Two "snipers" fired on the officers, according to Dallas's police chief, toward the end of "a demonstration protesting the police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana this week." If the left were the right—if there was an Alex Jones on the left—there would be cries of "false flag op" circulating online. Because this isn't going to solve anything. This only makes it worse.

WLS:


The gunfire broke out around 8:45 p.m. Thursday. Live TV video showed protesters marching along a street in downtown when the shots erupted and the crowd scattered, seeking cover. "Everyone just started running," Devante Odom, 21, told The Dallas Morning News. "We lost touch with two of our friends just trying to get out of there."

Carlos Harris, who lives downtown told the newspaper that the shooters "were strategic. It was tap tap pause. Tap tap pause."

TV cameras showed the search for the gunman stretched throughout downtown, an area of hotels, restaurants, businesses and some residential apartments. The scene was chaotic, with helicopters hovering overhead and officers with automatic rifles on the street corners.

It's 1968.



The person in the picture is presumably a "person of interest" because he was openly and idiotically carrying an automatic weapon around at a demonstration against police violence. Open and idiotic carry is perfectly legal in Texas, of course, thanks to statutes signed into law last summer by that state's gun-humping, NRA-fellating, ammosexual governor:


"Welcome to the gun business," Abbot said in another tweet the day he signed open carry into law. "I hope open carry boosts sales."

UPDATE: And that person in the picture has been cleared:


So the guy carrying an automatic weapon around in a crowd at an extremely tense demonstration isn't a suspect. He's just a guy carrying an automatic weapon around in a crowd at an extremely tense demonstration. One of the good guys.

UPDATE 2: The gun nuts on Twitter are blowing up at me because THAT IS NOT AN AUTOMATIC WEAPON, DUMMY. It's merely a giant-ass gun, maybe a semi-automatic weapon, and it most could be converted to automatic in ten minutes with instructions easily found on the Internet. But that is not an automatic weapon and I am an ignoramus and what's really important RIGHT NOW, according to the Gun Nuts of Twitter (sorta like Humans of New York but all assholes), is to argue about what kind of gun that is exactly because that'll deflect attention away from crimes committed with guns, the way guns make it easier for people to murder each other in large numbers, the buying of our elected official by the gun lobby, and then the Gun Nuts of Twitter can get back to encouraging all of us to run out and arm ourselves with guns because so many people out there are carrying guns around already and we need guns to protect ourselves from all those people who have guns and only guns can save us from guns so MORE GUNS.

But you know what? All guns are automatic. You pull the trigger and it fires a bullet automatically. Some automatically fire bullets faster than others. But they're all fucking automatic. So ban them all. Every. Last. Fucking. One. Including guns carried by cops. Ban those too. Let's pretend guns are as just as dangerous as lawn darts and ban the fucking things already.

UPDATE 3:


NYT:

The police believe four suspects coordinated the attack with rifles, he said, and positioned themselves in strategic locations near the route the protesters planned to take. The police had three people in custody and were negotiating in the early-morning hours with a fourth, who was in a garage in downtown Dallas at El Centro, a community college.

That suspect had exchanged gunfire with the police and was being uncooperative in talks, Chief Brown said at a news conference in the lobby of City Hall.

The suspect “has told our negotiators that the end is coming and he’s going to hurt and kill more of us, meaning law enforcement, and that there are bombs all over the place in this garage and downtown,” Chief Brown said.

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that a fifth officer has died of his wounds.