This is one of those stories that makes you bite your lip. From SFGate:
In a victory for gun advocates, a federal judge said Monday that California appears to have violated freedom of speech with a law allowing public officials — including legislators who voted for gun-control laws — to prevent online posting of their addresses and phone numbers.
The issue arose in July when a pro-gun blogger posted the names, addresses and phone numbers of 40 lawmakers who had supported firearms restrictions that were signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown. The restrictions included a ban on possessing guns that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition and a requirement of background checks for buyers of ammunition. The law also required that the buyer’s address and phone number be put into a state database.
The blogger, “Publius,” who obtained the legislators’ information from public records, declared in his posting that “these tyrants are no longer going to be insulated from us.”
After several lawmakers received threatening phone calls and messages, the legislative counsel’s office contacted WordPress, the blog’s online host, and demanded removal of the information within 48 hours. The office cited a state law, passed in its current form in 2005, that allows state officials to have their addresses and phone numbers removed from the Internet if they fear for their safety.
The judge suggests the plaintiffs are likely to win, and I can see why: the author of free speech cannot be held responsible for the actions of others unless the free speech alleges fallacies, such as yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater that is not afire. Despite the blogger’s unfortunately aggressive turn of phrase, no doubt brought about by decades of anti-government paranoia propaganda from the right-wing, there is little to criticize. Unfortunately, that paranoia has produced a divided citizenry on the subject, and therefore suggesting that the emergence of a leftist authoritarian government that could not be thrown off by an armed citizenry could still be thrown off by a united citizenry would not be an effective argument.
But, certainly, the threats, illegal as they are (and I certainly hope the perpetrators are caught, convicted, and locked up, if only for being idiots who don’t understand how we should be a cordial society), are meant to intimidate our representatives – an attempt to sway them from following their best judgment in making public policy, which is their job.
Their first step should have been to bring suit against the new law. Standing should be no problem, and then a Constitutional question can be plopped into the lap of a judge.
The right question. Not this nightmarish problem.
But they should have taken another path and tried to supply an answer to the problem California is presumably trying to solve – how to stop gun violence. Giving in to their base natures in this manner betrays their side and makes the debate – the search for a proper course – that much more difficult.
