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

kind to people....who he was speaking to directly in person? or making social media references while they were not present (or adding them to dox lists so they could be harassed for years with death threats [1]) ? This is the key difference of course. It's also a really basic technique of horrible people to come off as very empathetic and friendly in person under specific circumstances so people are fooled in exactly this way, giving them full leeway to do horrible things elsewhere (such as maintaining dox lists to terrorize people into submission, or referring to women of color as having lesser "brain processing power" - e.g. unfiltered racism [2]....oh or insisting that children should be forced to watch executions [3]).

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charlie-kirk-professor-...

[2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-black-women/

[3] https://meidasnews.com/news/charlie-kirk-wants-coca-cola-spo...

Preface: I'm not interested in debating this topic here. Therefore I'll be concise, abridged and probably glib.

Your term "assault", can legally, imply a prelude to battery. Maybe that's a stupid point.

And I do not wish to dismiss your concerns either.

However, if you endeavor to qualify the transport of potentially fatal materials as violence, such would be a highly abstract interpretation requiring an unprecedented overhaul of the present system.

If someone is caught planning a violent act, e.g. performing internet search queries for "how to do terrible x and accomplish terrible y, the rule of law doesn't permit immediately executing the individual. Traditionally, a trial ensues where possibilities of error and other critical considerations are made in order to ensure greater probabilities of a just outcome, hence Justice. An immediate threat and remote hypothetical threat are treated differently. If Bob knows you plan to kill him on Friday, but he finds you while you're doing laundry and kills you Thursday, while tactically legit, it doesn't work legally. Extrajudicial is what we might call this. But regular folks wouldn't earn the term.

But that's barely the surface. If transport qualifies as violence, then the users that contribute or essentially enable the entire cycle must be included. So now we are killing foreign boaters in the Caribbean and e.g. Hunter Biden on his jetski as he swirls around the Florida Keys high on fentanyl. We'll need to kill his hooker friend too, because she directly supports these transporters.

It gets much sillier from here, all the way until you kill Bill because he spent money at the same pizza parlor as the guy who sold the baggy that overdosed your friend.

And then comes the strange dynamics where you need to kill me because my self-righteous doctor won't prescribe me pain management for my cancer because xyz and I'm looking on the streets for some kind of relief.

But we needn't go that far. We can go back to the top and kill the growers. And their children which might aid and abet them. And certainly a few chemists here and there.

It gets way messier. If you fail to kill me, I might have a grudge. Because I was not trying to hurt anyone. I'm in pain and just want help.

While this all takes place, other artistically inclined persons superimpose their own values upon the law.

But really, a few guys steering a boat full of drugs is not violence. Certainly not an imminent threat especially after they've been identified. It's the potential for violence, but so is our trusty old proverbial hammer.

Regardless of bail, IMO you are almost always better off staying in jail if at all possible and forcing the state to a speedy trial.

I watched a close family member go through the process after getting out on bail. The charge was effectively a he-said she-said situation, at a time when that was going especially poorly for the he involved.

He bailed out and took his lawyer's advice to wait the state out. That turned into a 4 year delay for what was technically a misdemeanor charge with a 1-year max charge. The trial was a joke and they offered effectively no evidence beyond one testimony contradicted by another witness directly in the room at the time.

Who knows what would have happened in a speedy trial. If nothing else, a 1-year sentence would have been completed 3 years earlier than the trial he had even happened.

> I'm guessing that you have the means to pay your bills for years before having to worry about losing your income and your home. Most folks don't.

That's a pretty big assumption that also happens to be wrong. I specifically said "if at all possible" because I'm well aware that plenty of people can't put everything on hold for 30-60 days and have to potentially start over after that's done.

If someone can in any way afford it, though, I would always recommend that approach. As soon as one is embroiled in the legal system its terrible no matter what the end result is. Either way the outcome is bad, if you can expedite the process you are better off.

Personally I think it's a bona fide societal mental health problem. The American ideal of hyper-individualist self-reliance implies you are utterly on your own. This means that everything that happens to you is your fault, and you can only right it by taking responsibility to fix it yourself. But it's kind of impossible to simply stop yourself from being bullied, because "if you could have, you would have".

Coupled with entertainment that primarily revolves around people aiming guns at each other while barking orders, then shooting to see who gets to be in charge, then more aiming/barking. Guns are framed as the obvious solution to problems, and the media reinforces this by making sure every shooter gets their 15 minutes (or days). Frankly with this setup, the surprising thing is that there aren't more mass shootings.