Laws against fraud, libel, perjury, blackmail and espionage are not violations of one’s freedom of speech. These are examples of where speech has operated as the mechanism of criminal activity, but is not the crime itself. Speech is to perjury what fire is to arson. Certainly we can use words to commit crime – the same could be said of almost anything: water, bricks, golf clubs, even stuffed halibuts – but in a murder case we punish the killer, not the weapon.
We punish the killer not the weapon
