Obviously the police need to start killing more whites.

And last Thursday in Houston, an unarmed man with his pants around his ankles was fatally shot within 30 seconds of a cop arriving on the scene.

Dan-

While I agree with this discrepancy and the implied cause behind it, it does not help us make this point if we repeat things that are not true. The cops did not take Dylan Roof to Burger King. This is an urban legend. They took him to jail. Then because there was not food available in the jail itself, one of the cops went to a nearby Burger King to get Dylan Roof something to eat and he brought that burger back to the jail. And while I'm extremely critical of the police, the reason they did this actually makes a lot of sense. There was loads of media attention on the situation, and the cop involved was concerned that if they did not feed him and detain him properly, they could compromise his future trial (sometimes cases get thrown out or compromised if the cops are shown to have mistreated a suspect or violated his rights) especially if he made a statement while in custody that they wanted to later use. Let's keep in mind that he'd been on the run for a day by then, had not had anything to eat, and a small town police station was the one that got him. I'm sure they did the best they could at the time. Would they have just shot him outright if he were black? I think that would depend on the cop and the station- white supremacy is a thing for sure. But in this particular case, the cops were trying to do the right thing to make sure they didn't screw up the chances of this thug facing justice, and that did not involve taking him to Burger King so I wish people would stop saying that. It undermines a really good point.

Based on what is being reported in regards to how the arrest went down, I am unsure how the cops would have known he was armed at the time, as his duffel bag was unattended, and he was arrested at the ticket counter.

He had a gun on his person, but there is no mention that he was pointing it or threatening anyone with it. If he had been, I would imagine the police would not have had to find his illicit duffel bag first.

I also am not seeing anything about him being dressed as a "shooter," a bullet proof vest is often worn under clothing, and designed to be worn under clothing.

What did you see that led you to believe the police knew he was armed or that he was dressed "like a mass shooter?"

@3
Are you sure?
The way we heard it they took him to Disney World.
And then to Burger King.
Now we're confused...

@3: I never quite understood the outrage about Dylan Roof being given food either. I am pretty sure it is standard procedure to feed prisoners in the United States, but it has been a while since I have been inside a prison.

But you are beating your head against a wall here, although I respect what you are trying to do.

BTW The police handled the arrest and detention of Dylann Roof the way that we'd like police to handle them. They were scared and didn't really know what to do, and they handled it correctly. They also did not have the facilities to handle such a high profile case- had to improvise where to keep him until the feds came. It was unexpected and they had to be careful to do everything by the book at the same time as they had to improvise. I think they did an excellent job.

We should be able to criticize police brutality and white supremacy and how the two go together too-often without criticising police who do the right thing. We don't want police to start shooting everyone. We want them to stop shooting people. And we want them to be held accountable for when they do shoot people. A recognition that our system is white supremacist does not have to include criticism of when they do the right thing and do not take the law into their own hands.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2015/06/22/d…
https://www.yahoo.com/news/dylann-roofs-…

@5 fuck off. White supremacy and police brutality often go hand-in-hand. Your comments are flippant and do not acknowledge this so please do not pretend that we are in agreement about anything.

@Theodore. Exactly. If he'd been in a bigger jail in a city, they'd have fed him either from the cafeteria or someone would've brought something in. But since it was a small town and there was media everywhere swarming, they played it safe. An officer went to get him something to eat probably because it was easier than letting a delivery person in through media- I seem to remember that at one point they had to lock the doors to keep people out? Likewise, they kept him cuffed separate from everyone else and under guard the entire time to record any statement he made. They had to keep him there while waiting for the feds. These were small town police very well aware that their actions could jeopardize the whole thing- that the entire nation was watching them. I doubt it ever occurred to them that they thing they'd get criticised for was feeding their prisoner.

He had not eaten in a day and they had to hold him for some time. Can you imagine how easy it would've been for a lawyer to later claim that he made a confession under threat of starvation or torture through withholding food or some such shit?

I'm outraged by the police actions in these murders as well, and I think anger at the police is completely justified. But telling lies and spreading urban legends and criticising cops for behaving correctly all undermine our perfectly legit argument that so many cops are out of control and taking the law into their own hands. And it plays right into the claims of assholes like Kinkaid above that we are indulging in hyperbole.

@blip

I agree with that entirely. I'm saying we can make that point without lying.

