Webcomic Author Deemed a Terrorist Threat 486
CaptainCarrot writes "Writer/IT contractor Matt Boyd, formerly the man who made up the words for webcomic Mac Hall and who now does the same for his and Ian McConville's new comic Three Panel Soul, was recently fired from his government job. His conversation with a co-worker about a gun he intended to buy for target shooting was overheard by someone in a nearby cubicle. As it was unfortunately the day of the Virginia Tech shootings, the eavesdropper panicked and reported him to management. That was bad enough. But when he used the comic to document the meeting where the reason for his firing was explained, he was visited by representatives of local law enforcement investigating him on suspicion of making a "terroristic threat" using the Internet. No charges have been filed. Yet. FLEEN interviewed Matt about the incident."
chilling effects? (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who is part of the organization of another major webcomic, things like this are frightening. I like to keep my jobs, personally.
First and Second Amendment (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd be interested to hear the NRA's response to this.
Re:If you think about this (Score:5, Interesting)
Good point. You ever notice that the real nutjobs out there that walk into some public area and spray bullets all over the place are always described as "quiet" and "shy" and "oh my, he never talked about guns" and "gee, it's so surprising because he was a really nice boy" etc etc..
I can't remember one time when they talked to people who knew one of these mass murderers after the fact and they've said anything remotely like "well, he did talk about guns a lot" and "he went to the shooting range every week".
I mean seriously, if you were planning to commit such a terrible crime, or any crime for that matter, would you let any details out before you did it? Why would you risk getting busted before the fact? Don't they teach "think like a criminal" to law enforcement anymore?
Actually, I don't suppose they could...then they'd have to march every new graduate right off the dais and into a paddywagon for "criminal thoughts".
after columbine (Score:5, Interesting)
In context it's kind of hilarious because our school had a problem with gang violence (it was the suburbs and middle school, so this wasn't exactly the stuff you see in the movies, but it was pretty bad), that the administration more or less ignored.
Gently down the slippery slope (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's face it, ideas and presumed intentions are becoming criminal. George Orwell called it.
Re:Also (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So...? (Score:2, Interesting)
> Given the odds that some child conceived, somewhere, will have a genetic defect (not to mention prenatal difficulties, post-natal
> trauma, disease,
No, but we should investigate potential threats to my safety. That's sort of what I pay tax for.
Re:Yes, please: think about this (Score:3, Interesting)
And I remember a time where the only person you couldn't threaten to shoot was the president.
I find it interesting that 9/11 was almost 6 years ago.. there's people turning 18 now who were 12 or 13 when 9/11 happened. I dunno about you, but when I was 12 or 13 I had little concept of what freedoms adults had in society. As such, this year a whole generation of kids who have been raised in this 'political climate' are coming of age.
How will they see free speech and protest?
How might they vote?
Whoever responsible for firing him.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gently down the slippery slope (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Also (Score:3, Interesting)
Just FYI, and to show you that the US isn't the only Western country with a fascist government, in Australia... you can.
Under our Glorious Leader's "Work Choices" legislation, companies with less than 100 employees are exempt from the Unfair Dismissal laws. You're pregnant? Bye! You're Asian? Sorry! You're not willing to work unpaid overtime? Seeya!
(Okay, it's not quite that out of hand, but it's getting there. My sister was fired for being a volunteer fire-fighter.)
Re:Hoplophiliacs (Score:4, Interesting)
I honestly have to assume that at least some people who are afraid of guns and gun owners watch a hell of a lot of television. It's also fairly interesting the amount of stereotyping which goes on unchallenged about gun owners and their motivations. In many cases the people who routinely stereotype gun owners are the same ones who get bent out of shape when they, themselves, are stereotyped in some way.
My gun has killed a few hundred soda cans.
That's it.
All of the time and energy that could be spent actually trying to do something to address the completely fucked way this culture has come to regard and often glorify violence is spent in this bizarrely misguided struggle to take guns away from the people least likely to abuse them, and then money and time spent fighting these same efforts - money that could be used for gun safety education or some other effort to address the disturbing turn this country has taken in the past few years. I *am* afraid. I am afraid of the complete lack of ethics or sense of citizenship - by which I mean membership in and ownership of a society - that people seem to feel. I watch people litter and tag their own communities, pissing in the proverbial same river they drink from. It makes no sense to me. I certainly do not think that violence *isn't* a problem or that violence is over-hyped. There's a problem in the US, and it needs addressing - we have become an ugly, decadent culture, somehow...
But the guns follow; they certainly do not lead. If that was the case, we would have had the problems we have now a hundred years ago.
But the tone of this debate isn't helping. I admit that I contribute to it because I get wound up, insulted, and feel threatened sometimes by things I hear others advocate which would directly impact me, personally.
Most disturbing is the sanctimonious "I am so incredibly enlightened" attitude that some people who have an agenda against gun owners seem to have. In particular, this is vexing coming from the Left, who will (rightly) point to the abuses of this administration and its taste for police-state style surveillance measures against its own citizens, the illegal detention of people they refuse to charge with a crime, phony wars fought under completely false pretexts, and so on. And yet they will, in the end, suggest to you that they are entirely comfortable with this government having a completely monopoly on guns. In the end, even the loudest critics of government, would not want to be far from the safety of its embrace. Which is revolting to me, personally, but there it is.
There are people who, even after all of the incompetence, malfeasance, corruption, and crass cruelty of this administration, still trust them more than they do their neighbors. It really bothered me to watch the gun confiscation that went on in New Orleans, even when something that everyone said was impossible happened - and civilization broke down completely. There were few police around at all, but there were enough, apparently, to take guns from homeowners and residents, leaving them at the mercy of looters and criminals. This scenario was, until Katrina, a supposedly paranoid hypothetical that people claimed time and time again would not - and could not - happen in modern America. And yet, it did, and the police did the absolute worst thing they could (The NRA actually sued over this, and won).
If you ask me who we should really be afraid of, it's not peaceable gun owners. It's people who are paranoid and afraid of the freedoms of others. It's not just the serious, organized, politically active gun control advocates either - it's the people who think all homosexuals are potential pedophiles, or people who want to control what you can read or watch or listen to. It's the person in the room who wants all conversations sanitized because someone *might* be offended by something being discussed. Its the busybodies who report their neighbors to H
Re:Also (Score:2, Interesting)