TrickstaPriest

This “oathbreaker” fellow is an excellent example of why I have been saying in this thread politically motivated violence is not acceptable. Whatever your ostensible motivations, when you riot, assault or murder in the name of your beliefs those who disagree with you society must bring the full force of the law to bear. Someone can always justify their actions by saying “What choice did I have?”
 
 You had lots of other options. He is self admittedly guilty of violent insurrection and public mayhem. 68 months is a very reasonable amount of time, more would have been arguable as well.

OK, but doesn't that assume he recognizes he's doing, or planning to do, something wrong, such that he needs that protection?  And why didn't even *that* register enough to dissuade him?
 
The answer there might be simple enough...fear, real or stoked by the far right media types.  Frank Herbert was so right:  fear is the mind-killer.
 

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/new-jersey-councilwoman-shot-killed-targeted-attack-home/story?id=96844342
 
This is very ugly. We are really struggling as a nation when this sort of thing happens to our elected leadership. She was ambushed and murdered, motive pending…

I'm not saying this to try to exonerate the guy, but what I'd love to know is what he was thinking throughout 2020?  What led to this, why did he do it, how did he become so willfully blind to the nature of what he was doing?  What can be done to mitigate it from happening again??  Maybe nothing.  If the root causes lie in the decades-long effort to marginalize and dehumanize the "Liberal Establishment"...probably nothing because it's a practical impossibility to muzzle the vicious media elements who create this.  But if we can't identify the causes of radicalization, we can't even start to address them.

"I let my emotions take control" Dude, when you drive to DC, then spray police officers with your chemicals as you try to over throw a lawful election, then BOAST about it later, this wasn't just some slip of temper. It's premeditated, and as a Ex Marine, you're an Oathbreaker and a damned traitor.
 
I'm all for mercy in many cases, but in this situation? Zero sympathy.

He's lying. 

Still reading the whole story but there's a very early comment that's notable:  the National Fraternal Order of Police is NOT defending the officers.  QUITE the opposite, in fact.  From The Hill:
 
 
One of the points in the article is big, to me.  From the Reason story:
 
 
Yeah, we do hear this regularly.  People are lying...many people in this case.  (A question in my mind is whether the EMTs feared reprisal if they said anything.)  It's a repeating pattern...downplay, downplay, downplay until it explodes in your face.  The story indicts the media too;  they're not critical enough, too often.  There have to be red flags here...the duration of the event feels like the first one.  The timeline includes a 3 minute period after the police caught up to Nichols, where they beat on him for 3 minutes.  That is a LONG time.  There's about a 20 minute interval before he's treated.  Got to think that's another flag.

And Putin doesn't care. 
 
It was never about Russia. 

Did you ever watch the pilot episode for the new Hawaii Five-Oh? In it the governor of Hawaii decides to a create a police unit unhampered by things that get in the way of results. No red tape, no rules, no respect for civil rights. Just kicking ass and naming names. Getting the bad guys no matter what it takes.
 
In short an adolescent power fantasy that only a moron who confuses real life with Mel Gibson movies would think would produce good results if they tried it in real life. Newsflash. People try it in real life. They take the most aggressive cops, give them a badass backronym like SCORPION or STRESS, tell them they’re “elite” even though they actually have no special training just special latitude. They encourage the unit to prioritise maximizing the number of suspects they take down over worrying about proper procedure, put them on constant patrol in the most crime ridden areas, encourage them to think of everyone around them not as people to be protected but enemies to be suppressed and make maximizing their number of busts per week the priority while ignoring the misconduct complaints.
 
And then wait for the inevitable results.
https://reason.com/2023/01/30/the-most-popular-police-reforms-cant-stop-the-next-tyre-nichols-from-being-killed-heres-what-might/
 

Yes, that's premeditation now, IF that tweet is accurate.  That absolutely can't be assumed, and while I can find social media trash, I can't find a legitimate report about it.  But I'm not trying all that hard either.
 
That said, Haley was also accused of beating a prisoner when he was a corrections officer.  There was a lawsuit but it was dismissed on procedural grounds, it seems.  
 
Plus, it disturbs me that a corrections officer becomes a police officer...then gets onto a unit like this.

The unit broken up in New York was like this, and the infamous Crash unit in L.A. are the first examples I can think of at the moment. I think there was also a special unit in Chicago that was busted when their black site holding center was revealed
CES

I doubt any responsible adult did.
 
My next question is, how often does this happen?  Are we only hearing about it because the victim died this time? 

Plus, the vicious assault was only 3 weeks ago.  It's telling to me that
 
a)  the assault was on the 7th
b)  the victim died on the 10th
c)  the perps relieved of duty on the 15th
d)  they were named publicly and fired on the 20th
e)  charges filed on the 26th
 
When you're talking actions involving the police, IIRC this is *seriously* fast.  There are significant procedural issues;  this has to be done properly.  Named and fired 5 days after temporary suspension is arguably about as strong an implication that there is no other *possible* interpretation.
 