For example, we could point out how Dylann Roof was correctly treated by the police. How his rights were observed and he was held as a suspect awaiting trial as he should've been. We can make the point that this was the correct thing to do, and that this observation of human rights is often denied to black people WITHOUT a) lying about how Dylan Roof was treated, or b) implying that the cops were wrong to not violate Dylan's human rights.

@3) & @6) The point, which sailed so high and far over your heads it struck a blimp, is that this armed & murderous felon had light skin and gets to go to jail and eat American fast food while the other guy only had dark skin and gets to push daisies with no Burger King.

That Dan left out details of where the fast food came from and why humans are allowed to eat when in jail is completely irrelevant.

@3) Dan did not write one single thing word that was untrue. You decided that you wanted to be disagreeable because he did not spell out all the arrest details, and then wrote a word salad that does absolutely nothing to help your false premise. Please focus more closely on your education. Your parent spent a bunch of money on it. Study up on formal fallacies and propositional fallacies to get an idea of what your ideas read like.

@12 Fuck off. I've acknowledged that point repeatedly, am a member of a targetted population myself, and repeatedly said that it's an important point to make.

It is not true that the cops took Dylann Roof to Burger King. It's a false statement. It's one that is repeated a lot to defend the very important and true statement that the police often respect the human rights of white people without respecting the human rights of people of color. But by saying something that is not true- and that racists and assholes who defend the police in every killing KNOW is not true- you undermine this point and play right into their hands. They claim we make shit up and use hyperbole. So when you make something up and use hyperbole, you feed their side and make your own look like fools. Stop doing that.

As I said, we can make this point without lying. We can use Roof's detention as an example of how suspects' human rights should be observed. We can point out that this happened to Roof partially because he's white and is therefore more likely to have his rights reserved. We can make this point without criticising the SPECIFIC police that did the right thing and without lying.

And go fuck yourself with your fallacies and concern for my education. This is not a debate class. The statement that they took him to Burger King is an urban legend. It did not happen, and people who defend police ridicule us for saying it again and again.

@13) Don't know how to keep from sounding dumb, huh? You are harpooned by the idea of whether he got an escort to a fast food restaurant or not BEFORE he snacked on Burger King, as if that has any significance whatsoever. Good strategy, there. Blowing hysterics on the internet does not strengthen your position.

Correct, this is a forum, not a debate class, so stop bringing your freshman game. Obviously I give way more of a fuck about your education than you or anyone else; pretty sad that you would bring it up. Don't give up! Even Helen Keller learned to construct intelligent arguments.

Popelick, yes it makes a difference if the police took him out to eat vs if they fed him in jail. Obviously this makes a huge difference or else the urban legend would not resonate so much with people to be constantly repeated. I'm not sure why you want to insult me repeatedly for saying that it's a bad strategy to repeat urban legends. Some people like to build social and political movements on things that FEEL true or on made-up stories that resonate with people because they have larger lessons at their core. I think this is a flawed strategy- it's one the right uses constantly, and it's one that liberals have been using increasingly. Helen Keller was a genius and a social reformer so I'm not sure what your "even Helen Keller" is meant to imply. And I dont know what else you think internet forums are supposed to be used for? What do you think you are doing here? This entire discussion is all pretty cartoonish.

EmmetLutz sure has a lot of ideas as to what "we" can do! Exactly what she intends to do that is so important is never articulated or hinted at, but apparently she thinks lying is bad, so thank you.

Thankfully we have all learned that without furious platitudes typed by hypersensitive wallflowers, nothing changes.

For a society in which many people try to deny that race and racism are still major issues, we sure seem to have a lot (excuse the caps lock, but A LOT) of incidents, trends, news stories, tragedies, statistical reports, political outrages and online discussions that have race at or very near their center. Dan is rightly pointing out a troubling inconsistency in how the police sometimes handle these situations. fyi, far more whites are killed by the cops than are blacks (but remember that population proportion percentage is important), and way more men are killed than women. Somewhat surprisingly, to me at least, is the range of ages in these killings. By no means are they overwhelmingly young people. Check out https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-p… to download stats. It's disgusting but informative reading.

