If that was in the States I would expect to see cars on fire and running gun battles...

I had a guy rear end me one time. We were both at a red light and he decided suddenly he was just going to go. Slammed into the back of me, got out of the car, and shrugged off the officer because he wanted to finish his phone call.

But then again, the headline could me "Man shoots motorist who caused accident while texting" Or hell, let's have the "gun for everyone" solution and it would be "Gun battle ensues over driver causes accident while on phone."

Are you fucking high? I can't believe some of the stupidity coming from some of you people. This is even dumber than the ridiculous tack of @eric3579's comments (although I haven't read further than this comment yet, so maybe he pulled his head out later. EDIT: Nope!).

Bombing suspects weren't enough of a threat?!?! You mean the bombing suspects who detonated two bombs during the marathon, executed an MIT policeman while he sat in his car, committed a carjacking and didn't kill the driver only because he wasn't an American, then engaged Boston police in a car chase and gun battle during which they threw several explosives, and one of the "suspects" ran over his own fucking brother so he could get away? Those bombing suspects? "Just isn't any way" they were enough of a threat?

Look, I've been very vocal about my hatred of police, and it pisses me off to see the citizens of Boston engage in the pathetically effusive hero-worship of police who were just doing what taxpayers pay them to do, but this whole argument that the warrantless searching of homes in an area police believed the remaining suspect to be hiding is just daft and has NO MERIT, not unlike the suspicion that this was some sort of compliance test on the populace that @newtboy "heard some say", which is firmly in Alex Jones/Glenn Beck thousand-yarder territory. Maybe the government just really wanted to get into a few homes and look around without warrants, and the best idea they could come up with was to blow some people up, eh? What sorts of secrets do you think were surreptitiously gleaned from those searched homes that would justify such a huge and deadly ruse? Maybe they just wanted to find out if residents in a search area for an extremely and demonstrably violent suspect would be stupid enough to resist efforts to actually locate and apprehend him. Compliance test... give me a fucking break.

You believe the police should have whittled the the search area down to a single home, got a warrant, and then knocked on the door with their guns holstered? Do you also believe that the police can read minds, or have powers of perception that the rest of us don't? Maybe you think the movies are accurate, and anything that happens anywhere can be played back in HD by the police because some super-secret satellite gets it on video. They're dicks, but they don't have superpowers and can't know everything with certainty, and I think they did a good job in a relatively short period of time of homing in and getting those assholes. What I find amazing is the criticism being leveled at them for doing exactly what they were supposed to do. If I'm being held against my will by someone who just blew up a marathon, killed a cop, and ran over his own brother to get away, the cops sure as shit better be actively searching my neighborhood, and not holding back for lack of warrants or knowledge of exactly which house he's in.

Other people here have tried to explain what exigant circumstances are, and why they most definitely applied in this case, but some of you just prefer to see bogeymen everywhere. Maybe you need to, for some reason.

This would have unfolded completely differently in Texas. I would guess after the 4th or 5th pitched gun battle/standoff they would have re-thought their need for warrant-less searches.

>> ^gwiz665:

Alcohol is not the killer, the gun is. You can't kill anyone with alcohol, you need the car (or a weapon).
>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^gwiz665:
This is why amateurs should not have guns and this is why gun laws in the states are also crazy.
Might as well outlaw alcohol too then. Idiot drunks kill people on the highway, so obviously no one can be trusted to drink.
On a side note, I know an "Alcohol Enforcement Officer"... drinks more than anyone I've ever met, and not in a good way.



the same could be said for guns. it takes someone pulling the trigger to kill.

i do want to add a bit of commentary on these developing stories. between this and the jose guerera case, both cases piss me right the fuck off and heres why. In both instances you have an overwhelming force subduing another. in this case, gun toting cop vs knife toting dude. in jose's case, an entire swat team vs one armed man. the end result was death, fucking wrongful, wasteful death.

now having said that, the commentary i would like to add is this: i know that in armed conflict and escalating situations such as these (presumably, even hypothetically, ie, he could have charged the cop with the knife off screen and an attacker can close distance in most cases faster than the shooter can react and fire) it takes steel nerves and lightning reflexes reinforced by training to make the decision to fire or not fire.

