Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme

reason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 305 posts

Re: Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme

#141

Post by JumpCrisscross »

grafmax wrote: post #116
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why there should be serious consequences for everyone involved Do we have names of the arresting officers, prosecutors and judge this is in front of? With that we can determine who above them is elected.

I think you have a lot of faith in democratic processes at this point, despite widespread evidence such as this very article that they are being clearly undermined.

> you have a lot of faith in democratic processes at this point

I think civic laziness and nihilism, particularly in Silicon Valley, did a lot to get us to where we are.

Re: Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme

#142

Post by overfeed »

somenameforme wrote: post #122
overfeed wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is being punished for his speech. His persecutors aren't bold enough yet to publicly proclaim their violation of his constitutional rights, hence the verbal gymnastics.

[flagged]

The article discusses this, and explains why the sheriff is contorting the plain meaning of his 4-words and an image (about Kirk) into a threat of violence (to a nearby school). This won't stand in court, so they are punishing him before then.

Re: Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme

#143

Post by JumpCrisscross »

robotresearcher wrote: post #81
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while the percentage of households with guns has gone down, significantly The civilian gun stock has grown significantly since the 60s [1]. These data, together, seem to imply a large (but declining) number of households with a couple of guns and a few households with a ridiculous number of guns. Of course, the dagger in your argument is that American divorce rates are not extraordinary [2]. Our gun ownership and s…

> Of course, the dagger in your argument is… Reading comprehension moment: the parent comment was carefully not claiming either side of the argument. Your response, and the downvotes, are as if they declared for the locally unpopular side. They did not.

> Your response, and the downvotes

I upvoted rayiner’s comment because it’s argued in good faith.

(What would be in bad faith would be putting forward a third party’s flawed argument without pointing out the flaws for shits and giggles.)

Re: Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme

#144

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

onetimeusename wrote: post #86

There is a little bit more context here in a different article where the sheriff explains how the posts were interpreted as a threat https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2025/09/23/tennessee-l...

The officer's fabricated justification there is just as weak as the referenced article.

Re: Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme

#145

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nailer wrote: post #101
tootie wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kirk, among many other right wing figures, have absolutely made light of past violence against Democrats. The discourse around Paul Pelosi was utterly vile and despicable. Nobody ever threatened his first amendment right to say horrendous things.

FWIW I agree Kirk shouldn't have made fun of Paul Pelosi. I think Kirk probably wouldn't be proud of his own behaviour there.

> think Kirk probably wouldn't be proud of his own behaviour there

He had years to apologise. It could have meaningfully altered the temperature of our discourse, particularly among young men. He never did. Kirk gets no credit for amends he never made.

Re: Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme

#146

Post by bitsage »

This thread is looking at this from a political angle, but he was arrested and charged for threats of mass violence. This seems to be a case of over zealous policing regarding school shootings in a very tense environment rather than a guy arrested over offensive memes.

Re: Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme

#147

Post by JumpCrisscross »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #111

Due to Tennessee law, he has to come up with $210,000 himself to get bail from a bondsmen. And he loses $10,000 of that permanently. TN law is designed to keep non-rich folks in jail. He likely won't get his trial for months in TN. Also by design.

> he has to come up with $210,000 himself

Source?

Re: Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme

#148

Post by jandrewrogers »

card_zero wrote: post #97
rayiner wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I noticed the increase over time too. In the 1920s, the era of Al Capone and friends shooting up restaurants with submachine guns, there were 10 incidents of school shootings. What's up with that? I guess the population was smaller ... was it 26 times smaller than the 2010s (259 incidents)? I checked, and in fact the difference is about a factor of 3, not 26.

The largest school massacre in US history[0] happened in the 1920s. It was accomplished with high explosives. There were several school bombings in the 1950s too but few shootings. For whatever reason, school shootings displaced school bombings in recent decades. It has been a long time since there has been a major school bombing.

Bombings were the popular mode of creating mass casualties 50+ years ago even though actual machine-guns were widely available back then and almost completely unavailable for the last several decades.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

Re: Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme

#149

Post by watwut »

nailer wrote: post #96
watwut wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kirks career literally started with organised harasment of what they perceived as leftists professors. Kirk himself was pretty atrocious verbally to people he looked down at. And he wink wink condoned violence against husband of democrat. His murder was wrong. It is not true that he would be some kind of universal "civil disagreement" advocate.

Do you want to post an example? Kirk would defend students being harassed for unrelated political matters - eg the most recent case on his channel was an Agriculture major who had to take some kind of 'equity in agriculture' class and was being bothered by her professor for not being left leaning.

Kirk on the attack against Pelosi husband: “Why has he not been bailed out? [] By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out,..." That was about attacker by the way. Like common, the start if Kirks career was making a list of "leftists professors" and promoting their harassment. Kirk literally intentionally created and promoted toxic culture we have now. That is who he was.

Yeah, he would defend right winger or bigot. He would attack anyone not right wing. The rights of people who were not white conservatives did not concerned kirk. He was literally against civil rights, openly. Blacks are all stupid and trans are all groomers. They all should be fired.

I have no idea about what happened between that "left leaning professor" and student. But there is about zero reason to believe what right wing activist like Kirk says about the issue. As far as he was concerned, left need not exist and need to be punished for existing.

Re: Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme

#150

Post by metwo1234 »

yibg wrote: post #30
metwo1234 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If I say it’s ok he was killed for this, should I be arrested?

If you incite violence towards other people who expose similar views then yes because it's not legal to incite violence against others.
Post reply on HN