@15 Yes, although some of them were killed, just not the ones at the ranch. And there's a more terrifying lesson at the core of that story since part of the reason they avoided any confrontation at the ranch is that they are unwilling to engage in any confrontation with armed militias. This is something we need to keep in mind when discussing gun control in my opinion. Which people are going to be stopped/searched, have their rights restricted, imprisoned for violating gun laws and which people are going to be left alone to horde all their weapons b/c the police will not engage in a confrontation with them? I guarantee you it will play out along racial lines. (Not that I'm saying we shouldn't have gun control- just that these conversations must involve a racial analysis and discussions of police disarmament).

Another strategy is to look at the unequal application of Stand Your Ground laws (Siwatu-Salama Ra) or NRA defense of gun owners (Philando Castile). Or even, as I said, acknowledge that the Dylan Roof arrest was actually a by-the-book respect for the human rights of suspects and criticise that that this probably wouldn't have been extended to a black man- rather than criticism that the police did the right thing.

It's similar to how people criticise that violent white men who mass murder people in random shootings are not labelled terrorists. On the one hand, I get that this is racist and we want to point out the racism in labelling everyone else "terrorists", but on the other hand, the point is that we need to stop labelling everyone terrorists in the first place. There are two ways to achieve equality, and making everything suck evenly for everyone requires no systemic or structural changes.

The police responded the correct way in the case of mr. Malailua, and they responded incorrectly and inappropriately in the case of mr. Clark.
I don't think anyone could deny that, at least not in good faith.
The two situations were different however.
Mr. Clark was alone in his grandmother's backyard, Mr. Malailua was in a crowded train station.
Mr. Malailua had also stolen equipment from Chicago SWAT team, including body armor and firearms. I'm assuming the Chicago PD wanted to know how he had done this, and what exactly he was planning to do with their equipment. The police may well have believed Mr. Malailua was part of a larger criminal conspiracy. If mr. Malailua had been killed the police would not be able to interrogate him.

One final point.
Malailua is a Polynesian surname, which means there's a good chance that Mr. Malailua is Polynesian.
If that is the case then according to the US government Mr. Malailua would be a Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander.
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands. It includes people who indicate their race as "Native Hawaiian", "Guamanian or Chamorro", "Samoan", and "Other Pacific Islander".
The fact that Mr. Malailua may not be white is trivial, but it's also a point that many people may stress as this cases discussed further.

For those who are interested, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders make up .1% of the population of the United States, making them the smallest minority group in the country.
( of the five racial groups recognized by the US Census)

@16) So your point is that urban legends get repeated by people? And that some people believe urban legends? This is the great truth you bring? Still irrelevant to the topic. You are playing mental lawn jarts with a football bat.
Why do I post here (as opposed to the grammatically sad "what are you doing here"). Well, I tried to bring some rational thinking in, but now watching you flail hysterically to defend a non-position has become mildly amusing. Please post more!

@17 I'm not sure what you are talking about. As I said, I think the apprehension of Dylan Roof and the way he was held in custody, statement taken, etc was all handled very well. This is what I think cops should do which is my whole point of criticizing the police for feeding him. The problem isn't how he was treated- it's that this same observation of human rights is not always extended to people of color. If you mean me personally, I am not a cop. What are you asking? What do I do, as a citizen or an activist or whatever? Well I've spent a lot of time in this forum touching on that over the months and I don't think right now is a good place to review that. My own activities range from cranky internet posting while day-drinking to alleviate stress & indulge my own desire to argue pointlessly to actual on the ground activism and professional work with people in foster care and institutions which requires me to be much more grownup and reserved. I assume most people here are doing a similar thing, including Popelick, while others are just bigots. And by "we" I think I was pretty clear that I mean people who are concerned about white supremacy and police brutality- people such as myself and Dan and Popelick.

@18) Ad Hominem attack with zero intelligent thoughts... boy you know how to hurt a girl.

@14-- Popelick,you busted your own pick.

EmmaLiz encouraged Dan to stick with the facts. You claimed Dan said nothing untrue, which was patently not the case. You came back posing as if somebody dealt you a hand full of trump.

That makes you a serial loser, whether it's formal debate or teh internets. Fess up, apologize, and pipe down.

Turd @ 5 - You are so easily confused. Perhaps that's because your brain doesn't work.

@24: Amazing how you blend ranting, uninformed asshole with whiny little baby so well.

Also, I have to imagine even someone as dim as you can see the problem with using nothing but ad hominem attacks, and then crying about ad hominem attacks.