........however, when i was in afghanistan, i found myself in the middle of a legit "mexican standoff". long story short, my PCC team were to accompany the scout platoon to escort a rogue afghan border patrol police general back to our FOB to speak with his superiors. When we arrived to our PCC compound we found that he was there, along with over 100 of his loyals, preparing to mount a raid of their own (they were usually running illegal checkpoints, shit like that). Naturally when they figured out that we were there to detain their leader (in their eyes, our direct orders were to not detain but persuade him to come with us, if he refused we were to leave without incident). My CO talked with the general and persuaded him to willingly come with us.....but to his loyals, we were capturing him. within seconds, the guards they had in their towers had oriented their crew served weapons inwards, ANP loyals were loading their RPG's with armor piercers and taking fighting positions behind buildings oriented at us, you could hear dozens of ak's "racking" (chambering a round). There was over a hundred of them and less than 20 of us. Had it exploded into a firefight, we certainly woulved fucked all shit up.......but few, if any, of us were leaving alive. all it wouldve taken was one round to go off from either side to fully escalate that encounter to a full on gun battle. fortunately we kept our cool (as did the anp loyals), assessed the situation, navigated the battle space, reinforced by our training which emphasizes self control, discipline, and situational awareness, and we were able to diffuse the situation without incident. Not a single round was fired. and we had accomplished our mission (btw turns out the general had been hoarding police gun stocks, by the thousands, and had cached them at his house and was selling them off to taliban)

now my point being if i and the members of my team had the intestinal fortitude and mental tenacity to diffuse that highlyvolatile situation without incident, especially considering the higher stakes (this was in the middle of a fucking war, not in someones neighborhood or on a crosswalk), so to speak.......what is your fucking excuse Tucson swat team? what is your fucking excuse, cop in this video?

>> ^blankfist:

Burden of proof? Evidence? Well, it's hard to have any evidence when the government rushes off under the cover of night and runs top secret exercises with zero transparency except for what they tell me they did. But, let's look at the facts. OBL was unarmed, he was shot, the government reported an untruth that a gun battle was waged, they also reported an untruth about him using his wife as a shield, they claimed they ran a DNA test and identified OBL, then cleaned him and dumped his body in the ocean all within 24 hours.

How do you know OBL was unarmed? Because the government said so? How do you know that it was an "untruth" that a gun battle was waged? I'm particularly interested in that one, since you're the only person I've seen advance the story that the SEALs didn't take any fire at all during the raid.

>> ^blankfist:
And you say the burden on proof is on the "we the people" of this country to prove or disprove the secret assassinations of our military and CIA? Rolling my eyes right now.

Hey, you're the one who's supposedly in favor of due process. The burden of proof is always on the accuser, not the accused. It doesn't matter what the accusation is, or who you're accusing.

You're right, you've got a hard case to prove...whatever it is you're trying to prove. That's why I think you should probably start looking for evidence, rather than running around pronouncing people guilty of things you can't prove. That is, at least if you're going to continue to hold yourself up as the arbiter of what constitutes due process and what doesn't.

>> ^blankfist:
Gladly. 1. It's Osama Bin Laden. He's the bogeyman for our loss of liberties over the past decade and the reason we've marched headlong into wars. 2. The other "examples" weren't met with such momentous applause as the death of OBL - and the cheers were mostly from progressives I've always hoped were pro-human rights (namely the right to due process here). But instead what I see are a bunch of apologists who are pro-partisanship even at the cost of human rights.

Ahh, pretty much what I expected. He's famous, and there are plenty of liberals who're glad he's dead.

So what you're saying is, rather than accept that maybe, just maybe Obama deserves credit for killing the bogeyman, and joining the liberal pivot to "so now we can bring everyone home, right?" You want to intentionally beat this drum to try to show that liberals are...what? You say "bloodthirsty" a lot, but at best this is an excuse to call people hypocrites for saying "in this case, I'm willing to make an exception."

