More arrests are needed in cases of violence and threats of all kinds

[MineralMan]

against school board members and other minor-league elected officials. And those arrests should be followed by serious prosecutions and actual jail time for assault and battery, terroristic threats, etc.

Once a significant number of those hooligans get to spend 30-90 days in the county slammer for their ugly, childish misdeeds, we'd see people being more careful not to assault or threaten such people. Nobody wants to go to jail, and the fact that nobody IS going to jail for those things is encouraging others to act that way in public.

Our tolerance level, as a society, should be zero for that kind of behavior. Just cuff the noxious and dangerous creeps and haul them away to the local pokey, prosecute them in a speedy, efficient way, and give them a month or two to think about it in a nasty county lock-up. The word will get out quickly.

[DBoon]

1. Local public health officials as well, and appointed not just elected officials.

We need to make this a federal crime, as many jurisdictions do not seem to take these seriously.

We need to tighten the definition of a serious threat. Hinting at murder should be an offense - you should not need to give a time, place and method of the planned murder to be actionable. Saying something like "I know where your kids go to school" or "you deserve to be dead" should be an offense.

These threats are destroying our ability to govern ourselves. They need to be stopped now.

[MineralMan]

3. I agree completely.

[Johnny2X2X]

2. +1

Right wing threats are going largely unpunished or being very lightly punished. Local law enforcement and prosecutors are sympathetic to the Right, that's why.

[MineralMan]

4. Yes. That's what needs to be changed.

All such threats should be taken seriously, at all levels.

It wouldn't take too many jail or prison sentences to put the fear into those who would make such threats or physically attack someone with whom they disagree. There should be consequences.

[Initech]

5. More attention should be paid to the sources.

The people who are peddling this stuff and telling their listeners to act like assholes. Like Charlie Kirk and James O'Keefe and Alex Jones, and Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham. To stop the bullshit, go to the source!

[MineralMan]

6. Ah, yes, but the "sources" are not the ones doing the lawbreaking.

Arresting, charging, and jailing the actual people who are making the threats would be more effective, since there's nothing to charge the instigators with, really. They know exactly what they are doing, and know how to stay just on the edge.

As I said, a bunch of people getting actual jail time will slow this crap down.