Note, I’m neither American, nor heavily in that scene. I’m merely signal boosting what I feel is important information countering lib propaganda.
Note, I’m neither American, nor heavily in that scene. I’m merely signal boosting what I feel is important information countering lib propaganda.
Thanks.
I watched it several times in slow-mo. Seems to me like Arturo was walking towards the crowd before the peacekeeper fired, but he started running after the first shot in response to the shot. Looks like the barrel is down until shooting starts, at which point it goes up like 30° but still pointed at the ground. Video is quite blurry, from a distance, and doesn’t show the lead-up or aftermath of the shooting.
Utah is an open-carry state and it doesn’t seem like he was doing anything other than walking towards the protest with a gun, which is legal and expected behavior in that state.
But IMO Arturo is innocent until proven guilty, and if anything this is evidence that suggests his innocence.
It’s perfectly legal behavior to open carry at a protest. But walking behind a wall and pulling out a gun? That’s definitely not expected behavior. You can’t tell me you would expect that at a protest.
It’s also not legal or expected behavior to hide your weapon after you are involved in a shooting and try to blend in with a crowd. That’s not legal anywhere in the US.
Concealed carry is legal in SLC. If you’re carrying a concealed weapon at a peaceful protest and you realize that the “peacekeepers” are armed, you might want to be obviously also armed to deter escalation (as we’ve seen advised on lemmy a bunch lately). However, pulling a weapon out of your bag in the middle of a crowd is almost certainly going to scare someone, so it’s probably best to go off to the side, unpack it out of sight, and rejoin the group afterwards.
I’m not a gun owner, but this seems like a totally reasonable course of action to me. Am I missing something?
Making it reasonable to shoot someone who does this. That’s literally self defense, even if they fucked it up and shot someone else.
But he didn’t, he went off to the side behind a wall, right?
Those were your words, not mine. In fact, I think it’s much more suspicious to hide and then pull out the weapon than it is to do it surrounded by people.
I was saying that it’s reasonable to go behind the wall, because doing it in the middle of a crowd could scare someone. Why do you think it’s more suspicious to hide? It’s a pretty big gun, I imagine the process of removing it from his bag would either take serious gymnastics or involve the gun at some point having up to a 30 degree angle from the ground.
Why do I think hiding a gun at a protest, then sneaking away to pull it out is suspicious? Is that a serious question? Because I would think the answer would be pretty obvious.
Also, I’m curious what your thoughts were on his actions when you first read about the shooting at the protest versus now, and how that compares to your thoughts on the actions of the guy who assassinated the two democrats were when you first heard about it, vs now.
Did your opinion of the accused in either event change at all? If so, what new bit of information made you change your mind? Because the only new bit of information about this particular guy and what he did is that he’s allegedly a leftist. It seems to me, reading this thread, that that’s all it took for a lot of leftists to suddenly be very OK with what he did, and calling him the victim.
It’s honestly not. Can we go through the steps? Concealed carry is legal in SLC protests (and guns are scary and crowds are excitable, so there’s no need to raise alarm unnecessarily), peacefully and openly carrying weapons at a protest is a strategy to deter escalation of violence (and once you see the peacekeepers are armed, the benefit gained by not having a visible weapon around is gone), and dropping out of the crowd to do it lowers the likelihood of someone getting spooked during the unpacking. Those are the three parts of the situation I see from my perspective, which one(s) do you find problematic/which would you describe differently?
I’m pretty sure I read about it for the first time in this post, so I can’t help you there, but I was thinking it sounded iffy until I watched the video. The video makes him look totally unsuspicious to me.
I don’t think my thoughts on the assassin have changed (he’s seemed like a maga monster the whole time)- did I miss something about that?
?? I didn’t see that? Is that what the cops said? Did anyone else say that?
Again where does this come from? Would be suspicious if verifiable.
Yes, witnesses who were there. He did not have the gun, he left the protest route and returned with the gun. Somehow, that gun got into his hands in the middle of the protest.
This video shows him when he was caught. Another protestor noticed the gun in the backpack, said something, and a second protestor bravely snatched the bag away from him and alerted the police.
https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1lbz1vf/someone_noticed_a_rifle_in_the_backpack_of_an_slc/
This is correct. That said if you open carry you do so knowing any slight move can result in you being seen as threatening. It’s a logical result of being armed and masked at a protest where a large part of the issue being protested is ice using unlawful force and authority while armed, masked and without any indicator that they are in fact police.
It’s not victim blaming and it’s not shooter advocating it’s just saying this was both wildly foreseeable and incredibly unnecessary.