Police shot in Dallas

Five Dallas police killed, 6 wounded in coordinated assault during a protest of shootings by police in Minnesota and Louisiana.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/08/like-a-little-war-snipers-shoot-11-police-officers-during-dallas-protest-march-killing-five/

Police identify suspect, then retract:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X78hoKSXAcQ

Here's the tweet that ID'd Mark Hughes as a suspect (modified with "No Longer Suspect" tag).

He's carrying what is an apparently unloaded AR-15, which obviously had something to do with his false ID as a suspect .

Really stupid to bring a weapon -- loaded or unloaded -- to a peaceful demonstration.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/headlines/20160707-confusion-abounds-as-man-is-named-suspect-after-dallas-shooting-then-cleared.ece

this is horrible    

Can't even.........

this is awful.   i feel for the families of those policemen that were shot, they didnt deserve that and I hope the criminals that did that get their due punishment. 

Not a peep outta the NRA....

press conference going on now in Dallas.  They won't release any info on IDs of suspects.  I truly hope that's for investigative purposes and not because the identities of the shooters will prove to be inflammatory.  Fairly early on there were rumors that it was neo nazi types.  They even named names.   That seems to have died down but who knows.

bub said:

press conference going on now in Dallas.  They won't release any info on IDs of suspects.  I truly hope that's for investigative purposes and not because the identities of the shooters will prove to be inflammatory.  Fairly early on there were rumors that it was neo nazi types.  They even named names.   That seems to have died down but who knows.

I'm pretty sure the identities of the shooters will be inflammatory no matter who they are, so I'm not sure what you mean to imply.   

We'll know soon enough.

I think it will be more inflammatory if the shooter is black or muslim, since I've already seen a smattering of crazy race war talk on the extreme right wing blogosphere.  No one is going into the streets to burn anything down if it turns out to be a neo nazi type.  

The one dead shooter was quoted by cops as saying he was angry at white people and also that he was not part of any group, but who knows, could be BS on his part.    

Awful, awful, awful.

Paul Surovell -- Maybe remove that innocent person's name and photo from this thread?  (You are 100% right about showing up at a peaceful demonstration with a machine gun, but maybe make that point without showing his image or listing his name?)  

-

galileo said:

The police is looking for this suspect. Why should he remove the picture?

He was found to be innocent and released.     As far as showing up with a gun - Texas is an open carry state; idiotic as it may be, there's nothing illegal about toting machine guns (or any other gun) around.

I thought he had a long rifle, not a machine gun.  

And as an aside aren't machine guns illegal, or basically restricted enough to almost be illegal, nationwide?

From what I remember he was carrying an AR-15. That is a civilian version of the military weapon. The civilian version is semi-automatic and can be fired as fast as you can pull the trigger. They also have magazines we can carry a large number of bullets, so as you can imagine you can inflict a large amount of damage very quickly even without it being a machine gun.

The military version is the M16 which has a full automatic mode which is essentially a machine gun.

If an AR-15 was converted to allow for full automatic fire it would be illegal.

This kind of incident shows how absurd open carry laws are, especially with powerful weaponry.  I don't care what the law says, in a crazy situation like that, its reasonable for the police to have every person with a gun in handcuffs on the ground.  And it was reasonable to view that guy as a suspect.

mrincredible said:

From what I remember he was carrying an AR-15. That is a civilian version of the military weapon. The civilian version is semi-automatic and can be fired as fast as you can pull the trigger. They also have magazines we can carry a large number of bullets, so as you can imagine you can inflict a large amount of damage very quickly even without it being a machine gun.

The military version is the M16 which has a full automatic mode which is essentially a machine gun.

If an AR-15 was converted to allow for full automatic fire it would be illegal.

Capable of inflicting a lot of damage, but technically not a machine gun.

spontaneous said:

mrincredible said:

From what I remember he was carrying an AR-15. That is a civilian version of the military weapon. The civilian version is semi-automatic and can be fired as fast as you can pull the trigger. They also have magazines we can carry a large number of bullets, so as you can imagine you can inflict a large amount of damage very quickly even without it being a machine gun.

The military version is the M16 which has a full automatic mode which is essentially a machine gun.

If an AR-15 was converted to allow for full automatic fire it would be illegal.

Capable of inflicting a lot of damage, but technically not a machine gun.

Yup.

I think "assault rifle" is a more accurate descriptor. It's certainly a different weapon than something like the bolt-action rifle my grandfather had for hunting many years ago. They both are considered long rifles.

It is also odd to note that his AR was unloaded.  What is the point of looking like a target?  In my brief time with weapons I was taught never to take out a weapon unless I was prepared to use it.