Back tracing this to training issues...it's far harder to connect the dots.  That said, the special unit they were on, which has a questionable (at best) history, has been shut down.  From CBS:

 
 
This suggests a serious predisposition to make unjustified stops, and to escalate any stop.  It's plausible this will have repercussions up the chain, to be sure.

What I find interesting (a corollary to OM's comment about the race of the officers) is that there are no command officers/staff being penalized (at least yet).  Training, sop's, p&p's, etc exist for a reason.  This corpus is written by the command staff, presented in the form of training (either in-house or contracted in some way), and is part (should be, at least) of the road staff evaluations....  Who had the brainstorm to launch the Scorpion program, with so little oversight that behaviors like this could grow (in my experience, this would not have been the first time these guys threw on somebody - but it takes a very lax/unobservant  hand from command for it get like this).  Some command staff weren't doing their jobs of training/modeling/monitoring appropriately, for quite a bit.  Will rank protect them, or will higher heads roll sooner or later?   

5 former Memphis police officers have been charged with murder in the death of Tyre Nichols.
 
The DA's office has said they will release body cam video some time after 6 PM local time Friday.  If you wish to watch it, I'm sure you can find it...
 
BUT...
 
BE WARNED.
 
The comments I've seen...THE VIDEO WILL BE SHOCKING.  I found this quote from one of the attorneys retained by Nichols' family:
 
 
CNN has this timeline of the investigation, which included the above
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/26/us/tyre-nichols-timeline-investigation/index.html

I'm inclined to suspect institutional issues.  If you believe there to be an immediate threat to students and faculty, why would you pass the buck to administration and wait to see what they want to do about it?
 
Fear of lawsuits and media frenzies aside, I also wonder if none of the adults in the equation felt comfortable with the idea of potentially having to deal with a loaded firearm if they did search the kid.

SCOTUS’s First Decision of the Term Is a Unanimous Blow to Disabled Veterans

Just to nitpick, the Abrams can run on just about any hydrocarbon--the Australians run theirs on diesel--but the Army uses Jet A to simplify logistics with aircraft.
 
That said, I've also heard that the Abrams was designed for professional soldiers while the Leopard was designed for fresh-out-of-high-school kids doing their mandatory service.  And Poland, which is right there, has all the necessary facilities to maintain a fleet of Leopards.

You might want to keep an eye on West Virginia vs EPA as well, though I'm not certain it's as big a stick as some of the "2A" crowd might want to believe.
 
ATF did, however, recently issue updated rules on 'stabilizing braces' which will generate a lot of lawyer fees in the near term and could result in a weakening of NFA requirements.  Worse case scenario, from a gun control perspective, given the current court would be overturning the NFA in its entirety.  I'm thinking that is wishful thinking on some people's part, but I'll be surprised if the final ruling only overturns the updated rule.
 
A more viable fix to the main problem isn't any easier than fighting/re-fighting the same fights about gun control legislation in the state houses and courts.
 
Getting people in crisis the help they need shouldn't be that hard, but it is.
Convincing people that 'every problem can be solved with a gun' is not true is also going to be harder than it should be.

Quibble - those are the numbers for the "non-hybrid" cases, which are using conventional brass.  If you read up a bit in the article you'll see the hybrid cases are firing that same 135 grain projectile at 3,000 feet per second.  Additionally, even the hybrid cases aren't being loaded to their maximum rated pressure at this point - for reasons(?)...
 
The expectation is that the hybrid cases will be available on the civilian market.  To my knowledge, the specs on the military loading of the cartridge haven't been released to the public and these numbers are for the civilian loadings.
 
And, yes, SIG is hyping the bejeepers out of the rifle and the cartridge.  You can count me as skeptical on how well the new rifle and cartridge (and scope) will work out in practice, but I'm not in a position to make more than quasi-informed guesses.

It won't change anything in the case of school shootings. Also, this new weapon system's potential civilian version is being seriously overhyped. The scope will be prohibitively expensive, and it's the key component. And there are plenty of things that can penetrate level IV armor already available. Not to mention that actual AP ammunition is already illegal to sell. So, I don't think the concept of engaging the shooter is going to be altered by this. It's a lot of hype, just like "cop killer bullets" were hype.
 
SIG is hyping up their already commercially available piston-driven M4 clones. Which doesn't mean much except releasing them with the civilian version of their new ammunition (see edit below).The civilian version of this magical ammunition will not likely be any more armor piercing than existing loads for the AR platform. SIG is hyping this with typical gun company marketing material, trying to make their new thing sound cool and worth buying.
 
Edit: Here's the spec of the civilian version of the ammo, from Wikipedia:
 
 
This isn't particularly potent. Not more so than any number of rounds already on the market.
 
