Friday, August 21, 2015

Rebellious precrime

At Page 99 Test there is an interesting discusion about just what sort of training manuals should be allowed.  Although the discussion in the post is about First Amendment, Free Speech, issues, it certainly seems as if there are second amendment issues here as well.
The book examines the ways the courts deal with how-to-murder manuals as a distinct form of speech. For example, is Hitmandifferent than a mystery that provides a detailed description of the crime? Complicating this question is that a Florida housewife originally wrote Hitman as fiction. The courts have usually treated fictional works as an especially protected form of speech and not to be used against criminal defendants. In criminal cases, is reading a book like Hitman a precrime?
At one point in time, the concept of a "Right to Rebellion" was a commonly sited, if not universally accepted, concept within the framework of the Constitution.  Note, the right typically didn't come from the the Constitution itself, but Jefferson's writings in the Declaration of Independence.  Although the Declaration is not part of our government structure, there is a logic that it is still applicable as a founding document.  It is one of the arguments used to justify Southern States cessation in the run up to the Civil War.  So while a "militia" is guaranteed within the Constitution, what about the right to illegal activities in rebellion against the state?

My guess is that few of the founders would have accepted the notion of rebellion except within the context of a communal agreement to rebel.  The modern terrorist methods of "revolution", I doubt would have been acceptable to them.  

Some of the militia novels do venture into the terrorist territory.  Most are set after a government collapse, but not all of them.   So they fall into the category of precrime activity?

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