France has an incident of workplace violence at Satirical Magazine

[Robert]

If France had treated the Hebdo publications as incitement and locked up the cartoonists we could all then say "well, at least they haven't been murdered". Could we then argue that locking up cartoonists would be for the public good and the good of the cartoonists also?

Not quite; I never implied locking anyone up for publishing a cartoon was for the public good.
Nor would I, since I agree with you that it is hypocritical.
However, if you're going to compare one incident to the other, it seems valid to me to point out one of the rather glaring differences between them.

Either you lock everyone up or you allow unfettered (non-violent) expression for all. The crux is hypocrisy.

Yes.
Society is riddled with hypocritical laws, the drug laws being one example that springs to mind.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

However, if you're going to compare one incident to the other, it seems valid to me to point out one of the rather glaring differences between them.

The actual magnitude of the retribution (death versus kidnapping and being held against your will) is clearly different, if the laws against offence were applied symmetrically, would the Hebdo guys have been killed or jailed? Vice versa, if some of the other forms of "satire" could never be prosecuted, how long before some fanatic got lethally frustrated?