Edit: Just for clarity, it's potent for it's size, but it isn't bringing new levels of lethality to the table. .308 win / 7.62x51 ARs have been on the market for decades and are far more potent, for example.
 
 
The Uvalde cowards were trained on school shooting response. The current doctrine being trained is to engage, not to sit back. So, yes, in this case they had an expectation to act.
 
 
It's currently far less time and effort to simply buy a gun. 3d printing a firearm isn't quite so convenient as the press leads people to believe. I'm not a huge fan of Vice on these sorts of things, but this video was pretty well put together and gives some good insight to the whole process:
 
 
It's not quite there yet. Not enough to see widespread criminal use. (Though materials technology keeps advancing.) When talking 3d printing, you either do what this guy did to print the frame of a gun, then finish it by fitting it to the rest of the mechanisms, which gives you a somewhat less than durable frame that's a pain to assemble and get to function reliably, or you do the whole thing on a 3d printer, getting a single shot gun that's no more viable than making a zip gun from parts from a hardware store. Using a home CNC machine will produce a more durable receiver, but is still a pain to get working.
 
Frankly, I'd prefer to be shot at by someone using a 3d printed gun, because it's far more likely to malfunction. I think we don't have to worry too much about future tech, since the government seems to have figured out that the technology needs to be regulated. While it's legal to manufacture a firearm for your own  use, making it so easy that any idiot can do it is more than a little problematic. The tech is far from idiot proof, and I think the government (half of it anyway) is wary of letting things advance further without regulation.

New weapons change doctrine all the time.  I doubt it in this case primarily because I don't think the XM-5 is particularly suited to an active shooter scenario compared to a typical AR-type rifle.
 
If, on the other hand, the rifle lives up to its hype and becomes readily available, expect doctrines to be adapted or developed accordingly.
 
 
 
Cops, firefighters, and even soldiers aren't expected to throw their lives away needlessly either.
 
The point of small unit tactics is coordinated action.  Large groups of people mindlessly acting independently results in Keystone Kops.
 
That said, leadership would clearly seem to have been lacking.  Instead of Keystone Kapers, we saw everybody waiting on somebody (and not just anybody), so we ended up with nobody doing what needed to be done...

Oh yeah, it merges them...
 
STOLEN GUN's OWNER - Imagine applying the same logic to vehicles.  Your car was stolen six months ago, and used in a drive-by shooting and three robberies last week, and you are responsible?
 
CANADIAN POLITICS - Danielle Smith has made a series of past gaffes - take a look at her campaign bus when she ran as leader of the  Wild Rose party in 2012. 
 
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/wildrose-partys-bust-bus-gaffe-causes-social-media-uproar/article534972/
 
The next election should be interesting, at least...
 
Based on leaked emails, it appears I now have both a national and provincial leader who considers interference with the justice system well within their rights (while knowing full well that it is not, given how hard both Ms. Smith and Mr. Trudeau worked to cover up their interference).
 
Our electorate (both sides of the 49th parallel) prizes showmanship over statesmanship. Our  recent "leaders" are the results.

In order to do that, all guns would have to be registered, and all sales tracked.  That's never happening.  
 
Also, how many gun crimes are committed with receontly-stolen weapons?  The El Paso Walmart shooting...gun was bought legally.  Uvalde...the shooter bought 2 ARs legally.  In the Mandalay Bay incident, the shooter had MANY guns in his room, and more apparently at his residences...all legal.  I'm not intentionally cherry-picking here, I'm just looking up incidents that pop to mind.
 
If a gun is stolen, then used 2 years later and 1000 miles away, is that the purchaser's responsibility?  From an ethical standpoint, I think that's a very hard sell even in a restrictive-purchase environment.  Since it's so trivially easy to buy them, I can't support this.  Basic gun availability has to be addressed in a more comprehensive matter first.
 
Now, if we're not talking stolen guns, but guns left inadequately secured, then used in a domestic situation, or because they were available to someone with normal access to the home...the owner probably has an ethical responsibility for improperly handling a dangerous item.
 
 

Genocide is an ugly word, but it is an accurate description of what is being attempted against transgender folk here in the US.

A new anti-trans bill in West Virginia would ban "transgender exposure to minors" as "obscene matter."
 
If this passes, it will be illegal for me or people like me to exist in West Virginia. Bills like this are being proposed across the country, and some of the marginally less bad ones have already passed.
 
Some people wonder why I and people like me can't be friends with Republicans these days. After all, it's just politics. Well, I can not be friends with, or, honestly, even civil to, people who support the elimination of people like me. If you vote Republican in these times, you are voting for my death (or, I suppose, just my imprisonment, which, since you'd also have me put in a men's prison, might as well be my death). Whether you personally want me dead or not, if the party you support gets it way, that's the end result.
 
I limit my participation on these boards somewhat because certain frequent posters have made their affiliations clear, and I'm not going to interact with them as if they aren't evil and a threat to my existence.