If you have no argument, just use threats
A Republican state lawmaker from Texas has caused outcry for tweeting “My AR is ready for you Robert Francis” after Democratic presidential candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke pledged to ban and confiscate AR-15 military-style rifles.
That’s no good. People shouldn’t have military weapons if they’re not in the military, people shouldn’t threaten to kill people who want laws saying we can’t have military weapons if we’re not in the military. That’s no good at all.
Within hours, Twitter took down Briscoe Cain’s post, which O’Rourke’s campaign labeled a “death threat”. “It violates our rules for threats of violence,” a company spokesperson said late Thursday night.
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Earlier, Cain, a 34-year-old “conservative Republican” lawyer who represents a district outside of Houston, Texas, had mocked Twitter users who called his comment a threat of violence. “You’re an idiot,” he told one commenter. When O’Rourke called the tweet a death threat, and said it proved that neither Cain nor anyone else should own an AR-15, Cain responded, “You’re a child, Robert Francis.”
Because telling someone your assault rifle is “ready for you” is so adult?
Cain, who did not respond to an emailed request for comment, appeared to defend his tweet as simply a version of a popular slogan among American gun rights activists – “Come and take it” – which generically dares any politician to try to confiscate their guns.
Meaning, if any politician tries, the brave gun rights activists will shoot them. That is indeed a threat of violence. That’s the whole point of it.
This is no good.
Wow. Threaten a man, and stuff happens to you. Twitter notices.
And don’t let’s forget that Robert Frances was also a pair of names shared by a Kennedy…
Interesting catch, Seth. That had not occurred to me.
That guy should not have any guns. And the name-calling is kindergarten sandbox maturity. He should definitely not have any guns. And he should be disciplined by the state bar.
The “first name, middle name” thing seems to be a popular way for angry parents in the South to let their kids know they are in big trouble and had better listen. (Maybe it’s more widespread than that. I was unfamiliar with it until moving to Alabama.) I took the phrasing to be condescending in that way, referring to O’Rourke as a child. Then I saw he literally called O’Rourke a child later, which cinched it for me.
Sackbut, that was commonplace where I grew up, too, which was Oklahoma, which isn’t really south but often identifies as south.
@iknklast But what are Oklahoma’s pronouns?
Pronouns would be a good name for a baseball team. I’s on first, Her’s on second Theirs’s on third. It’s so obvious it’s probably been done.
And then police did something about it, right? …Right?
Iknklast, I can’t take original credit for the observation; I just noticed someone else’s remark to that effect on Twitter. It could well be a coincidence, but the parallels (even if unintended, through ignorance or apathy) are still striking.
And no, Holms, the police did nothing, because (as Ken White so helpfully explained), Cain’s words were not a ‘true threat’ since a mythical ‘reasonable person’ would not have taken them as an imminent call to lawless violence. (Note that even in cases where someone’s words do, in fact, incite immediate lawless violence—such as with the odd Trump rally where a protester is rather aggressively removed by self-identified security amateurs, the inciting speech can *still* fail the ‘reasonable person’ test.)
As a Canadian who grew up in America and now lives in Germany, I must say that the American interpretation of free expression, as with its interpretation of health care and guns, only really makes sense if you are completely ignorant of how any other country in the world manages to operate. Every advocate of these different concepts seems to think that if the US budges one inch on their pet issue, it will inevitably lead to Nazi Germany (even if they, like Ken, can see how absurd that position is when applied to an issue they aren’t as in-the-weeds on, such as guns).
I’m not going to defend Ken White because he’s a big boy quite capable of looking after himself. I’ll note that he has made the point many times that explaining what the law is, is not the same thing as discussing what the law should be, let alone discussing the ethics of a given situation.
Yeah, I think this one falls sort of in the zone of the bulls-eye that Sarah Palin put on Gabby Giffords. When Giffords (and others) actually got shot, everyone rushed to the defense of Sarah, even many who despised the self-proclaimed “Mama Grizzly”. The bulls-eye was reprehensible but not illegal.
While I do favor holding people responsible for irresponsible speech, I would not want to swing to the other extreme where England has libel laws that protect disgusting corporations from true speech unless the person can prove to a very high standard that what they said was true. There must be a middle ground, and I imagine there are countries in that middle ground, but I don’t know enough about the laws of other countries to know for sure who is doing what on this issue.
I also don’t favor those places where they lock up people like David Irving for denying the Holocaust, because it is easy to set in a dogma that can’t be challenged at the cost of imprisonment, and because I think it gains them sympathy for their odious views from the masses. People often think “there must be something to it if they won’t even let it be said”. (Which may end up being the downfall of the trans activists, cross fingers)
Of course, just because it isn’t a prosecutable “true threat” doesn’t mean that Twitter can’t ban you for it. Twitter isn’t bound by the 1st Amendment and bans people for all sorts of speech that the government couldn’t punish. From past Twitter controversies, my impression is that Twitter interprets threats in a broader way. Though like all social media companies, it is hopelessly inconsistent.