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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3578 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 14, 2025

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There's a lot of speculation about who knew what in Charlie Kirk's killer's social network. Is there a general legal duty to report that covers people who learn about a planned a murder?

If it turned out the killer shared his plans with somebody and that person responded with "you're retarded, also never talk to me about this again" but did nothing else, would they be criminally liable?

If it's just general retarded talk then indeed the internets are full of it and the feds aren't going to bother with it. But if it's specific talk like mentioning specific plan, specific weapons and specific discussion, like where to hide the rifle and which way it's better to run away, then participation in such chat may be trouble. Probably not for "never talk to me about this again", unless the feds have a particular reason to haunt this person, because the likelihood of making a case on such basis is very small. But from what I read his pals may have been a bit more supportive than that... If that's true, they may have some unlpeasant time ahead of them.

IANAL, but I'd guess that a reasonable person could be expected not to be able to distinguish between edgy hyperbolic jokes that appear as "plans" for murder and true plans for murder such that people who didn't report it wouldn't be liable. However you might feel about the morality or good taste of such jokes, it's hard to deny that the internet is so chock full of them that if you randomly selected one such statement, the odds that it's not a joke seems almost vanishingly small.

Also I'm curious if it's like Tyler Robinson had a history of edgyposting, dropped some sort of 'SOMETHING BIG IS GONNA HAPPEN TOMORROW AT THE CHARLIE KIRK HAPPENING' in a discord in a way that could plausibly mean something but also could just as easily be random bluster or 'I'm gonna go throw a tomato at Kirk' is it an offense not to report that.

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