Upon her arrival, reporting officer Deanna Clouse contacted a neighbor working in his yard. He stated to the officer that on Monday night (5/12/14), at 2300 hrs, he witnessed a shooting in the driveway near his place. He stated that he didn't call 911 because he doesn't own a phone. He also stated that he saw "dozens of muzzle flashes in the dark." However, he could not provide a description of the shooters because it was dark.

The reporting officer then walked to the driveway and "located approximately 52 AK rifle round casings, four .45 handgun casings, and five 10mm casings." She then knocked on the door of an apartment near the casings and spoke to the tenant, who wished to remain anonymous. The tenant stated that she was at home with her sister when the shooting began. She and her sister "hit the floor of her apartment" to avoid being shot.

They, too, did not see the shooters.

The reporting officer then exited the apartment to search for damage caused by the shooting:

I was unable to locate any damage in the immediate area. Due to the long range of a rifle, I was unable to tell if there was any long range damage. None of the buildings or vehicles in the area showed signs of damage. I collected the rounds.

Two days later, there was another crazy shooting at Othello Park.

But here is something worth thinking about, now that we have guns on our minds. Is it possible that giving the American public guns instead of, say, economic democracy, works to the advantage of the present banking system? Meaning, would we be less fearful of letting the big banks fail and rebuilding the economy from their ruins if we did not always have in our minds the presence of not just a large number of poor people, but a large number of poor people with nothing but their guns?

Consider this passage from Mark Blyth's excellent book Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea:

A shorthand way of thinking about the decision to bail [out] US banks rather than let them fail is that there are 311 million people in the United States. Sixty four percent of people are aged 16 or over, around 158 million work. Seventy two percent of them live paycheck to paycheck, have few if any savings, and would have trouble raising $2,000 at short notice. There are, as far as we can tell, about 70 million handguns in the United States. So what would happen if there was no money in the ATMs and no paychecks being paid out? That was the fear. But what was the reality? Was the U.S. financial system, compromised by shadow banks, opaque instruments, bad risk models and flawed blueprints, actually too big to fail?

What we fear is not an armed uprising, but the nightmare of poor people killing poor people.

Note: A link to the police report wasn't provided in this post because I want to protect the anonymity of a witness.