There is a vast amount of misunderstanding around the legality of threatening language in the US. Like it or not, Americans have tremendous freedom of speech to use threatening language. It is one of the things that makes this a great free country.
For instance, you can say:
“Look I swear to God, if you do this or that to me, then I will kill you with my bare hands….If you violate me in such and such a way, so help me God, I will fucking kill you.”
That is 100% legal, either in speech or in writing. It’s not even a threat. It is a warning. The person says if you harm me or violate me immorally in such and such a way, I will retaliate by killing you dead. The cops would say, well, I would not violate him in that way, and then you will be fine. There is no threat. Instead there is a warning to behave yourself or else. People talk and even write like this all the time. It’s 100% legal. No cop will ever arrest on it and no D.A. would ever waste his time on it.
You can even go to a therapist and make all sorts of threats. You can say:
“I feel like killing people. I hate women. I want to kill a woman. I hate Republicans. I really want to kill a Republican real bad, so help me God. I really like the idea of being a serial killer. That sounds like a lot of fun. I think I might like to do that some day. Sometimes I find myself driving around and it seems like I am looking for a victim to rape or kill.”
Truth is that not only will no therapist turn you in for that, but he can’t anyway, because all that speech is 100% legal. No cop will arrest on it, and no D.A. will prosecute.
You can even admit to crimes, as long as you did not commit them. With many high profile crimes, there have been countless people who have confessed to them. Many men confessed to being the Green River Killer. Many people confessed to being the Zodiac. Many people were reported for saying that they love to kill people and that they are the Zodiac. None of those people was the Green River Killer or the Zodiac. None of them were arrested, though they made some pretty dangerous statements.
Look at these:
“I have been to prison before but I am not going back. If the cops try to put me in prison again, I will go out in a blazes, shooting as many cops as I can. I hate cops. I want to kill a cop so bad. Next cop that messes with me is going to die.”
All of that talk is 100% legal and no one can do a thing about it.
Truth is that even if you confess to a crime to a therapist, they probably will not report you. A lot of therapists say, “I am not a cop.”
If all this threatening speech is legal, then for God’s sake?
You cannot make specific threats to a specific person.
Threats have to be made against a specific person, not against a group or people or humanity in general. If you say, “I hate people. I feel like shooting up a shopping mall,” you have not threatened a specific person, so it is 100% legal and no one can do a thing about it. The only way you could go down would be if someone proved that you were actually actively planning or conspiring to shoot up a shopping mall, which is a hard thing to prove. On the other hand, if you said, “I am going to shoot up the Mayfair mall today,” that is a specific threat against a specific place at a specific time. It’s not legal and you can go down on that.
I am aware of only two people were were hospitalized as potential serial killers and people present in therapy all the time with violent fantasies of raping, murdering, mutilating and committing serial murder. No one can do anything about anyone who has these kinds of fantasies even if they say they want to act on them. So they want to act on them? So what. So are they going to do it or what? Lots of us want to do all sorts of things, and we never do them. Just because you say you want to do something doesn’t mean you are going to do it.
The two men who were hospitalized not only said they wanted to go on a serial killing spree, but they said, “I am going to go on a serial killing spree.” Even worse, both of them had made up murder kits. Serial killers have “murder kits” with all of the implements needed to commit murder. Making a murder kit shows some real intent to carry out these acts. It shows you are actively planning them. In one case, a man had written out the names of 21 people who he was going to kill. They were all people well known to him. He had them listed in a notebook. He had been stalking them and had their routines down. He listed how he was going to kill them specifically and how he was going to get away with it.
All of that was considered to be specific enough that the therapists could issue a commitment order. Both men were committed for about 1-2 years. One man was Bipolar and the other had Borderline Personality Disorder. Both were released as cured 1-2 years later and were judged no longer violent at that time.
The problem is that really people can look and act as dangerous as they want to, and no one can do a thing about it. You can’t arrest someone on “dangerousness.” The sad fact is that you pretty much have to wait until someone commits a crime until you can do anything to them legally.
What else is not legal? A specific threat against a specific person. “I am going to kill my wife. I will kill my husband with a knife. I already have it planned out and I am going to do it. I am going to take him out.”
The person has named a specific individual and has leveled a specific threat at that individual, including even how they are going to do it and when they are going to do it.
Truth is you can even issue specific threats against people in real life outside the therapist’s office. People threaten each other all the time, and hardly anyone gets arrested.
Personally, I have been threatening people since my teenage years. Not human beings or classes of them in general – instead I have been threatening my enemies. Why? Because they deserved to get threatened. Was it fair to threaten them? Maybe they should have thought about that before they made enemies out of me? I have been threatening to hurt my enemies, hurt them so badly they end up in the hospital, and I have also threatened to kill my enemies many, many times. Of all of the times I did this, I was never arrested. In fact, no one even called the cops on me.
In truth, I used to threaten to kill my enemies a lot when I was a teenager and a young man. I do it only rarely now that I am older, and I usually get over it in a few days and lose my anger towards the person. Basically, I am calming down in my old age.
As you can see, even though it’s illegal to threaten bodily harm or death to specific persons, people do it all the time, and the vast majority of the time, they get away with it. The crime is called “Making terrorist threats” and people do get arrested for it from time to time. However, arrests are rarely made for verbal threats simply because it is your word against theirs. Most people who go down on the “Terrorist Threats” statute have been stupid enough to make threats in writing or they left threats that were recorded on the answering machine of a phone.
What about hospitalization? This is another area of vast misunderstanding. People always think that it is trivial to commit someone for making threats. But it is actually exceedingly difficult. First of all, in order to commit a threatening person, the person must be mentally ill. Believe it or not, the vast majority of folks who issue threats and not mentally ill in any way, shape or form. Instead they are just angry. There is nothing in the DSM called “Anger Disorder” or “Threat Disorder.”
Not only does the person have to be mentally ill, but they have to have a valid mental diagnosis issued by a mental health professional. Absent that, the person has to be so observably crazy that a police officer could look at them and say that they are clearly mentally ill. The vast majority of folks who issue threats do not appear obviously mentally ill in such a way that would allow a cop to arrest them as mentally ill.
It’s not illegal to be mentally ill, no matter how crazy you are. You can only be taken in if you are mentally ill and unable to care for yourself or if you are a danger to yourself or others. The danger to yourself or others is so specific that the police officer almost has to hear you threaten suicide or violence against others. Unless a cop hears you with his own ears, you won’t go down. In California, the crime is called 5150. Anyway, most people taken in on 5150 are rapidly released after a day or two in jail.
The only reason those two potential serial killers were able to be hospitalized at all was because they had a mental diagnosis. One was Bipolar and the other had Borderline Personality Disorder. If those men had no obvious mental diagnosis, there is probably no way that the therapists could have detained them.
Tragically, if you want to live in a free society, you will have to live with a lot of obviously dangerous people walking around. It’s not illegal to be dangerous. It’s not illegal to look dangerous, mean, threatening, menacing or violent. There is no statute against any of that. You pretty much have to wait for someone to commit a crime before they can be arrested. That seems painful, but it’s really better that way for you, me and everyone else. You want to live in a society where people can be arrested for “dangerousness?” No you do not.
The vast majority of Americans are completely stupid about these laws and think that anyone who talks in the slightest threatening way may be arrested or especially hospitalized as dangerously mentally ill. They are wrong, but then you average Moronican is wrong about just about everything on Earth, so that is no surprise.
