New York Poised To Deny Thought Criminals Their Second Amendment Rights

     Before graciously permitting you to exercise your inalienable rights, the State of New York is considering a proposed law that would allow them to deny a person’s 2^nd Amendment right for expressing thoughtcrime. Specifically, it would require the state to review one’s Facebook, Youtube, Gab, Twitter or Instagram accounts to see if they contain “excessive discriminatory content; or … content that is likely to incite or produce a violent action in or towards others”.

     In other words, one’s exercise of their 1^st Amendment right in a way that the State of New York does not like will result in the surrender of your 2^nd Amendment rights.

     As Eugene Volokh, a respected 2^nd Amendment legal scholar, notes:

“‘Discriminatory content’ isn’t defined, here or elsewhere, but presumably refers to speech that expresses negative views about various groups (or what else would it mean?). Presumably more than 100 posts in 3 years that criticize Muslims, or oppose bans on discrimination based on transgender status, or contain sexist jokes would qualify. What about “discriminatory content” towards Republicans? Towards Israel? Not clear.

“It’s also not clear what qualifies as ‘content that is likely to incite or produce a violent action in or towards others’ (for which there’s no 100-post ‘excessiveness’ standard). Does this have to be a 51% likelihood, a threshold which would almost never be satisfied? Some possibility, which could be satisfied for a vast range of rhetoric? Again, not clear.

“It is clear, of course, that such speech is generally constitutionally protected, whether it’s ‘discriminatory content’ (‘excessive’ or not) or speech that is ‘likely to incite’ ‘violent action’; recall that the very narrow incitement exception to the First Amendment is satisfied only if the speech is (1) intended to produce (2) imminent illegal conduct, and (3) likely to produce such imminent legal conduct — item (ii) above doesn’t include the intent or imminence requirements.”

     Considering the call for banning “H8 speech”, this is the camels nose in the tent of liberty that the anti-liberty Left will use to eviscerate the Bill of Rights.

     The bill, as introduced, can be read below.

New York State bill S1413 by ThePoliticalHat on Scribd

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