Is Playing Paintball and Firing Legal Guns Terrorism?. Consider the following hypotheticals: Would Irish Americans who played paintball and played with guns in order to support the IRA have been similarly treated?
What about Jewish Americans who played paintball and engaged in target practice to train to support the Israeli army's actions in the Palestinian territories?
And even if these Irish and Jewish Americans were charged, would anyone possibly suggest that they were terrorists who might someday attack the United States as well?
Judge Brinkema suggested exactly this with respect to the three Muslim American defendants. She said she believed that those convicted might someday take up arms against the United States.
Yet the defendants' only proven animosity--if any -- was toward India, over its actions in Kashmir. There was no evidence to support the claim that they had any political animosity toward the U.S. -- let alone that they would ever violently attack their own country. (link)
One of the best analyses I've seen of this case. [Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs]
The answer to the hypothetical question is that those groups would indeed be persecuted if their beliefs were unpopular with the faction controlling the government at the time. A non-hypothetical example can be seen in the persecution of the Viper Militia.
7:08:46 PM 
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