Dallas shooting

[Xan]

Has "black lives matter" officially lost all sympathizers from mainstream society?

[dragoncar]

If only open carry were legal in Dallas, citizens would have stopped this immediately.

[MachineGhost]

What is this about? TLDR please. I don't feel like looking at news porn.

[clacy]

If only open carry were legal in Dallas, citizens would have stopped this immediately.

Open carry is not stopping multiple shooters with assault rifles, from elevated locations (snipers), who triangulated a position to ambush as many police as possible.

[ochotona]

If only open carry were legal in Dallas, citizens would have stopped this immediately.

Open carry is legal in Dallas. Cities don't have the right to preempt state firearms laws.

[dualstow]

If only open carry were legal in Dallas, citizens would have stopped this immediately.

Open carry is legal in Dallas. Cities don't have the right to preempt state firearms laws.

I don't know how it works in Dallas, but everything I've read about Philadelphia suggests the gun and knife laws are different from the rest of open carry Pennsylvania. I mean, on paper you can technically open carry, but you'll be harassed at the very least and likely slammed to the ground by officers who don't know the law. I've seen maybe 7 stories about it.

[Tyler]

If social media is to be believed, at least one peaceful protester was open carrying a rifle and proactively handed it over to a police officer during the action to avoid any confusion that he was the shooter. A perfectly reasonable response, IMHO.

Look -- this is not the day for gun debates. More guns would not have stopped this, and less guns would not have stopped it. We're dealing with racist mass murderers who have arguably been radicalized by never-ending knee-jerk reactions to other senseless violence. Blaming guns, cops, race, or anything else but the evil staring us in the face only makes the evil stronger.

[dualstow]

+1 Well said, Tyler.

[Mountaineer]

A friend of mine is a prison guard. He just quit. His reason - fear for his life. He said the prison is being taken over by the inmates. He said all the "good" guards have quit. Only the corrupt are left. Those in charge bow to external influences (e.g. One of the inmates called his grandfather to protest his being told to enter his cell and shut up. The grandfather called the authorities and complained about discriminatory and harsh treatment to his grandson who was, according to the grandson, singled out by the guard and verbally abused. BS.) My friend also said Christians are no longer allowed into the prisons do do prison ministry - reason, if offends the inmates who are heavily black Muslims.

Sad story on so many levels. The trends do not portray a very good future, whether Dallas or this prison guard story, or pretty much everything else we see glamorized and sensationalized on the boob tube.

... Fletch

[Reub]

Obama's America.

[Kriegsspiel]

If social media is to be believed, at least one peaceful protester was open carrying a rifle and proactively handed it over to a police officer during the action to avoid any confusion that he was the shooter. A perfectly reasonable response, IMHO.

Look -- this is not the day for gun debates. More guns would not have stopped this, and less guns would not have stopped it. We're dealing with racist mass murderers who have arguably been radicalized by never-ending knee-jerk reactions to other senseless violence. Blaming guns, cops, race, or anything else but the evil staring us in the face only makes the evil stronger.

That guy said he turned in his gun so that the police wouldn't shoot him on sight; obviously a legit fear. He said they still kept his gun and confiscated his clothes. I guess the police also put his name and photo out there as a suspect.

It's a pretty shitty situation all around.

Something to take away from all this is the idea of keeping your driver's license on the dashboard/sunshade, not anywhere a cop could suspect a weapon is.

[Reub]

In the past when I'm pulled over, I always put my hands in plain view so as to ease any concerns that the police officer might have. I speak calmly and pleasantly to them and always announce what I'm going to do before I do it. I realize how difficult their situation is with all of the cop hating and crazies running around loose in Obama's America.

[Benko]

In the past when I'm pulled over, I always put my hands in plain view so as to ease any concerns that the police officer might have.

+ 1

If pulled over, roll down the window, and put your hands on the steering wheel and await the cop.

[clacy]

I feel bad for all the innocent black people that have been killed (or unduly harassed for that matter) by police, but I just heard this fact, from a professor that has studied this issue....

Cops are 18.5x more likely to be killed in the line of duty by a black man, than are unarmed black men shot by police. Black men account for 40% of all police officers killed in the line of duty, while only making up about 6% of the population.

