cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/11490010
Update, yes there are snipers:
"Geez, they're not snipers! They're just using the sniper scope as a telescope! They're not for use as actual snipers! We just gotta use them to look at the evil protestors!""
“These are not weapons trained at your precious little foreheads, they’re Democracy Spreaders™’. You go to class & learn all about democracy & when you exit the building, we use these to spread all that democracy stored up in your brains all over the wall behind you.“
The fact that a rifle is attached to the telescope is just a funny coincidence
Just a matter of time before we have another Kent State.
My fear is that the next one will be worse.
With the artillery that’s out there these days, it’s almost a certainty.
Plus the police which seem even more bloodthirsty
Police have been taught that the only way to deal with anyone who doesn't immediately comply is through violence. And increased militarization doesn't help. We live in a police state but the narratives created by the ruling class have made people forget it
It was really close at UT. State police, city police, and national guard called in by spineless university president (Jay Hartzell).
Fuck Jay Hartzell. Hope he gets recalled. No golden parachute.
The fact that no charges are being filed should result in a strong condemnation and accountability for the administration and the cops. You put everyone in danger when no crime was being committed. There won't be, but there should be.
It feels like these protests are going to shape how the governments of the world will respond to mass unrest in the future.
Or in other words - those in charge want the common person to be disempowered, to frame a peaceful protest as an act of terrorism so they can be more aggressive in future.
Hopefully no one on either side does anything stupid.
These reactions by the US to a student protest are nothing new and the fact they haven’t sent in the army and killed anyone yet shows it’s not even as bad as it historically has been.
Not everything a shithole like America does dictates what the rest of the world does.
In the future?
Ask any student population in the past who were shot, beaten, tasered, hosed down with water cannons, and jailed what they thought would happen to future protesters.
The shape of silencing unrest, especially anti-war or liberal unrest, hasn’t changed at all. And it will look just the same a decade from now.
If those snipers were to shoot someone, the protests would be twice the size the next day.
Look what happened when Nixon, Reagan and Trump escalated violence in response to protests.
Nixon's in songs for killiing Ohioans.
From Wiki, sadly: "President Richard Nixon, who is criticized in the song, won a landslide reelection in 1972, which included winning the 1972 United States presidential election in Ohio by a margin of over 21%."
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been gone long ago
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
the land of the free
Never has been. National anthem notwithstanding the United States has always been land of the richest getting what they want.
Hell the entire history of the United States is basically, we want something so we're going to have it, and if there's inconvenient people in the way then those inconvenient people will go away or die. The US had race separation until as recently as the 1960s. Wherever was the freedom?
This seems so incredibly ill-advised. If students become martyred by trigger-happy snipers, these protests will boil over into open violence. Imagine thousands of videos flooding social media in an instant showing student corpses. I fear that gasoline has been poured and matches are being lit everywhere.
What is it with Ohio and murdering college protesters? (See: Kent State)
We should treat them like snipers? ie. We should rush them and neutralise the threat they pose?
I mean, obviously question: how does one treat them as if they are?
(Make them say the quiet part out loud)
Ideally, countersnipers
If everyone's a sniper, we're all safe.
That's literally how it works, and the Black Panthers proved it a long time ago. The cops stay peaceful when the protesters are heavily armed and heavily organized, because cops are fucking cowards who don't want an actual fight
Reposting this because it’s relevant here too: A scenario like this is what led to the formation of the Black Panthers during the civil rights era, and subsequently led to gun control laws being started by republicans. During the civil rights protests, people quickly realized that peaceful protests were violently broken. But heavily armed peaceful protests had police nervously watching from across the street.
Because police had no qualms about firing into an unarmed crowd to get people to disperse. But when the entire crowd is armed to the teeth and can immediately return fire, the police are suddenly okay with watching from afar. This was the start of the Black Panthers; a group who organized heavily armed protests.
When conservative lawmakers saw a bunch of heavily armed black people (and allies) on their front steps, and saw the police unwilling to break the protests, those conservative lawmakers got really fucking sweaty. So instead, they gave the police tools to arrest individual protestors. The Mulford Act was drafted and quickly passed. At the time, it was the most restrictive gun control law the country had ever seen. It was written by Ronald Reagan (yes, the same Ronald Reagan that the right uplifts as a paragon of conservative values,) and was supported by the NRA, (yes, the same NRA that lobbies for looser gun control laws in the wakes of school shootings.)
