Monday, September 16, 2013

Overheard in Email...

From an email thread taking imaginary bets on how early garbled reports will compare to reality once everything calms down in DC (and how the early, garbled reports will be used to gin up all kinds of conspiracy theories):
Me: "Washington Post reporting witnesses saying bald black dude in fatigues with AR."

Caleb: "Oh man, it's Dorner back from the dead! His death was staged by the illuminati!"
Zombie Chris Dorner: That's the best conspiracy theory yet.

Currently, my chips are on the square marked "'Workplace Violence' à la MAJ Hasan."

32 comments:

og said...

Didn't happen. It is a gun free zone, after all.

Anonymous said...

WHEN, oh WHEN
will they allow on-duty military personnel (besides MPs/SPs and civilian police) to go armed on military reservations?

One would have thought they learned a lesson from Hasan?

gfa

og said...

That may be unnecessarily flippant; people, after all, have died. (apparently). If any member of my family or someone I cared about personally were harmed like this I would sue the people that made this a victim rich environment until they were paupers. My thoughts and prayers certainly go to the people who were harmed.

og said...

(Armed, lest I offend,"unnecessarily flippant" refers to my own comment)

Anonymous said...

Affirmative action = negative reaction.

Curt

Library-Gryffon said...

Given that the government's only reaction to gun violence in "gun free" ("target-rich") environments is to mandate even fewer legal guns, I'm sadly not surprised.

At least I didn't hear about this shooting by getting a PM from family or friends to let us know they were OK. (My husband's niece was at Fort Hood, prepping for an Afghan tour.)

Anonymous said...

Yet these reports are so much less detailed than the ones from the Sandy Hook shooting incident. Murky, not clear.

Tam said...

"Yet these reports are so much less detailed than the ones from the Sandy Hook shooting incident."

No, you are wrong. They are exactly the same kind of definitively-stated contradictions of the immediately previous report, which are then contradicted again in a rush to be the first to a mic with a new tidbit.

Geodkyt said...

Hell, they're my co-workers (literally - I have more interactions with the guys on the 4th floor of BLDG 197 than I do with the guys across the street), and we're in the dark as much as you all are.

Not until at least 24 hours after the perp(s) have been chillin' in the morgue will we have any reliable info.

Patrick said...

Obama kicked off his pre-arranged presser today about the economy and how awesome he has made it (really) with a few short words about the Navy Yard shootings.

He said some magic words to telegraph his intent: "Another Mass Shooting"; "We need to do things to stop these events in the future."

Missing were the words "common sense", but you can bet they are coming.

This guy is daft in more ways than one. You got a bonefide standoff at an active military base just a few miles from the White House, where numerous people are being killed, and at least one active shooter still on the loose. What does the Commander-In-Chief do?

Hold a press conference on how awesome he has made the economy. I realize no President is going to go all Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider on the Navy Yard attackers personally. But there is just something ugly about standing on a stage festooned in regalia, with a corps of smiling glad-handing pols behind you, bragging about an economy that is still in tatters, all while people who work for you are still being killed less than one long rifle shot from your teleprompter.

Anonymous said...

Security there is not a joke.
+1 Geodkyt

Gerry

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

My money is on MAIG making a run at 'high-capacity' magazines in 5... 4... 3... 2...

JohninMd.(too late?!??) said...

NJT may not be far off; 12 confirmed dead, inc. a DC cop.....

Geodkyt said...

And things were just starting to loosen up in the market, so I could afford to buy ammo and parts again. . .

Bloodberg and Obama will do everything they can to trigger another panic frenzy. . .

Matt said...

It was not a gun free zone. The police and baious security had guns. Didn't seem to protect anyone.

Goober said...

Matt: that's the point. When the only people capable of defending themselves are clearly uniformed and a minuscule percentage of the actual population they are pretty easy to avoid in one's quest for softer targets.

Woodman said...

Early reports had three of the wounded being a guard and two cops. So this doesn't seem to fit the normal show up somewhere and shoot yourself crowd.

Tam's money looks like the smart bet right now.

The Jack said...

And David Frum's ahead of the pack saying "No, no waiting for the blood to get to room temperature is too long. We have to have our "conversation" about gun control NOW!"

Speaking of putting chips down. Who had the low ball of "Media names killer! Names wrong guy!"

I'm shocked that for all the dog whistles the Administration is giving out they're overtly saying that they need to wait before the go all gun control.

Then again I can see them getting top-line briefings on the "optics" of this shooting.

If the perp is the wrong religion or got his guns in the wrong way well...

Tam said...

The Jack,

"If the perp ... got his guns in the wrong way well..."

It looks like he used Joe Biden's shotgun to smoke a guard and take his 9mm to open the ball.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

MAIG needs to pass a law against Ball-Opening, then!

Anonymous said...

Having been on scene fairly quickly after the flag drops in events very much more simple and very much less dramatic than this one, I can assure you no one knows what's happening. Info will begin to gel no sooner than 48 hours, and won't resemble anything cogent for at least 100 hours. At that point the challenge will be getting past the "narrative adjustments" stemming from witness vagaries and misinterpreted evidence to what actually happened, where and involving whom, which will require at least another 100 hours and some deep digging.

If this occurred anyplace but a federal facility in Washington we could expect at the 250 hour mark some data errors due to confusion, most of which will be corrected over a period of weeks; given the location, I'd be suspicious of anything that's officially reported, whenever that might occur.

Ancient Woodsman said...

