at Camp Casey 5 or 6 times, marched to the pig farm many times with thousands of other activists and never once saw signs or heard talk of wanting Bush dead. Never.

While he was still in office, his death would have put Cheney in the White House and he was - still is - hated much more than Bush.

We wanted both of them alive to spend the rest of their lives in a jail cell.

There may have been a few isolated death wishes against Bush. But not even close to the extent of the death wishes and threats against Obama. Not even close. To compare the two is just another false equivalence.

[kentuck]

21. The shady area of free speech is in inciting others to violence.

Usually the weak-minded.

It is a false equivalence to compare the threats against Bush with the threats against our present leaders, Obama and Pelosi. There was not a "movement" with guns and flags and direct threats of violence. There were signs and yells and passion and perhaps hatred, but they were exercised as free speech not as "Second Amendment solutions". The problem is not with name-calling or free speech, it is with violence and threats of violence.

[proud2BlibKansan]

24. Exactly

Thank you.

[Capitalocracy]

26. I would accept the guns in support of the second amendment

if anyone was actually threatening the second amendment in any way. Taking guns to health care rallies? Umm...

[4lbs]

31. How true.

Interesting how many more people own guns now than right before President Obama was elected. Also the Faux created panic about the Second Amendment being under assault.

Yeah, that scary black man in the big white house sure did take them guns away did he? :sarcasm:

[indepat]

27. Threatening violence against another person seems to be the exclusive franchise and prerogative of

those who foster and spew RW hatred and divisiveness. :shrug:

[Nye Bevan]

30. Should the people who hung Bush in effigy while he was president have been arrested? (nt)