This gave the police the power to arrest individual protestors after the fact. Instead of firing into the crowd to disperse the protest, they would wait for the protest to end, follow the protestors home, then kick in their front doors while they were having dinner with their families. (Remember all of the “don’t bring your cell phone to protests because police will arrest you a week or two later if your phone was pinged nearby” messaging during the pandemic protests? Yeah…)
This led to the Black Panthers diving underground. They realized what was happening after protests, so they took efforts to guard their members’ identities. They pulled tactics straight out of anti-espionage textbooks. Randomized meeting places, so police couldn’t set up stings ahead of time. Code names, so arrested members couldn’t rat even if they wanted to. Fragmented info, so no one person (even the leaders) could take down the entire operation if busted. Coded messages. Dead drops. Et cetera, et cetera…
We’re on a rocket trajectory straight down that same pipeline now.
The joke was more an extension of the argument ammosexuals like to make about everyone being safer when everyone is armed. A bit of a non-sequitur, but those are nice from time to time.
Love how the narrative went from “nah those can’t be snipers definitely spotters” to “snipers are commonplace at big events!” once it was confirmed. Also the fact that only msn and snopes have published anything about this (or is that just a search indexing problem?).
I think those are to protect from psychos that want to kill the protesters.
Think about it, it would be idiotic for any crowd control “measures” and doesn’t make any sense otherwise.
This is fucking cope... I guess you lived in a cave during the BLM protests
Or lived in saner country.
EDIT: for some reason I typed "like was" instead of "lived"
Oh you sweet summer child.
No. The cops ARE the psychos that want to kill the protesters.
Just look at the past century of protests in America and how much “good” cops did vs how many innocents they hurt.
OK, so lets think this out. These are pointed at the crowd correct so lets assume the threat is from the crowd.
You have some Ne'er-do-well in the crowd who is planing some type of trouble, you notice this person looking "dastardly" from your sniper nest. You radio in and get the go ahead to take the shot with your trusty Remington M700. You shoot centre mass as you have been trained to do and the villain drops like a puppet with its strings cut.
You saved the day right? Oh no that is just the start, since the round fired was a 7.62x51mm NATO (there is no "rubber" round for this firearm) it went straight through the torso of that protester with a box knife and into and then back out of at least a few other people in the dense crowd (must be their fault for not wearing better body armour). The gunshot is still noticed even with the police issued silencer and at seeing the carnage the crowd does what crowds do, they stampede.
After the chaos settles down the body count will be a lot higher then that one person with a box cutter could ever manage (not that you can even say they where going to do anything).
These are not there to protect people, that is not their role, this is not an action movie.
I imagine there are situations where benefits outweigh the risks. Probably not your interestingly creative scenario. But congratulations for your vivid depiction.
The issue is I can not even with my vivid imagination can think of a scenario where shooting into a crowd (where these teams have their rifles pointed) would have benefits that outweigh the risks.
The use for sniper teams on roof tops is in VIP protection (as in fuck all the little guys as long as the important one is safe) and offensive actions.
Can't wait for a headline about them accidentally shooting an innocent person and then admin goes on the defensive, claiming that the snipers were only doing their job. That, or hush the grieving family by either paying them to shut up or flat out erase them by buying off the police.
So I have a question I sort of posted in there too but figure I’ll bring the conversation over here (in a more respectful way)
These are called spotters/marksman and they have them at football games, the Olympics, presumably political events, etc. to handle the threat of suicide bombers and other mass-population terrorist threats
How should we handle these threats without police intervention/snipers to quickly take out a bomber?
Looking for civil discourse if at all possible, but I also understand this is a high stakes discussion and directly affects some more than others
Edit: Asks a legitimate question, without ulterior motives, literally just trying to steer the conversation to a productive, constructive discussion: is bombarded with bad faith arguments, downvotes, accused of being down right disingenuous, and minimal attempts (1 as of this edit) to actually address the conversation. Psychotic experience this was.
“These threats” what threat?? People protesting? These snipers have never once protected protestors from the violent freaks that show up to run people over or shoot people.
The fact you Americans think this is normal for a protest says more then anything I can comment.
A good test is to think of a private entitiy doing this and if that passes the smell test. I don't think deploying snipers at events has ever saved anyone (correct me if I am missing an incident) and in this case if they are there to protect the students why does the school not hire their own sharpshooters?
They're just business men with business plans. They're totally not cops.
Too many assholes in this country think they are the American Sniper.
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