Five dead now. There haven’t been any recent updates on the story that they’re negotiating with a sniper holed up oin a building, so I have no idea if that’s true or not.
Louisiana is an open carry state. I don’t like it, but yeah. But it was illegal for Sterling, as a convicted felon, to carry a firearm. It’s not clear to me at this point that the cops knew his record. And if they knew who he was, it seems like they’d have known that he was a known guy around the neighborhood who people seemed to like.
And this news from Dallas… I can’t even wrap my head around the past few days.
The guy from the pic has turned himself in. No idea whether he was involved. They also have the holed-up guy in custody.
There’s also a car that’s been surrounded on a highway. Totally unclear what’s up with that.
Where are they saying 5 dead?
There’s video of shots firing with the “person of interest” just standing there. Doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the shootings. If you search #dallas on twitter, you can see it.
Brace yourselves for the videos of the actual shootings, up close. You know they are coming.
@Youdon’tsay - yes, that’s what I tried to say in #117. He didn’t have anything to do with it; he was a co-organizer of the event. But they kept calling him a suspect on CNN (not sure what other channels others are watching). If something happens to him, CNN should be held accountable for disseminating false information.
I’m so glad that I don’t have cable TV. I am pretty appalled by the state of 24/7 media these days. But Dallas police did tweet the picture asking for help in finding him, so …
Heck, the shooters themselves may have taken video. Do they really think they’re going to get out of this alive? They may have taken video so they are ‘credited’ with the carnage.
But did the Dallas police say person of interest or suspect?
Person of interest, I believe …
So CNN escalated it to suspect. Shame on them.
@DonnaL I am in Dallas and all local reports are still 4 dead. News here is reporting two people in custody- one a suspect and one person of interest.
I think they’re saying 4 cops dead, one civilian. The civilian isn’t being included in any totals, and I’ve only heard it mentioned in passing.
DPD Twitter called him a suspect when picture was tweeted out.
Silly. Of course they will.
After Sandy Hook, Wayne La Pierre said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” I wonder how that theory applies to this mass shooting, where there were a whole bunch of good guys with guns.
My thoughts exactly, LasMa.
I got the 5 dead from a google news headline, but when I went back to check on it, they had changed it to 4 again.
The immediate labeling of that guy as a suspect – wrongly, from all indications – reminds me of the New York Post front page after the Boston Marathon bombing, identifying two innocent people as suspects, with a photograph, before the Tsarnaev brothers were arrested. I’m not sure, but I believe there was a lawsuit. If so, I hope they got something out of it.
People are going crazy. There’s no love for our country as a whole. It’s all us vs them, whites vs blacks, citizens vs cops, gun owners vs gun control advocates, Christians vs Muslims, etc. Was there ever less friction between the segments or did I just grow up extrodinarily sheltered in believing things were more peaceful (though far from perfect) years ago?
Surely you read about the events years ago in 1861-1865 that were not exactly peaceful?
However, general crime is down considerably from the early 1990s (see http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm ), even though it seems that fear of crime is as high (or higher) now as it was then.
The AR-15 semi-auto shoots a .223 caliber bullet – not a particularly big round. Many rifle rounds, almost all of them, pack more power than the .223: .270 Winchester, .30-06, .308, and 300 Winchester Magnum are all more powerful. The AR-15, like other rifles, pistols and revolvers, is not an automatic weapon – one trigger pull fires one bullet.
It can be equipped with a high-capacity magazine, however. So it doesn’t fire any faster than your average rifle and shoots a smaller bullet than nearly every other rifle round – but if it has an advantage, it’s the potential mag size.
But a “room broom” it is not. A true assault rifle (as I think of one anyway) is an MP5, M4/M16, or AK47 (etc) on full auto.