Instead, your logic (such as it is) goes:

1. It isn't a war, it's purely a criminal matter (no matter what Congress says)
   
2. The official story says he was shot while reaching for a weapon, which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the SEALs could've captured him if they wanted, and just shot him anyways
   
3. It was Obama's order that even if they could capture him, they should kill him instead
   
4. Obama is the physical embodiment of pure liberalism, so anything he does must be based on a core tenet of liberalism
   
5. Therefore all liberals are bloodthirsty murderous cretins, especially that pro-Obama NetRunner guy

>> ^NetRunner:
It's easy, put your hands in the air and say "I surrender." At that point, killing him really would've been a war crime. There's no evidence that indicates he did anything of the sort.


Burden of proof? Evidence? Well, it's hard to have any evidence when the government rushes off under the cover of night and runs top secret exercises with zero transparency except for what they tell me they did. But, let's look at the facts. OBL was unarmed, he was shot, the government reported an untruth that a gun battle was waged, they also reported an untruth about him using his wife as a shield, they claimed they ran a DNA test and identified OBL, then cleaned him and dumped his body in the ocean all within 24 hours.

And you say the burden on proof is on the "we the people" of this country to prove or disprove the secret assassinations of our military and CIA? Rolling my eyes right now.

And, lol at "it's easy to raise your hands and say I surrender". What an apologist answer. Fucking murderous cretins. Yes, it's easy for you or me to raise our hands and say "I surrender" if the cops are outside our door with a bullhorn. Doubt anything remotely similar to that happened. lol

>> ^NetRunner:

But that's why I think you should explain your fixation with OBL's death. There are much better examples to use to advance the cause of civil liberties.


Gladly. 1. It's Osama Bin Laden. He's the bogeyman for our loss of liberties over the past decade and the reason we've marched headlong into wars. 2. The other "examples" weren't met with such momentous applause as the death of OBL - and the cheers were mostly from progressives I've always hoped were pro-human rights (namely the right to due process here). But instead what I see are a bunch of apologists who are pro-partisanship even at the cost of human rights.


>> ^Psychologic:

They didn't instantly teleport into his room... I doubt he was sleeping too well with helicopters hovering over his residence and gunshots being fired.
And as far as due process... while I agree with that notion in general, I'm wondering what the point would be in this case. Whether or not he actually perpetuated the 911 plans, he was more than willing to accept credit for it.
Bin Laden had at least several minutes to prepare from the time the heli arrived to the time his room was breached. I wouldn't discount the possibility of him having a bomb under his robe in the hopes they would try to arrest him.
Honestly, I have far more of a problem with predator drones nuking buildings than I do with this particular operation.


Yes, Osama heard the helicopters being valeted, got up, brushed his teeth, flossed, took a nice jaunt around the park, walked his dog, shat, and jerked it moments before strapping on his Explosinator 3000 under his robe.

Several minutes to prepare? You're obviously speculating. The reports of eye witnesses said the helis came fast as if they were out of nowhere.

As far as due process, what're you saying? That the premise for a trial is flimsy? And therefore assassination is a better recourse? Has everyone on here lost their fucking minds? Seriously, I think we're all getting hung up on this being OBL. Yes, he was a fucking scumbag that probably deserved worse than what he got, but goddammit he deserves a fair trial if we're to have a society of laws, no?

Isn't that what all you statists keep clamoring on and on about? That we should have laws? Well, where's your consistency here? A man, a very terrible scum of a human being, was robbed of his right to a fair trial. The "who" in this scenario is incidental. Rights aren't conditional based on someone's popularity. For fuck's sake.

And, yes, the drone planes are terrible. I despise those too, and we should constantly be outraged at that every second of every day and not stop voting out the lying bastards that continue bombing innocent people. Starting with Obama and any other Republican or Democrat that steps up in 2012 who isn't immediately in favor of ending these warlust aggressions against other people in sovereign lands.

@NetRunner, well, let's assume the government never lies and their version of the story is 100% accurate. Granted. How did they expect OBL to surrender exactly? Surely if this was a "capture or kill" order, then they must've offered a chance for him to surrender, right?

