Damned Either Way 

Here is a scary news story out of Kentucky:

Police in Winchester, Ky., say Winston Poole would have been the nation's next school shooter, had they not intervened.

"All the bells and whistles went off on this case," said Steven Caudill, a detective with the Winchester Police Department. "Our No. 1 goal is crime prevention and law enforcement, not just here in our community. But the nation as a whole. All the warning signs were here in our community. We saw it. We acted on it."

Poole, 18, has been charged with terroristic threatening for allegedly trying to recruit fellow students he called "soldiers" to participate in a school shooting. His grandmother turned him in after finding his journal.

"He was talking about taking over the high school and when it was all done, that everybody would be laying" on the ground, said Poole's grandmother, Joyce Craft. "You have to stop and think that these things can happen. If somebody sees it coming, or has some suspicions, then they need to report it. I could not let this go by."
...
Supporters said it's not a crime to write about violence, as long as you don't act on it. A group of California First Amendment supporters - unwilling to be identified - freed Poole temporarily by paying his bond.

"It was just a fiction story and everybody is just blowing it out of proportion," said Poole's friend, Anthony Rudolph.

So what do we have here. We have a grandmother who read her granchild's journal, saw some scary stuff, and notified police. We also have a group of people who are supporting the kid saying he was exercising his free speech rights.

Just for fun... let's pretend like the grandmother never found the journal... and fast forward a couple of weeks. How would this news story change?

WINCHESTER, Ky. - Police are investigating a school shooting that occurred early this morning. Witnesses are saying that a student, Winston Poole, came into a classroom and began shooting fellow students and teachers before turning the gun on himself. Detective Steven Chadill has said that they have yet to have found a motive for why this student might have chosen to turn a gun on fellow classmates.

Parents of injured students are trying to come to grips with this terrible tragedy. One parent who has not been identified was seen yelling at a police officer, "How could nobody have seen this coming? Why could nobody prevent my child from being killed?!"

It sounds a whole lot different on the other side of that timeline doesn't it? It would seem that we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't. If something terrible happens, we scream in outrage that it couldn't be prevented. If a possible heinous act is prevented, we cry in outrage that we don't know he would have carried out what he said. I'm not saying its easy... and I'm not sure what the solution is. We're basically damned if we do, and damned if we don't.

It would seem that people are trying to say in this case that the 1st amendment should shield this person from any consequences arising from what he's said. But is that what the 1st amendment actually guarantees? Are we saying that nobody should ever be held accountable for their words... ever? I haven't a clue. It's a delicate issue... because if we start down that direction, we could very quickly find ourselves on a slippery slope to something very bad.

Maybe we should be looking at this from a different direction. Unfortunately we're not dealing with a minor here. If we were.... grandma (being is legal guardian) should've had him sent in for psychiatric evaluation. Is that still possible here? I haven't a clue.

Was something terrible prevented here? We'll never know... was it worth putting this in jail to make sure? That's the difficult question.