3 ms·

The guy with the FAL hasn't committed any crimes, except for speaking (a threat). He can legally own a firearm, he can legally be aware of his neighbor's habits

The guy with the FAL hasn't committed any crimes, except for speaking (a threat). He can legally own a firearm, he can legally be aware of his neighbor's habits, and he can legally ask his neighbor for some cash. Yet you would be extremely hard-pressed to find a jurisdiction that wouldn't take his statement as criminal, and at the very least use it as grounds to take him into custody. The only thing criminal committed is the speech. My "false consensus building" was the assertion that the vast majority of people are okay with that speech being criminalized. Call it "violent speech", or "speech about violence" or "speech threatening but not directly constituting violence", but at the end of the day, we're talking about speech, criminalized speech, criminalized speech that damn near everyone is in agreement should be criminalized.

naniwaduni 4y ago
> Yet you would be extremely hard-pressed to find a jurisdiction that wouldn't take his statement as criminal, and at the very least use it as grounds to take him into custody. And yet you would be hard-pressed to find a jurisdiction that has ever done so, because that's not really how people make credible threats of violence for extortion. We have a lot of case law around extortion. > The only thing criminal committed is the speech. It is, in many jurisdictions, not illegal to drive. Yet it is generally illegal to drive while underage. Clearly, the only thing criminal committed is being below the driving age.