Their first story was that a gun battle occurred, then later it was revealed he was unarmed. Also they claimed he used his wife as a shield, then later it came out that he didn't. So, the real story is he was unarmed and asleep when they stormed in and shot him. I'm curious when and how was he supposed to surrender and get his day in court?

Too circumstantial for you? Okay. How about Obama's track record? In 2009 military commanders told Obama's Administration they were able to located and capture one of the most wanted leaders of Al Qaeda, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan. Instead of capturing, Obama's Administration said they wanted him dead. And the SEALS bombed him from the sky. No arrest attempt.

And the drone aerial attacks have increased over Pakistan under Obama, according to Long War Journal, a website dedicated to tracking the attacks. They estimate that the drones over Pakistan have killed almost 1500 people. Not capture, killed. Innocent people live there in tribes. Murdered as a casualty. But look at you and people like Yogi, the brave people who're out of range of danger that just don't give a fuck about those who are targeted and murdered - unless of course it furthers your political agenda, right? Yep.

Most damning is the time when Obama's Administration authorized the assassination of US Citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. He wasn't even Osama. He was some radical cleric they gave "explicit" authorization to murder without due process. That's your guy, Obama, side-stepping the rights of people like a pro authoritarian fascist.

Osama's murder without trial looks like more bloodthirsty progressivism to me. Hiding behind civil righteousness. By contrast the Bush Administration "captured" (not killed) thousands of suspected terrorists. And we all hated him.

You know.. I gave props to the guy in his early videos for creating a better then average fire fight then most of the made4youtube gun battles, but he hasn't really upped the ante since then. Gunfire needs work with its volume vs distance from the camera, the blood spray is still unrealistic and he MUST work on rendering body damage into it, and frankly he needs some damn good scripts. I just tire of watching this guys videos after video with the same gun effects, the same unrealistic splatter, and no story line. Innovate!

>> ^rottenseed:
>> ^ponceleon:
I shit you not: the google ad that came up was for bulletproof vests...

mine was for ninjitsu. I think google wants you to live more than me


True, or google wants you to be more awesome than me...

>> ^Stormsinger:
Personally, I'd be much more impressed with our legislators if it was at least -somewhat- more difficult to get a gun than to get a driver's license.
I'd like to have -some- reason to believe that the idiots carrying guns had some basic knowledge of safe usage...I suppose it would be asking too much to have some assurance that they're emotionally stable as well.


Do you think any of the goons in this video legally purchased their guns?

>> ^ponceleon:
I shit you not: the google ad that came up was for bulletproof vests...

mine was for ninjitsu. I think google wants you to live more than me

>> ^DrewNumberTwo:
I'm sure that you're a law abiding citizen, but you seem to be claiming that your view is the view of every law abiding citizen. That is not the case.

My view is my own. I'm sure there are plenty of Americans who disagree.

The point I was making, is that as a law abiding citizen, I see absolutely no need to own a gun or ammunition. I can, however, see how they might come in handy if I wasn't one.

But you go ahead, wave your 2nd amendment, point to studies that show that the increased % of guns in the population has no effect on firearm-related fatalities, don't wonder why certain people need AR-15s for "self defense".

I'm sure the problem will fix itself

>> ^demon_ix:
as an outside observer, the ease in which someone can get a gun and ammo to that gun is borderline insane. From a law-abiding citizen perspective.


I'm sure that you're a law abiding citizen, but you seem to be claiming that your view is the view of every law abiding citizen. That is not the case.

>> ^dana980:
Or people wouldn't be committing so many murders or crimes in general if we started fining them for it...... Brilliant argument demon_ix!!!

The argument isn't mine, but just to keep it going, there is a massive difference between actual price before the criminal activity and a theoretical fine after, should you get caught. I doubt anyone goes around with a loaded gun thinking "I'm gonna get caught later".

I doubt any sort of law that does anything to reduce use or availability of firearms will be passed in the US any time soon, but as an outside observer, the ease in which someone can get a gun and ammo to that gun is borderline insane. From a law-abiding citizen perspective.