Jamelle Bouie at Slate had an interesting piece on how the media give more sympathy to white murderers than to black murder victims. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018…

@popelick monster

The police had to feed dylann roof, it was their responsibility.
They fed him a burger from a fast food joint, not filet mignon with a side of truffles.
He ate a cold crappy cheeseburger in a jail cell.
The police weren't showing him special treatment, they were doing their job.

When the police shot mr. Clark, they were acting inappropriately. They weren't doing their job the way we the people, their bosses, expect them to do their job.
I'm pretty sure Dan isn't suggesting that the police should have killed dylann roof, or that they shouldn't have fed him.
Mr. Clark should have been arrested and given some crappy food to eat while he sat in a jail cell, instead of being shot in his grandmother's backyard.
You see, in this country people are innocent until proven guilty, no matter what the circumstances of their arrest happen to be.

Let's be honest, though. We don't have much hope of having a non-racist police force when racism is so built into media, history books, the educational system, the financial system, etc. Especially not when pressing the race-fear-hate button is such a reliable way to get elected.

And really, if racism is so bad, why does it persist? It's not nice, especially not for the targets. It may or may not be "Christian". But it seems to be expedient for something. Perhaps white Americans are psychologically preparing ourselves to re-enslave black and brown people in the coming generations, should it seem necessary?

@30 Yup, at this point I find myself leaning towards complete abolition but the truth is that I don't know enough about that to have an informed opinion on it. When I start to think of it all big picture, I find myself just seeking distraction. It's a really grim thing when you look at the scope of it. And white supremacy is just one aspect. Combine that with their militarization, the increasing lack of municipal autonomy as federal forces like ICE gain more control over cities and their own courts/jails get more power, plus the profit margin on prisons, plus the way police are used mostly to defend property, and what to do? Cranky internet posting, day drinking, I wonder what superhero movie is on at the cinema hall, most people are on some sort of drug and have some sort of mental illness. It's not getting better, best I can tell.

Are people under the impression that this Chicago kid is white? Or that the parkland shooter is white? Are we gonna go back to the days of classifying people mulatto or octaroons so we know how to feel about them when they interact with police?

@Blip

I think we can all safely assume that they're not black.
It's also possible that either one or both of these individuals could be considered non-white as well.
One way or the other it's completely irrelevant.

I've often wondered why racists don't use examples of African Americans being arrested without the police resorting to violence as a justification for their whole "police aren't racist" argument, but then I realize that isn't the argument they're trying to make.
The argument they are trying to make is much worse. You see, they want the police to be racist, and they want the police to shoot African-Americans. That's why they always like to say that these shootings were "Justified".

It's obvious police are excused for killing Black people. The Australian woman shot by US police, the man who killed her has been charged with murder. How is her murder any different? Oh yes she's white.

EmmaLiz, don't feed the monster troll. He's got issues best dealt with elsewhere.

@36
Let's not jump to conclusions here.
He could have been charged with murder because he's black, or because he's Muslim, or both.

@20 “It's similar to how people criticise that violent white men who mass murder people in random shootings are not labelled terrorists.”

That be me. When FOX and fiends began calling PETA and those who torched homes under construction, no body got injured, killed or maimed (I’m pretty sure), when those people – their goals, I’m fairly certain ARE Moral (from everything I’ve learned) – when they were labeled “Terrorists” and compared to Islamic terrorists, and no mention by the thought-leaders/makers of Timothy McVay, then ALL White massacrers (Black ones, too, I spose – not that any spring to mind…..) are. Fucking. Terrorists. Or, like you suggest, we redefine terrorism.

It’s interesting Dan hasn't yet edited out the trip to Burger King, what with all the very probable evidence here. With the far alt right and the True Believers, oh and not to mention the propaganda arm of the Murdochs, Kochs etc, the Myth is more important than the Actual. It's the Emotions what makes a movement these days when corporate teevee and perhaps soon corporate internet too…

When trying to reach the 'morally challenged,' among others, do we 'borrow' their methods, or is it true that shit ALWAYS comes back to bite? We shouldn't risk it?

Uh, the difference is that shooting at a suspect in Union Station would probably also take out civilians, whereas the cops didn't need to worry about that in a backyard. It's not right that they shot the guy in Sacramento. The calculations change based on how many innocent bystanders are there. The same reason they don't shoot at people holding hostages.

You're a smart guy, Dan. This should be obvious.

In terms of case comparisons, perhaps this is also relevant:

This incident is the second time in a little more than a month that an armed man has been arrested in downtown Chicago while wearing bullet-resistant body armor.