Wow, I must be on MOL.  A bunch of cops are murdered, and so far the NRA and open carry laws have been blamed, but there has been not a word about all of the violent anti-police rhetoric that has become an accepted part of the political dialogue over the past couple years.

(FYI...I don't support the NRA on assault weapons and many other things, and don't feel strongly about open carry laws in states where people want them.  But the elephant in the room here has little to do with either)

ice said:

Wow, I must be on MOL.  A bunch of cops are murdered, and so far the NRA and open carry laws have been blamed, but there has been not a word about all of the violent anti-police rhetoric that has become an accepted part of the political dialogue over the past couple years.

(FYI...I don't support the NRA on assault weapons and many other things, and don't feel strongly about open carry laws in states where people want them.  But the elephant in the room here has little to do with either)

What is the elephant in the room?

ice said:

Wow, I must be on MOL.  A bunch of cops are murdered, and so far the NRA and open carry laws have been blamed, but there has been not a word about all of the violent anti-police rhetoric that has become an accepted part of the political dialogue over the past couple years.

(FYI...I don't support the NRA on assault weapons and many other things, and don't feel strongly about open carry laws in states where people want them.  But the elephant in the room here has little to do with either)

And why did anti-police rhetoric come about?  

We are pretty far down the road of alienation of police from those communities that need effective policing and it is going to be a hard one to walk back.

And it will have to be done in a land where people own guns because the 2nd Amendment is not going to go away any time soon.

"Violent anti-police rhetoric" is not 'an accepted part of the political dialogue".  I do not know of one candidate for President, Governor or Member of Congress who has engaged in it. There has certainly been pointed criticism of police practices and police misconduct. No prominent person has called for violence or anything approaching violence toward the police.

Unfortunately that is not true with respect to ethnic and religious minorities.

I made a comment about open carry laws but I sure as hell wasn't blaming them for this incident.  This guy, and maybe some cohorts, did it, period.  You can't help but notice though that a guy, whether an aggrieved black veteran, muslim fanatic, or white supremacist, can do a whole lot of killing with the high quality big clip weapons that are available in this era.  

ice said:

Wow, I must be on MOL.  A bunch of cops are murdered, and so far the NRA and open carry laws have been blamed, but there has been not a word about all of the violent anti-police rhetoric that has become an accepted part of the political dialogue over the past couple years.

(FYI...I don't support the NRA on assault weapons and many other things, and don't feel strongly about open carry laws in states where people want them.  But the elephant in the room here has little to do with either)

First of all, we don't know anything at this point about the suspects, so we (figurative) don't know which "group" to blame.  

Second, let's say for a hypothetical argument that the people in custody and the deceased shooter are black, I won't blame all black people, or even the BLM movement, for the actions of a few deranged hate spewing individuals.  By all accounts the protest was peaceful up until the snipers opened fire.  They aren't responsible, just like I won't blame all police for the actions of a few, and I won't blame all Muslims for the actions of a few, and as a white person I hope no one blames me for Dylann Roof or any of the other white people who have committed blatant hate crimes.

breal said:

Paul Surovell -- Maybe remove that innocent person's name and photo from this thread?  (You are 100% right about showing up at a peaceful demonstration with a machine gun, but maybe make that point without showing his image or listing his name?)  

I attached a tag to photo to show no longer a suspect.  I think the photo is part of the story.

"...It appears that the dead sniper, identified as Micah X. Johnson, 25, was the sole gunman, a senior law enforcement official said. Officials at first said that at least two snipers had carried out a coordinated ambush, firing rifles from triangulated positions, including from one or more elevated posts in downtown buildings.

Mr. Johnson, an Army veteran who lived in the Dallas area, apparently had no criminal record in Texas. Investigators have not turned up any evidence that he had ties to the Black Lives Matter movement or to political groups. The official said that Justice officials have reached out to the Pentagon to obtain Mr. Johnson’s military records....

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/dallas-police-shooting.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

A single angry (disturbed?) guy with a big-a$$ gun shoots 11 officers, killing 5 of them.

Ugh.  

For me this event illustrated the pitfalls of social-media culture of instantaneous dissemination of info, as evident by all the misinformation that spread during the initial hours. 

Our expectation for instant info, stories that unfold before our eyes, has the local news outlets in a minute-by-minute competition to reach the public, often failing to heed well-established journalistic practices like fact-checking, etc.  This expectation is also pressuring the police to release information quickly, even in the fog of uncertainty, at the expense of accuracy. I mean, when was the last time a police chief held a press conference during the middle of a barricade? 2-3 hours after the incident began?

True.