[ExI] arrested for what?

[Dan]

On  Sunday, December 23, 2012 2:44 PM Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 10:53 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>> What do you make of this?
>>
>> http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2012/12/19/superintendent-drawings-of-weapons-led-to-new-jersey-students-arrest/
>>
>> So now we can conclude that the US constitution protects the right of its
>> citizens to bear arms, but not to draw pictures of them?
>
> In the US, anyone under 18 is usually not considered a full
> "citizen", in the sense of "a person who has the protection
> of the law",

While true, irrelevant, for the most part, in US constitutional law, as constitutional protections apply to citizens and non-citizens alike. Also, in the more literal sense, the Second Amendment states the "right of the people." This is open to interpretation, of course, but it doesn't say "the citizens."

There's another wrinkle on this too. The US is a signatory to the UN Declaration on Human Rights. While said declaration is not, to my knowledge, concerned with the right to bear arms, said right might be defended by non-citizens according to it under rights listed therein. No one, as far as I know, has taken that route, but it's easy to see how such a case might be laid out. And, again, this would be a legal claim for a right to bear arms for non-citizens.

> when convenient for any adult authority figure -
> such as if said figure is the least bit concerned by the
> juvenile's actions.

I think this more a matter of authorities overhyping what's likely not a concern at all. To wit, I knew many kids when I was in grade school who were fascinated by weapons and drew pictures of guns, explosions, etc. Not one of them, as far as I know, ever carried out any violent act with a firearm. While this is anecdotal, I think people are getting overworked by media coverage of the shootings. It's kind of like if you spend all day watching the ID channel (Investigation Discovery, which is devoted to series on crimes like murder, rape, stalking, and kidnapping), you're likely going to believe the world is far more violent, that there are far more crimes out there, and that you need to devote ever more resources to avoiding or detecting crime than you likely would if you took a reasonable perspective on how unlikely all of this is. (Granted, you might still err more on the side of safety. I lock my doors even though burglary and home invasion is very
 unlikely partly because the very unlikely thing might still be very costly if it does happen and the cost of the precaution is fairly low. The problem arises when the cost is really, really high and the likelihood is miniscule and yet people worry about it. Or when some competing risk is treated as if it were low, when in fact it's much higher. For instance, think of flying a plane versus taking a train or driving a car: the risk of being injured or dying in a plane accident is far lower than either a train or car accident, yet people will take huge risks with the latter.)

> Whether or not this is legal (to my knowledge, it blatantly
> is not) is another matter.

To my knowledge, it's not legal either. Of course, the problem is authorities tend to abuse power until enough or the right people complain about it.

By the way, wouldn't one way to avoid any problems here be to just get rid of traditional schooling? Potential targets of mass violence would be dispersed if, say, they're homeschooled, as a friend of mine recently pointed out. If little Johnny wants to draw machine guns and has fantasies about killing his classmates, it's going to be extremely hard to bring the latter to fruition if his classmates are not all together in one building, even in one room and unarmed.

Regards,

Dan
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