I'm waiting to see on certain blogs & forums the inevitable concern about Secretary Mabus' last name, how this was somehow predicted by Nostradamus in 1570-whatever, and the sure sign that the end is nigh. At least that would make more sense than the certainty of renewed push for 'common sense' gun control.

And a dude shooting up a Navy base - including a few armed guys - kind of puts the lie to the NRA side of "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun..." I'm sure the anti's will bring that up pronto, even though this event also proves that such things can happen no matter where - USN base security being just a hair under that of a maximum security prison (where the residents still manage to make weapons & kill each other with regularity).

So, no. This is not a good thing in any way, shape, or form for anyone, be they pro-freedom or striving for (yet more) tyranny. This is just ugly.

The Jack said...

Tam, I heard rumors of that too. Seems a bit more reliable than some of the other drek.

Ancient Woodsman that puts an interesting position for the Antis (well if the bothered with logic). Since do they get on the horn about disarming the military even more?

They can definitely spin it for their "only ones" fetish.

Go for more TSA in more places?

Just rush for private sale and magazine bans because that's their comfort zone?

I suppose they could go for the "Make everything a felony! No plea bargains." angle

Matthew said...

The anti's will spin it, but "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun..." isn't a guarantee, nor does it mean only one good guy.

It just points out that absent a good guy or guys, the stopping only occurs when the bad guy decides to stop.

That a bad guy might go through a couple good guys due to having surprise and initiative on his side, particularly in areas where the only good guys are marked, often static, targets, doesn't contradict the larger point.

If anything it makes it clear that the solution is more good guys, and ones not so easy to spot preemptively eliminate.

KM said...

kind of puts the lie to the NRA side of "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun..

So your theory is the bad guy did himself in the midst of the shootout with responders?

Matthew said...

@KM

That's usually the way to bet. The shooter goes until someone shows up that can hurt him, then eats his gun.

Number actually shot, much less shot and killed, by responders is pretty small as I recall; which buttresses the "good guy with a gun" theory, as that suicide will happen sooner due to not having to wait for the police response time.

Plus, of course, it's harder to casually massacre people while taking incoming fire.

R said...

Really looks like the Seattle Municipal Prosecutor dropped the ball on bringing charges against him in 2004. Had he been convicted of the property destruction and unlawful discharge I'm not sure he would have been able to enlist (I don't think we were scraping the bottom of the barrel for enlistees in 07). It is also the type of thing that gets one's CWP yanked too.

Ancient Woodsman said...

No, my point was on the other end of the 'the only way...' idea of putting armed folks in to schools; I figured the anti's will now spin that as "See? There were armed folks at the Navy yard, and they couldn't stop this!" Guessing some points for them to compare "armed professionals" versus "armed sorta-trained professional teachers"...or who knows? They aren't known for logical reasoning; I just kind of seem them as putting this side out there.

On their oft-argued "safe storage" ideas (particularly after Lanza stole his mum's guns) - how much more safe can it be to have guns stored on a military base, guarded by armed guys? This guy still stole them & used them. He knew where they were, made a plan that worked, and got them. He might as well have started with a Liberator pistol; he ended up with something that better suited his purpose.

On the latest push for "enhanced background checks", how much of a background check will the average citizen have to have to satisfy the tyrants, when this guy had already had a "secret" clearance by the military? Which didn't prevent a damned thing. Prior charges for firearms issues? No problem.

How about "waiting periods"? He reputedly bought a shotgun a few weeks back...will they now want a month waiting period? More? I'm waiting to see how long it takes for the phrase "cooling-off period" to start back in the press again.

Nope, I think this will be ugly, as I put before. As with most statistical outliers, this one has so many weird points that should be good fodder to argue against the anti's, but instead will be used by them in their twisted logic to argue yet again for gun control. Which is ugly.

Stranger said...

As of five this morning it was reasonably obvious that Alexis was a typical active killer with a greater depth of knowledge than most. News reports of VA treatment for schizophrenia and a history of erratic behavior strongly reinforce that perception.

"One man cannot defeat an army."
Clearly the credit for the death toll at WNY, and at Fort Hood, must go to the person who ordered all military personnel except MP's on duty to be disarmed. Another Anti- named William Jefferson Clinton, reportedly at the behest of one Hilary Rodham Clinton.

And yes, the anti's are on the case like a dog on a bone. So we have another fight on our hands. Since Thanksgiving weekend of 1963 what was the day we did not?

Stranger

Robert Fowler said...

I want to know which installations you could carry a gun before Clinton?My dates of service were 1973 to 1977 and we were not allowed to carry guns unless d our particular duty called for it. Such as guard duty. We were supposed to turn all of our personal weapons in at the armory and check them out when we wanted to use them.

After being assaulted, I did keep a small pistol in my locker aqnd carried it when off duty and off base. I have no idea what would have happened if I had been caught with it.

Geodkyt said...

Robert Fowler -- prior to 1993, it was ENTIRELY up to the base commander's discretion. Also, the rules applying to troops living in open bay barracks were different from those with base housing.

Ancient Woodsman -- The Navy Yard security is good, but it's an iron eggshell.

Once the gate guard clears you on post via your base badge and/or CAC card, you won't see another person until you get to a building (or section of a building) where there is a single bored security guard at a glass door. Building 197 is pretty much as far from the gates (where the guards are located, including the only on-site reinforcement team available that I am aware of) as you can get and still be on the base.

Geodkyt said...

SHould say, "you won't see another armed person until. . . "