Just owning guns isn't (or at least shouldn't be) enough to be a credible threat -- that's perfectly legal. And I say that as somebody who's really not a big fan of guns.
No, but having access to guns makes it a lot more likely that you can carry out any threat to shoot someone, don't you think? He's not being prosecuted for legally owning guns, he's being (potentially) prosecuted for threatening to use them in an illegal way. It would be the same if you threatened to beat someone to death with a claw hammer, you're not being charged with possessing a hammer.
Pointing a gun has nothing to do with this scenario either. You want to regulate words, and ultimately thoughts. That's a big no-no.
If I am a gangster and I tell one of my henchmen to go out and break someone's legs because they owe me some money, I am guilty of a crime even if I don't even see the victim. If the police manage to record me saying this, or get a witness to prove I did, my "speech" will led to my being convicted of a crime, and therefore regulated.
What you're unwilling to understand is that words can have multiple meanings. Just yesterday I heard the words "Kill that guy!". A violent threat, right? Nah. It was a kid playing a video game, the "guy" a collection of pixels, and "kill" didn't involve taking anyone's or anything's life. People engage in hyperbole. People speak in idioms. Insisting on parsing everything everyone says as being literal is rather stupid when it's demonstrably true that people often express a desire or intent to do things that they don't actually have a desire or intent to do.
Yesterday I shot forty people in the head. But it was in a video game. So there's no such thing as murder in real life.
You're not a perp until you've done something, or at least set in motion clear actions towards doing something.
But he has done something. Communicating threats is a crime in most states.
But the "libertarians" (i.e. Randroids) here don't consider that a crime on principle. It is just "free speech" until you actually carry out your threat, which is one reason why the idea of absolute free speech is such nonsense. People have seriously argued here that the person who hires a hitman to kill someone else hasn't committed any offence themselves.
You are assuming this was an imaginary threat without any knowledge of the details involved. Or do you think that real threats against children are somehow acceptable?
Oh, I forgot, this is slashdot and any form of preventative law is nannying pussy socialism. A man has the right to carry, draw and fire his gun into anyone's face and it would be immoral to even consider stopping him until the trigger is actually pulled.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about: one person can terrorise another without there being any political motivation involved e.g. a serial killer torturing a victim to death for his own amusement.
But because your post is anti-government it's modded up. Congratulations on adding a tiny bit more stupid to the vast ocean of stupid that is the internet.
And one million dollar bail is quite high even if he had said to a specific kid that he was going to kill them.
The bail idea is ridiculous, it just favours the rich and bail bond companies. If the allegations are that serious you should be charged and kept on remand in prison, then tried as quickly as possible.
Terrorist threats have nothing to do with terrorism.
Sorry, what?
The term has been used for many decades before the Patriot act was even imagined
Yes, and prior to 9/11'ish it was generally reserved for acts that sought a political goal through terror. It's only been very recently that the political motivation was dropped as a requirement.
When someone like that not-to-be-named mass murdering cunt in Norway kills a load of teenagers, I don't give a flying fuck whether it's called terrorism or an insane fucking joke as long as the perpetrator gets to spend the rest of his life rotting in solitary confinement in jail.
Him and people like bin Laden are indistinguishable from criminal murderers, their motivations or excuses are of no interest.
No he doesn't, but he does know that this is all about ZOG engaging in censorship and mind control prior to surrendering humanity totally to the lizard overlords orbiting Venus in their invisible Deathships.
thoughtcrime Big Brother doubleplus ungood political correctness gone mad Orwellian nightmare Minority Report pre-cog Richlieu give me two lines and I will find enough to hang anyone Ayn Rand government laws make everyone a criminal Soviet Russia Nazi Germany moral disintegration so-called hate speech fluoride in the water turning everyone homosexual
Back when I was a boy, when I was pissed at someone, I could talk with friends and say, "I wanna kill that bastard."
Yes, but back in the good old days you probably wouldn't have written a letter for publication in a popular newspaper saying that (or you would at least have worded it rather more carefully).
Posting something on the internet is the same thing.
He said he would be willing to kill to get some shoes. That's not a crime. That's a joke. Like if I said, "I could kill for some ice cream."
And obviously the police and courts have no concept of "a joke" and can use any casual piece of speech to imprison anyone for life in the 1984-style dystopia that we live in. (If we're paranoid fantasists).
I haven't see what the guy posted on ESPN, but my first assumption it was more in the same vein as the first statement I made
Translation: I have no idea of the facts, but will choose anyway to believe an interpretation that matches my prejudices.
