this whole tjic thing

[totient]

Making the rounds of the blogosphere: A gun nut (and I mean that in the kindest way) in Arlington MA made a blog post the title of which I can most charitably describe as stupid and the cops came and impounded all his guns. People are getting upset about his freedom of speech, or his right to bear arms, and posting pictures from Spartacus in solidarity.

The blog has been taken down, and I don't have a copy of the whole post, so I can't judge whether it's reasonable to prosecute him for threatening or inciting to violence or conspiracy, all of which are IMO perfectly reasonable for a society to consider crimes of speech. And I also know, because TJIC is a friend of mine, that some of his weaponry is beyond what I feel requires constitutional protection.

But the episode makes me profoundly uncomfortable anyway, because there aren't any charges. I don't like that cops can just take anything they feel like, handwave that there might be a trial about it someday, and then you never see your stuff again. I don't know if TJIC should get his guns back or not, but I do know that a jury should decide that, not a police chief.

Comments

[frotz.livejournal.com]

My take on the blog entry was that it was clearly satire. Arguably tasteless in the extreme, but satire. (Being used to his style of humor may or may not be required.)

[jered]

Yeah, what s/he said. It was significantly more tasteless than his usual inflammatory commentary, but clearly not a threat. I'm very disturbed by the whole situation.

As I said to TJIC privately, the big problem is that he's not charging for the privilege to listen to his rants. What is says is a whole lot less outrageous, on the whole, than what Limbaugh or Beck or Palin (or Santorum, or etc.) says. He's just being persecuted because he's not a professional. I find that even more upsetting -- it's ok to say controversial things as long as at least 50,000 people listen to you, but you get arrested if fewer do?

[scliff.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it was not clearly satire. It was especially not clearly satire when followed up with a long screed justifying assassination. What it looked like to me was someone accidentally letting their true feelings show a little too clearly, and those feeling being beyond the social norm.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this.

[jered]

Yes, you're correct. Not satire, but not a threat (imho).

[foms.livejournal.com]

I think that, if I am recognizing this, I read something about the post, weeks ago. When did this other part happen?

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

The other part was pretty soon after the first part; I'm just slow to notice.

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

You might be able to look up the blog on http://waybackmachine.org/

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

no, they honor robots.txt retroactively, so it's unavailable.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I don't know if TJIC should get his guns back or not, but I do know that a jury should decide that, not a police chief.

This. If what he said was demonstrably awful enough to cause a panel of laypeople to go "...dude, I'd feel a lot safer if you didn't have those," that's at least FAIR, and not a police state.

[imvfd.livejournal.com]

I don't like that cops can just take anything they feel like, handwave that there might be a trial about it someday, and then you never see your stuff again.

This has been pissing me off ever since it came into effect as part of the War on Drugs. You know, so the cops could take control of crackhouses.

What's particularly problematic is that if I recall correctly, this went all the way to the Supreme Court and was found to be constitutional since it is the property, not the person, that is being accused of legal transgression (!!!) and thus can be guilty until proven innocent. *headdesk*

[fin9901.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. Accusing inanimate objects of crimes is one of the worst legal inventions of the 20th century, and has been used to justify such mind-boggling bullshit as pulling someone off the street, finding they have "too much" cash on them, and seizing the cash, no charges, trial, judge, jury, or anything.

In more civilized cultures, that's known as highway robbery.