"I support Free Speech, but I do not consider _______ Free Speech."

[TheMadMonk]

163. Not if they're pre-conditioned and on a hair trigger.

OK, how about a message on your answering machine, offering graphic harm to your family and a knock on the door at the exact moment the message ends.

Or a whispered sledge in a huddle.

There is no substantiative difference. A .45 just makes for more immediate results.

The problem is not the instrument, per se, it's the ACT OF VOLITION behind it.

You don't need a Ministry of Mental Sanitation to force feed images and sounds into a brain. Nor electroshock electrodes hooked to your balls. Just an environment which cannot be easily avoided.

The deliberate production of such a work is not greatly different to niggling annoyances in the workplace, whisper campaigns, or hazing to the point of smearing foreign substances on naked bodies. If the intent is harm, it doesn't matter if it's as direct as a bullet to the brain, or as protracted as six months of derogatory whispering.

Speech intended to cause harm has no business being free.