I love how on slashdot everyone parrots "infringement of free speech" without even considering that there might be an alternative explanation to The Government Trying To Destroy Liberty. Such as, the clown here was serious.
As I think about it, we shouldn't be doing bail at all anymore. People awaiting trial have yet to be found guilty of a crime and so should not be held at all. In the old days, we did that only to assure they would show for trial, then we started offering bail recognizing that jail wasn't really the right answer but needing something to encourage the defendant not to run.
Fine and dandy, but these days we have tracking ankle bracelets.If a person cannot or just does not want to come up with bail, the only reasonable solution is to fit them with the bracelet and let them go about their life until the trial.
Tracking ankle bracelets are trivially circumvented by 14 year olds with ASBOs (or whatever they're called now) here in the UK, so I wouldn't fancy relying on them to stop a ruthless adult murderer ffrom disappearing.
Um, what? You killed someone, but ah, no worries, head on back out on $100K bail, we'll see what happens. But whoa, you talk about it and we're hoisting that ten times! How dare you talk about it - you should have just done it and gotten out cheaper.
Most murders are impulsive one-off acts. I'm sure that if a professional hitman or psychotic serial killer was arrested they wouldn't get bail at all.
I'd rather have Jimmy Carter than Ronald McDonald Reagan any day of the week. It wasn't Carter's fault that your fabulous US military fucked up the Iran hostage thing.
If this was a fucking software discussion I'd be calling you a paid shill for the nuclear power industry now and getting modded up for it.
But as the slashdot groupthink is that anyone who is not 100% a cheerleader for nuclear power is some tree-hugging commie, we all know what will happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Just owning guns isn't (or at least shouldn't be) enough to be a credible threat -- that's perfectly legal. And I say that as somebody who's really not a big fan of guns.
No, but having access to guns makes it a lot more likely that you can carry out any threat to shoot someone, don't you think? He's not being prosecuted for legally owning guns, he's being (potentially) prosecuted for threatening to use them in an illegal way. It would be the same if you threatened to beat someone to death with a claw hammer, you're not being charged with possessing a hammer.
Pointing a gun has nothing to do with this scenario either. You want to regulate words, and ultimately thoughts. That's a big no-no.
If I am a gangster and I tell one of my henchmen to go out and break someone's legs because they owe me some money, I am guilty of a crime even if I don't even see the victim. If the police manage to record me saying this, or get a witness to prove I did, my "speech" will led to my being convicted of a crime, and therefore regulated.
What you're unwilling to understand is that words can have multiple meanings. Just yesterday I heard the words "Kill that guy!". A violent threat, right? Nah. It was a kid playing a video game, the "guy" a collection of pixels, and "kill" didn't involve taking anyone's or anything's life. People engage in hyperbole. People speak in idioms. Insisting on parsing everything everyone says as being literal is rather stupid when it's demonstrably true that people often express a desire or intent to do things that they don't actually have a desire or intent to do.
Yesterday I shot forty people in the head. But it was in a video game. So there's no such thing as murder in real life.
You're not a perp until you've done something, or at least set in motion clear actions towards doing something.
But he has done something. Communicating threats is a crime in most states.
But the "libertarians" (i.e. Randroids) here don't consider that a crime on principle. It is just "free speech" until you actually carry out your threat, which is one reason why the idea of absolute free speech is such nonsense. People have seriously argued here that the person who hires a hitman to kill someone else hasn't committed any offence themselves.
Say this guy did do what he said he'd do. Who was he terrorising?
Sure he'd be murdering, but not inciting terror specifically.
You don't think that, possibly, the children would feel a little bit scared? Never mind their families.
You really are a priceless twat.
You are assuming this was an imaginary threat without any knowledge of the details involved. Or do you think that real threats against children are somehow acceptable?
Oh, I forgot, this is slashdot and any form of preventative law is nannying pussy socialism. A man has the right to carry, draw and fire his gun into anyone's face and it would be immoral to even consider stopping him until the trigger is actually pulled.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about: one person can terrorise another without there being any political motivation involved e.g. a serial killer torturing a victim to death for his own amusement.
But because your post is anti-government it's modded up. Congratulations on adding a tiny bit more stupid to the vast ocean of stupid that is the internet.
And one million dollar bail is quite high even if he had said to a specific kid that he was going to kill them.
The bail idea is ridiculous, it just favours the rich and bail bond companies. If the allegations are that serious you should be charged and kept on remand in prison, then tried as quickly as possible.