Also, black and hispanic cops are statistically more likely to shoot black men than are white officers.

It's easy to see why police tend to be a little more aggressive with black men.

[bedraggled]

Might be a good idea to ask an officer for permission to leave the vehicle so that you are in full view. Then ask permission to get the wallet, which you inform the officer is in your back pocket.

When local police do stops for whatever reason, I have one hand on the wheel and the left hand on the roof above me. Ask permission at all times. No tickets in 45 years of driving!!

[Kriegsspiel]

I also try not to be black when going for my wallet. You can never be too careful.

[Reub]

Anti-cop rhetoric, including what's been said on here, feeds into the killing of innocent, good cops.

[MachineGhost]

Anti-cop rhetoric, including what's been said on here, feeds into the killing of innocent, good cops.

Do you know how to idenitfy an innocent cop from a pig before the fact???

[Reub]

Didn't you say that you were a drug dealer once? Could this be influencing your opinions on the subject?

[MachineGhost]

Didn't you say that you were a drug dealer once? Could this be influencing your opinions on the subject?

No, I was never a drug dealer. I was a drug kingpin! I've never had a problem with law enforcement about drugs. I have nothing but pleasant memories of dealing with law enforcement except once. But hey, I'm white.

[Reub]

Lol, Mr. White!

[MachineGhost]

Lol, Mr. White!

I wish. I'm no Christopher Walken.

[dualstow]

Lol, Mr. White!

I wish. I'm no Christopher Walken.

Harvey Keitel, no?

[Tortoise]

The videos of the police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota this week were both hard to watch, but as usual, both cases appeared to involve the person either actively resisting or doing something to really set the cops on edge.

In the Louisiana shooting video, what I see is a man doing the most unwise thing possible: struggling with all of his might--and he's a very big man!--against two cops who were trying to subdue him. Someone had called the police to say he had threateningly brandished a gun, so naturally the cops who responded had to assume that he was armed and dangerous. Being human, they were on edge because they feared for their lives. And then the man physically resisted them, quickly escalating the situation far beyond where it needed to go. Tragic, but 100% avoidable.

The Minnesota shooting video is a bit trickier to interpret, because it only shows the aftermath of the shooting. But let's think about it for a second. The cop in the video is not calm at all; he's in complete panic mode after he shot the guy. This is not a cop who killed someone in cold blood. Something freaked him out. So when the guy's girlfriend says he did everything right and did everything the cop said, I call "bullshit." Yes, he told the cop that he had a gun in the car, which was the right thing to do, but what he almost certainly did wrong was to then reach for the glove box to get his license/registration before the cop explicitly told him to. Either that, or he reached for it far too quickly, which the cop interpreted as a threatening movement. Either way, the guy almost certainly didn't keep his hands motionless and in plain sight the entire time the cop was standing there. If he had, why in the world would the cop have been spooked enough not only to draw his gun, but to shoot?

Certain types of people tend to act too cavalier, know-it-all, and defiant when interacting with cops, and they are the ones who are 10x more likely get shot in police encounters. It's pretty simple: When dealing with cops, you show respect and obedience--period. You shut your damn trap except for "yes, sir" or "no, sir", and you pretend like you're a robot who can't move unless the cop explicitly commands you to. The problem is that black culture inculcates defiance and disrespect towards all authority figures, especially cops. The tragic result is predictable.

If we're going to be seeing more mobile phone videos like this in this modern era, then I think police departments would be wise to start regularly sharing some body-cam videos in public forums: videos that show some of the shitty things that people do to cops on a daily basis that tend to put them on edge and fear for their lives. If we're going to be flooded with videos from now on, we should at least have a balance of them where we can see both sides of the story and make up our own minds about whether (a) the police are really waging a systematic war against black people or (b) black culture systematically breeds disrespect, defiance, and threatening behavior towards cops.

[MachineGhost]

Lol, Mr. White!

I wish. I'm no Christopher Walken.

Harvey Keitel, no?

He he wasn't in New York City. Pulp Fiction was in SoCal.