Restricting Violent Speech

[August]

I meant this title to read Restricting Violent Speech

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/13/op...iolent-speech/

In the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords last weekend, some legislators are considering new bans on speech that supposedly uses violent metaphors or imagery.

"The rhetoric is just ramped up so negatively, so high, that we have got to shut this down," is how Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pa., put it, though there's no evidence that the killer was at all influenced by any such speech.

There's no specific text yet, so it's not clear exactly what language or images the bills would try to criminalize. What is clear, however, is that any such proposal either would be repetitive of existing law or would violate the First Amendment.

Now it seems to me that, as the article says, restricting political speech to non violent imagery is something any free society would want to avoid, but Skybirds post in the Giffords thread lamenting our nearly unrestricted American rights in this area tells me that perhaps there is a valid argument to make for some degree of restriction. Opinions?