30 thoughts on “On The Apparent News Of The Day”

  1. There’s a simple thing to remember: If you go into a group of law enforcement officers and pull a gun, bad things are going to happen to you. Perhaps he believed that his moral superiority would protect him. Perhaps it was suicide by cop. Regardless, he FOed and Found Out the hard way.

    According to a firearms expert I know, the gun he was carrying appears to be a custom works SIG P320. Those cost about $2400. The magazine shown has no signs of previous usage. It looks like he just bought that gun.

    2. He may not have pulled the gun. He supposedly had a CC permit. However, reports say he had no ID on him, and you are required to carry both an ID and your carry permit when you carry in MN. If true he was undocumented (heh) I find it ominous. There’s absolutely no way I’m prepared to believe he didn’t know he had to have ID on him.

  2. Yes, best to await more information. I think it was Scott Adams who said to wait 48hrs before opining.

  3. I,ve seen a couple of videos, and to my eyes they’re clear as mud in many ways, such as if or when the dead guy was relieved of his gun. (and whether or not that occured before or after he became a dead guy) So, I think waiting to see what happened is a wise move.

    However, no one’s ever accused me of being wise, so I’ll weigh in; I think there’s something missing from the arguments of both sides, those who seem focused on whether or not the guy still had his gun when shot.

    Even if the ICE agents had just taken the gun, how exactly would those ICE agents know whether or not it was his only gun?

      1. Looks to me like he was resisting, including trying to get up. Kind of hard to pat someone down for further weapons when they’re struggling.

        Resisting arrest while armed makes this, per the law, a rightful shoot.

        It’s by definition not a peaceful protest when the so-called protesters are violent. I never had any issues with the capitol police shooting and killing one of the “protesters” who stormed the capitol on Jan 6th, even though she was unarmed, because the forced entry was violent (and thus not peaceful). That made them not protestors. I did have major issues with them prosecuting, to the extent they did, the utter morons who strolled into the capitol after the takeover and snapped selfies, because stupidity is not a crime. That was trespassing (I’d have been totally fine with it being prosecuted as that).

        So, applying either the left’s own rules, or the law, the Minneapolis shoot was totally legitimate.

        1. I do have a big problem with that shooting. It was not a forced entry, she was unarmed and no one tried to arrest her so she wasn’t resisting. No justification at all. Completely different from these anti-ICE riots.

          1. Yes, she presented no imminent threat to loss of life or serious bodily injury. On the side she came from, there were a bunch of cops and on the side she crossed to, the guy just jumped out of concealment and shot her.

          2. It was not a forced entry

            Ashli Babbitt climbed through a window that someone in the mob outside had broken. That’s forced entry. If she managed to open the door, that mob would be inside. I think there’s a reasonable case here for self-defense even though she wasn’t armed (and they hadn’t had an opportunity to pat her down, unlike Alex Pretti).

            Resisting arrest while armed makes this, per the law, a rightful shoot.

            That’s a large undermining of the Second Amendment (especially given how easy it usually is for law enforcement to generate grounds for a resisting arrest charge).

            For example, the NRA has criticized the Trump administration’s stance on this:

            Carrying a handgun in public is legal with a permit in Minnesota, and Pretti was a lawful gun owner – a fact the NRA has seemingly taken into consideration.

            The NRA on Saturday refuted a comment made by Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, who posted to X: “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”

            The gun rights advocacy group, in a quote tweet on X, called Essayli’s remarks “dangerous and wrong,” adding, “responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”

            I think it was very stupid to bring a firearm to a protest. That’s something that almost all of the January 6 protesters in comparison were very careful not to do. But stupid people don’t waive their rights. I think the NRA’s stance is sensible here: full investigation of the shooting like normal, and don’t use the shooting to claim a substantial undermining of the Second Amendment.

  4. You know it just might have been helpful had the mayor of Minneapple said “ICE, stay the f*ck away from them” instead. Ya, think?

    1. It’s fascinating that you consider murderers, rapists, drunk drivers, and so on “mice”.

  7. From the video that I saw, the agent who shot him was very well placed to see that the gun had been removed from the suspect. The reason for waiting before holding an opinion is that the current evidence appears to go contrary to one’s preferred view that the shooting was justified. So, instead of withholding opinion, why not just say that, in lieu of further evidence, it appears that the shooting was unjustified?

    This is in contrast to the previous shooting where a vehicle was moving toward the agent driven by someone who had been harassing ICE agents and who had refused orders to step out. In other words, it was entirely reasonable for the agent to shoot a reckless and threatening person in self-defense.

    1. Why withhold an opinion of guilty until all evidence is available?

      Because “innocent until proven guilty” is the standard.

      1. No, that is a legal criteria not the criteria for the court of public opinion. It is a criteria for court situations where the consequences are things like imprisonment. In blog comments, is it common practice to withhold an opinion on something that Biden or Kamala did? Of course not. Now granted, in this particular case, it appears that we have clear evidence. But it is not impossible that there is more to the situation than our lying eyes are telling us. But from the evidence in front of us, it sure looks like an agent pulled a gun and shot a guy dead while clearly seeing that he had been disarmed. So, tentatively, it appears as though it was an unjustified killing. The most recent actions by the Administration appears to me that they understand that the evidence is continuing to point towards it being unjustified.

    2. Without further evidence, it seems very clearly justified. I’ve never seen an armed civilian walk up to law enforcement doing their job and start interfering with them. That’s especially true when other agitators are nearby already trying to complicate the officers doing their job. I’ll need to see some evidence, hopefully from body cams that show some other reason for this gunman to approach this scene to understand anything other than him needing to be neutralized.

    3. ” So, instead of withholding opinion, why not just say that, in lieu of further evidence, it appears that the shooting was unjustified?”

      Because people ignore the qualifier and go open loop.

    4. It was a “bad shoot” but there were a cascade of unfortunate events from all involved.

      The man shouldn’t have been doing what he was doing. His actions created the situation.

      The whistles created auditory chaos preventing communication and degrading the ability of the officers to think clearly.

      The officer who took the gun appeared to have a ND, spooking the rest of the officers in the scrum causing them to open fire.

      It was a chaotic situation because the activists were trained to make it chaotic just as they were trained to take the other actions they took.

      Everyone should share some blame here, especially the people who created the confrontation. ICE needs better tactics for dealing with an insurgency, mitigating noise, and subduing people at the officer level.

  8. Reading the news of Minnesota and Iran called up memory of W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming:”

    “The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.”

    and

    “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

    1. I’ll say. I’ve been wondering why Minneapolis? But now Data Republican and connected the politicians to the money and the insurrection so it’s become more clear.

      1. “why Minneapolis?”

        The most common theory is to detract from all the fraud. Notice all the ICE activity was completely under the radar and barely on the news until after the video about the Learing Center was released.

  10. Wretchard says it was recon by fire, which may or may not be true but had the same effect regardless. He also says the insurgency tactics will not go away but spread, first to other Democrat cities and then to people on the right.

    Our government isnt prepared for an Iraq style insurgency and while there are Democrat politicians who are participating, most of them lack the intelligence or experience to organize this.

    I wonder who controls the party, since a power structure exists outside of the public facing politicians. And there could be foreign governments involved.

  11. So, some current analysis suggests that, after the officer removed the gun from the nurse, he may have accidentally discharged it setting off a reaction by the other officers that could explain why one of the officers who shot the nurse in the back would have done so despite being able to see the gun . If that’s the case then it is a complicated and unfortunate situation and not straight forward like it first appeared. Rand was right to reserve judgement.

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