I wish I could say this surprised me.

[Shishio]

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/

You'll have to scroll down to where Rich Stevens makes his blog posts.

But if you want a summary first, a webcartoonist was fired from his job for talking to a coworker about a hobby of his; paper target shooting. He made a comic about this, which the police seem to regard as "making a terroristic threat."

[Ataraxia]

Compare this to the case of Allen Lee, a high school student arrested last week due to a violent creative writing assignment.

(Conspiracy Hat On)
It's like a page taken out of the banana republic playbook: When the populace is worried about something, simply make a few high-profile arrests and then declare the matter solved. It's not important to actually do anything about the bugbear of the day, whether that be communists, homosexuals, terrorists, immigrants, school shooters, or whatever. The important thing is to make a big show of the fact that the government is still in control.
(Conspiracy Hat Off)

When faced with an uncertain situation and no obvious solutions, most people would prefer to do something rather than nothing. Unfortunately, in many cases something can be worse than nothing. I wish Mr.Boyd the best of luck in getting his name cleared.

[McDuffies]

I thought that the fuss about terrorists has calmed by now?

[Perk_daddy]

I dunno, the Virginia Tech shooter's teacher was concerned about stuff he wrote before the incident, but nothing was done. It's not unreasonable to ask if stuff like this should be dealt with to avoid violence. I don't agree with the man's firing in this instance, though.

[Ataraxia]

Sure something should be done about it, but I don't think arrests were warranted. Arresting people for crimes they might commit someday in the future is a bad idea. Who gets to decide how scary a person has to be before we lock them up? Should we round up everyone who's ever drawn a violent cartoon and ship them off to prison? How many people do we have to arrest before we feel confident we've averted a tragedy?

Maybe the police have information that we don't. Maybe not. If all they're charging him with is the cartoon, there's something seriously wrong.

[ShardZ]

Tough call on potential violence as a whole... but firing the artist for what I'm sure countless numbers of people do for fun seems a bit excessive, especially if what he claimed to be into was the exact opposite of what most firearm-related activities involve: He's shooting at inanimate, unmoving, inorganic and non-living targets. What about all the workers who mights be into hunting for sport or food? And that's nothing compared to what other "interests" could be harmless entertainment, but would have most "normal" folks running to support wiretapping and invasion of privacy just so they can feel safe. *cough*Dolcett*cough*

I'm all for psychological testing, though, when the situation seems to warrant it (not necessarily immediate imprisonment). Or at least working toward tests that even psychopaths couldn't worm their way through.

But that's just me. I've seen people on the internet who, one could imagine, could actually snap if the "waaahhmbulance" was mentioned one more time, and it does make me wonder. (Most shooters do seem to have given some sort of warning signs--they were just either untouchable by law, which made them bolder, or disregarded as an emo freak, which made them angrier.) If I saw a guy waving a sniper rifle around in public, I'd at least want to ask someone to check him out, mentally as well as physically. Even if it just turned out to be a fake, you never know how many real weapons are buried in a secret compartment in his summer cottage two states over... right next to the remains of his last two wives.

Er... sorry about the ramble.

[Kisai]

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/blog/?p=44 for the story link.

>_< Another reason why American [law]s are scary. Whatever happened to presumed innocent till proven guilty?

Ugh... What sucks is that I've worked for nothing but US-owned companies it seems, even though I'm in Canada, and half of them have very paranoid threat assesment for this reason. Suffice it to say, every place I work for has bomb threat polices <a href="http://www.nbc11.com/news/10205869/detail.html">for good reason</a>

[Jekkal]

Lovely. It's only a matter of time before someone uses all comic artists who even depict blood as some sort of serial killer.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

This is retarted with a capital R.

The thing with the Virginia Tech kid is that when one of his teachers heard about the shooting, she knew right away it was him. All the other students figured he'd do it one day too, and he did. It's funny when you can see it coming from a mile away, nothing is done, but when it does happen, a bunch of harmless people are crucified in the wake till everything blows over. Then when a ton of other warning signs pop up again, everyone is complacent by that point and the cycle starts over again.

Arresting people in advance is like a shittier version of Minority Report. Let's go arrest Jhonen Vasquez and Stephen King. Or Dick Cheney who actually did shoot someone in the face.

[McDuffies]

It's funny how people who aren't creative rarely understand people who are. They often think that writing and drawing is just projecting projecting, projecting, they often don't realise that we'll often write about things not because we like them or because we're obsessed with them, but because we hate or fear them. It's that kind of thinking that brought David Lynch mysogynist accusations.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

It's funny how people who aren't creative rarely understand people who are. They often think that writing and drawing is just projecting projecting, projecting, they often don't realise that we'll often write about things not because we like them or because we're obsessed with them, but because we hate or fear them. It's that kind of thinking that brought David Lynch mysogynist accusations.

I try not to say this often, but it's often true. Non-creative types rarely ever understand creative people.

[Kris X]

It's funny how people who aren't creative rarely understand people who are. They often think that writing and drawing is just projecting projecting, projecting, they often don't realise that we'll often write about things not because we like them or because we're obsessed with them, but because we hate or fear them. It's that kind of thinking that brought David Lynch mysogynist accusations.

I try not to say this often, but it's often true. Non-creative types rarely ever understand creative people.

Case-in-point, my brother never understands me. All he's said to me when viewing my creativenss is "Kris, your weird." or "You like weird stuff huh? Why do you like weird stuff?" He says this with a sense of disgust.

To which I reply, "Um, it's not weird... It's just original from everyday mundane crap... And shut up."

[Jekkal]

They often think that writing and drawing is just projecting projecting, projecting, they often don't realise that we'll often write about things not because we like them or because we're obsessed with them, but because we hate or fear them.

Reminds me of the teacher pointing out how much religious slant I had in one of my superhero projects 'cause I had a catholic priest as one of the heroes in the team, an israeli immigrant character, the A.N.G.E.L Institute as cover for the main villain . . .

and I don't even go to Synagogue on the high holy days anymore. O_o

[Ataraxia]

Whatever happened to presumed innocent till proven guilty?

Apparently Boyd hasn't been charged with anything yet, so presumably that still applies. There's an interview with him here:

http://www.fleen.com/archives/2007/05/0 ... r-suspect/

[Robbie]

Awesome! Now if we just put cameras in everyone's homes and jail people for even referencing guns (unless they're talking about the second amendment and how awsome it is), we'll be all set!