"There is no reliable way of predicting which tiny percentage of the country's many oddballs and malcontents will convert weird ideas into homicidal actions. That reality may be scary, but it is not nearly as scary as a legal regime that strips citizens of their Second Amendment rights based on the opinions they express.
Even worse is a legal regime that imprisons eccentrics on the off chance that they will commit murder someday. Klein regretted that "we no longer lock up the mentally ill," while University of Maryland political scientist William Galston said civil commitment rules should be changed to "shift the balance in favor of protecting the community." Such a shift inevitably would mean locking up more people who pose no real threat to others.
If we can't pre-emptively detain all potential Loughners, maybe we can avoid saying things that might set them off. That censorious impulse, which imposes a madman's veto on speech that might unintentionally provoke "unbalanced people," is manifest not just in ritual calls for rhetorical restraint but in proposed legislation that would punish people for failing to heed those calls.
CNN reports that Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pa., plans to "introduce legislation making it a federal crime for a person to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a member of Congress or federal official." Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., wants to reinstate the "fairness doctrine," a policy of enforced balance on the airwaves that federal regulators abandoned because it had a chilling effect on speech."
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