That said, the arrest is still bonkers.
Ah good, finally someone who actually knows the details of this case. Oh, wait...
Terrorizing != terrorism
However, someone doing the terrorizing could accurately be callled a terrorist in English. It's just playing with words.
Terrorist threats have nothing to do with terrorism.
Sorry, what?
The term has been used for many decades before the Patriot act was even imagined
Yes, and prior to 9/11'ish it was generally reserved for acts that sought a political goal through terror. It's only been very recently that the political motivation was dropped as a requirement.
When someone like that not-to-be-named mass murdering cunt in Norway kills a load of teenagers, I don't give a flying fuck whether it's called terrorism or an insane fucking joke as long as the perpetrator gets to spend the rest of his life rotting in solitary confinement in jail.
Him and people like bin Laden are indistinguishable from criminal murderers, their motivations or excuses are of no interest.
Oh please.. It's an expression.
Do you know exactly what was said?
No he doesn't, but he does know that this is all about ZOG engaging in censorship and mind control prior to surrendering humanity totally to the lizard overlords orbiting Venus in their invisible Deathships.
thoughtcrime Big Brother doubleplus ungood political correctness gone mad Orwellian nightmare Minority Report pre-cog Richlieu give me two lines and I will find enough to hang anyone Ayn Rand government laws make everyone a criminal Soviet Russia Nazi Germany moral disintegration so-called hate speech fluoride in the water turning everyone homosexual
Back when I was a boy, when I was pissed at someone, I could talk with friends and say, "I wanna kill that bastard."
Yes, but back in the good old days you probably wouldn't have written a letter for publication in a popular newspaper saying that (or you would at least have worded it rather more carefully).
Posting something on the internet is the same thing.
>>>the actual crime he did commit.
He said he would be willing to kill to get some shoes. That's not a crime. That's a joke. Like if I said, "I could kill for some ice cream."
And obviously the police and courts have no concept of "a joke" and can use any casual piece of speech to imprison anyone for life in the 1984-style dystopia that we live in. (If we're paranoid fantasists).
I haven't see what the guy posted on ESPN, but my first assumption it was more in the same vein as the first statement I made
Translation: I have no idea of the facts, but will choose anyway to believe an interpretation that matches my prejudices.
I love how on slashdot everyone parrots "infringement of free speech" without even considering that there might be an alternative explanation to The Government Trying To Destroy Liberty. Such as, the clown here was serious.
As I think about it, we shouldn't be doing bail at all anymore. People awaiting trial have yet to be found guilty of a crime and so should not be held at all. In the old days, we did that only to assure they would show for trial, then we started offering bail recognizing that jail wasn't really the right answer but needing something to encourage the defendant not to run.
Fine and dandy, but these days we have tracking ankle bracelets.If a person cannot or just does not want to come up with bail, the only reasonable solution is to fit them with the bracelet and let them go about their life until the trial.
Tracking ankle bracelets are trivially circumvented by 14 year olds with ASBOs (or whatever they're called now) here in the UK, so I wouldn't fancy relying on them to stop a ruthless adult murderer ffrom disappearing.
Um, what? You killed someone, but ah, no worries, head on back out on $100K bail, we'll see what happens. But whoa, you talk about it and we're hoisting that ten times! How dare you talk about it - you should have just done it and gotten out cheaper.
Most murders are impulsive one-off acts. I'm sure that if a professional hitman or psychotic serial killer was arrested they wouldn't get bail at all.
"news worthiness" = can you instill fear, doubt or anger in your audience?
Well in that case there would never be any Linux stories on slashdot would there?
Because apparently american reactors just work.
They're designed by Apple? God help us all.
I was so scared until I recalled that more people died at Chappaquiddick than at Three Mile Island.
More people died in the 1918 flu pandemic than in the First World War, so therefore the war wasn't that bad.
It takes a Jimmy Carter to get a Ronald Reagan.
Just sayin.
I'd rather have Jimmy Carter than Ronald McDonald Reagan any day of the week. It wasn't Carter's fault that your fabulous US military fucked up the Iran hostage thing.
Ronald Reagan was also a terrible actor.
As well as being a terrible politician and a truly evil president.
At least the music was better back then. Now get off my lawn.
Implying Three Mile Island was even a big deal.
If this was a fucking software discussion I'd be calling you a paid shill for the nuclear power industry now and getting modded up for it.
But as the slashdot groupthink is that anyone who is not 100% a cheerleader for nuclear power is some tree-hugging commie, we all know what will happen.