The first case involved a fatal shooting on Feb. 13. That suspect, Shomari Legghette, is a four-time felon.

Legghette is a black man, well known to police, who killed an off-duty Chicago PD Commander who joined an active pursuit. He lived to plead "not guilty" to 56 felony counts.

Cops don't kill every black man they can. They do kill white people too. (See the WaPo or Guardian compilations.)

In the fatal shooting stix, black men are over-represented as a share of population. Unarmed black men are over-represented as a share of total incidents (though the numbers are small).

OTOH, black men are under-represented as a share of felony arrests ... and under-represented in proportion to homicides, or attempted homicides, or aggravated assaults.

Stacking the evidentiary deck, as Dan's post does above, does not do justice.

Dan cites anecdotal 'evidence '; which is worse than useless,
and manages to botch even that;
in a clumsy attempt to demonstrate that police disproportionately kill blacks.

There are striking disparities when one looks at murder and race in America, however.

Blacks are 13% of the population but 50% of the murder victims.
Blacks are six times as likely to be murdered as whites.
Pretty obvious racism, don't you think?
Except that 90% of the blacks are killed by other blacks,
who are seven times as likely as whites to commit murder.

What about when people kill someone of another race,
surely racism will rear it's ugly head there...

In raw numbers twice as many whites are killed by blacks as are blacks killed by whites.
When you factor that over the fact that 77% of the population is white and 13% black you find that blacks are TWELVE times as likely to kill a white as whites are to kill a black.

That smells like some pretty ugly violent racism.

maybe Dan can did up a couple of stories about that.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/201…

Just curious (literally, not trolling not taking a side, I'll leave that to popefucker):
How many of the people expressing an opinion regarding the sacramento shooting have watched the bodycam video? I ask because (now stating opinions) I am generally not a fan of police shootings, as no one should be, and firmly believe that too many cops are underqualified for the responsibilities and expectations placed upon them. But watching that video it is apparent to me that evaluating how they interact with a suspect in a (presumably) well lit train station vs a pitch black (no racisim intended) neighborhood by flashlight is disingenuous. I recognize that there are plenty of examples of cops shooting unarmed black people in broad daylight. I am just not convinced this shooting was as cut-and-dry.

@39
The ACLU explains the legal definition of "terrorist". Hopefully they are reputable by your standards:
A person engages in domestic terrorism if they do an act "dangerous to human life" that is a violation of the criminal laws of a state or the United States, if the act appears to be intended to: (i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.
https://www.aclu.org/other/how-usa-patri…

Therefore PETA burning homes is by the legal definition domestic terrorism. Distributing bombs around Austin without a stated agenda? Murder, mayhem, attempted both, etc, but not terrorism. Shooting people from a hotel room in Vegas, also not terrorism. Making terrorism out to be a worse crime than mass murder and mayhem? Politics.

@43

I think the point is that police violence is excessive when it involves helicopters out tracking a man in the dark running through a neighborhood because there are reports that he was trying to steal cars or break windows. In the first place- they shouldn't have been on foot chasing someone in the dark with directions from a helicopter with flashlights and guns out. Does this seem like normal police behavior to Americans? Likewise with the recent shooting of the old woman in Oklahoma. Why in god's name were they raiding a residence in the middle of the night, guns ablazing, just to nab a petty small time drug dealer? Likewise when they pulled that child out of her house at night- oops we're at the wrong residence. She's screaming and crying and they take her out in cuffs and they tell her to be quiet. The fact that they were at the wrong house, bad enough, but the point is- why are they raiding houses in the middle of the night in the first place over stupid shit like small time drug dealers?

Now this happens more in black neighborhoods for more complex socioeconomic reasons than just the individual racism of cops. But that happens too- and you can't deny that cops are often afraid of black people. The cop in the recent arrest in Austin even tells the teacher in the back of his car as much. That he sees black people and feels they have a tendency of violence. This is happen too often to be coincidence. Is it a factor every time? Probably not. I think probably a lot of times the cops aren't even aware of it. But if it continues to go on- excessive macho policing in lower income areas combined with racist cops combined with a justice system that lets them off for murdering people (and yes white people too) then you start to see patterns.

