After the horrific school shooting in Florida, several major companies have announced plans to rescind special advantages given to NRA members. One of those companies is Delta Airlines which has its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Now many Republican lawmakers in Georgia are threatening to withhold approval of a tax break planned for the airline regarding jet fuel if the company follows through on eliminating price breaks for NRA members.
There are longstanding jokes about the intelligence of southerners involving inbreeding, but this time they clearly didn't give much thought to their threats. The First Amendment protection of speech doesn't apply to you telling your neighbor to shut up, or deleting comments from a private website. The purpose of the free speech rights is to prevent government from using its various powers to eliminate speech it doesn't like. So taking steps to punish a company financially through the government power of taxation because the Republican representatives (and there are several but the biggest voice comes from Casey Cagle who is currently lieutenant governor but is running for governor) don't like that company's public stance is pretty much the textbook definition of a violation of the First Amendment.
Being from Georgia it is likely that Cagle doesn't much care about the nitty gritty details of the US Constitution. Most of his type of politician use bluster about overreach when talking about the federal government any time they don't like paying attention to law.
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