As for apprehending this person or Dylann Roof- in both cases I think the scenarios AROUND the arrests (the high profile of Roof, the public crowded well-lit setting here) probably had more to do with their successful arrest without murder than the race of the men. But there's just been too much work around how cops interact with young black men vs young white men plus how the media covers the violence and/or threat of each group to deny that racism isn't a huge factor in a more general sense. What annoys the fuck out of me is that you can stack up 100s of examples of racist policing/murders/court systems, but then the moment some well-intentioned but not-nearly-so-progressive-or-informed-as-they-think liberal like Dan Savage makes a bad argument, everyone comes out of the woodwork saying actually it's not about race at all because in this particular scenario, things are different.

Yes it's about race. Yes it's about poverty. Yes it's about excessive out of control police. Yes it's about corruption in our judicial system. If you were to create a venn diagram with all these issues, the shared areas are going to disproporationately affect black people. That doesn't mean any one case can't involve some or the others of them. The police are out of control period. If the "all lives matter" people spent half as much time talking about the police torture and murder of Kelly Thomas or Daniel Shaver as they do trying to defend the police and crunch statistics to show race isn't a problem, then I would believe they were coming from a place of more general concern about excessive police violence, and they could probably be good allies to other groups working on issues of social justice. But they don't do that. BLM does- they also report on the police deaths of non-black people- but those all lives matter folks don't. It's like the NRA. If they really believed in gun rights for all, they would've come out for Philando Castile and John Crawford. But they don't. BLM does that, even though most liberals are for gun control. Likewise, if they protested when police were excessive or let off- like when they chase car thieves with guns blazing through neighborhoods at night and then claim they have reason to kill people they can't see because they can't tell if they are armed or not- then I would believe them that race is probably less an issue here. But they don't do that. They justify police errors without criticising what the fuck they were doing there in the first place, which makes their supposed support of the constitution make no sense at all. When you add all this up and look at trends, yes it stinks of racism. Why protest so much in the other direction otherwise?

I'll tell you what is racist. The way Americans judge cops (or vigilantes like that guy that shot Trayvon Martin) is that they consider the intentions/mistakes of the cop/shooter just before the killed a person. So, did the cops who shot Stephon Clark have reason to fear he was holding a gun? They couldn't see him. They were chasing him. They saw something in his hand. Probably the cop pulling the trigger really did think Clark was armed. Likewise with the guy that shot Trayvon. In the moment that he killed him, did he have reason to fear that Trayvon would beat the living shit out of him otherwise? I don't know, but I've heard convincing arguments that this could be true. Likewise with dozens of shootings- people justify the police actions in the split second before they shoot. But if you take a step back, what the fuck were the cops doing in the first place? Trayvon wouldn't be beating that guy to a pulp if he had left alone in the first place. The police would be shooting people they can't see in the dark in their backyard if they hadn't responded by going out with guns and helicopters to search through the night for someone breaking car windows. It's the same logic with the guy with the "flamethrower" at the Nazi rally in Charlottesville. The number of assholes I've seen saying that the Nazi was correct to defend himself by shooting at that man because that man was attacking him with a "flamethrower" is a bunch of fucking bullshit- who made the goddamn Nazi go into someone else's neighborhood with guns and cries of blood and soil in the first place? The justifications that we give to the police/shooters of self-defense or legit fear are based on racism and also classism- the idea that they are given the benefit of the doubt in the first place in scenarios that THEY created and/or escalated.

Do you think that in other developed democracies that the police would respond with helicopters and armed night time raids running through neighborhoods with guns shooting people they can't see at night just because they got reports of someone breaking car windows? It's like Americans have gone collectively insane to say that it's self defense because you can't see the person you chase down and shoot. WTF are you chasing down and shooting people you can't see in the first place? This isn't a war zone- he's not an ISIS operative.

And yes, there is a racist component to how we understand self-defense and threats and reasonable actions. There's also an authoritative component and a class component, and when you add them all together, it's also borderline fascist.

@44 "Shooting people from a hotel room in Vegas, also not terrorism."

Please. Terrorizing tens of thousands of concert goers -- murdering 59 human beings and injuring 550, or so, directly, and indirectly, with a full fucking Arsenal of military-style automatic weapons IS FUCKING TERRORISM. Websters (and the ACLU is just gonna hafta catch the fuck up.

How anxious do you spose those horrifically trapped in that Nightmare in Vegas are gonna be to get back on and ride that horse again?

Q. Is the NRA a Terrorist Organization?