See, this is something that can’t happen in the USA (yet,) but is easy-peasy in the rest of the world.

Don’t give avowed authoritarians positions of power. Yes, their membership in a hate group can be used to limit their opportunities. You make a choice by joining a recognized hate group, you gotta own it.

…..except in the USA, where hate groups are just fine and dandy for governmental spots. (Perhaps encouraged in some cases.)

Yet another thing the rest of the world gets right that we’re sorely behind on.

Private security here! Spent eight years as a guard before moving up to corporate level.

I think about this daily. How an armed guard could get not only fired, but potentially blacklisted from the entire industry (at least locally) for pulling their gun at the “wrong” time. If I were on duty and shot a journalist with a rubber bullet on fucking TV….its just inconceivable. If I were a manager and got a call that one of my guards did this, I can’t even imagine, I’d have to Japanese-train-conductor myself live on the 5pm news after reading a 20 page apology. There aren’t responses strong enough in my repertoire for something like that.

Cops just do it and saunter on to their next abomination.

Like it or not, private security have ten times the liability, accountability, damn near any metric you wanna use, that police do. We get fired (or removed from contracts at client request) for tiny shit daily. A guard being caught burping by a dickish client manager could lose a contract worth millions and dozens of people their jobs.

There are enough bad apples in our industry that I can’t really argue against the leeriness, ridicule, etc, from the public. I get it; there are a lot of IRL Paul Blarts out there. It means the industry needs to raise standards…meh, I’m getting off topic here.

You’re entirely correct, and I’m glad to see this pointed out. Police get away with shit that would get any guard super-extra-mecha fired, whether it’s a highly trained armed guard working a federal contract or an unarmed kid making $9 an hour to sit in an empty parking lot.

From both sides of the fence, this is not how this should be working.

You’re not wrong; this is a tough one to comment sensibly on.

The crowd thing, it’s Utah; I would anticipate a crowd at an Utah university for something like this being full of homeschooled kids who haven’t broken away from parroting their parents’ views yet. Kirk is probably a hero in many of those households.

I was thinking the same thing about the angle. The tent would’ve theoretically meant the shooter would’ve had to be at a similar level/grade to make that shot.

I was only able to find censored versions of the video, but it sounds like he was hit in the neck. It will be a genuine miracle if he survives.

You know what’s sort of depressingly funny? The country would be better off if he were jailed for speech inciting violence. Not this.

This; look at how short-term they’re already thinking.

They will see the writing on the wall long before they actually have any genuine fear for business. And they’ll take the money and run, just like they already do now.

I think I’d feel safer leaving my kids with a polar bear carrying a grenade launcher than a Republican.

I seriously think this is the reason why everyone got so mean post-Covid. They realized it can always get worse; there is no rock bottom. Everyone was forced to accept that things can always suck WAY more tomorrow than they do today, and they/we can’t handle knowing that.

It broke a social contract.

Note that none of these policies ever involve “giving.” It’s all taking this away, means-testing this, banning that, etc.

This is the place a segment of America wants us to be more like. Funny enough, many of them don’t even realize they’re pushing us full-steam towards a China-esque police state. (We’ve gotten damn close on our own, but it’s still not the absolute totality of China’s system…yet.)

A, uh, government bearing arms against its citizens….why you ask…?

reads headline

WHYYYYYYYYUUHHHHH

Was gonna say, they’ve not been given any reason to care about international law.

Although, I swear I saw that the ICC put out a warrant for Bibi.

As much as I don’t care for Newsom, he’s playing this well. Using the photos of the guys piled on each other in some classroom to call out Trump directly.

Political affiliations don’t matter here; Americans like soldiers. Especially older people, they get livid seeing our soldiers get treated like shit.

#GoodWorkGavin

I can work on/repair basically anything old. Things from a certain period and back just make sense, plain and simple.

I can shave with a straight razor, operate an oil lamp (and I have several throughout my house,) hell, I’m a musician, and I recorded on tape until 2014, using clunky, old multitrack tape machines, which I can also repair and maintain. (I still dream of getting ahold of an 8-track reel machine, a Tascam 80-8 or especially a 388. They are stupid expensive if you can find a working one at all.)

I’m so proud of LA right now.

Those of us on the opposite side of the country may or may not be ready, as well, when our time comes. (And it’s definitely a “when.”)

Ex alcoholic and “cirrhosis survivor” here. (I hate that latter term.)

I’m stunned that this situation went down how it did.

I had the full jaundice package when I finally went into the hospital and agreed to detox. I was told I would have to be booze-free for a minimum of six months to be considered for a transplant of any kind; both my liver and kidneys were in concerning shape.

They told me the timeframe for actually being considered was more like two years; there’s basically a board of trustees for each state, they review every case requesting an organ transplant and decide who gets what. (It’s literally a death panel, haha.)

No matter how good I was/am, I would still be at the very lowest priority. They’d have to have available livers as far as the eye can see for me to have a realistic chance. There is no actual chance I would ever get a donor liver, and I don’t want one.

I was dumb. I did it completely to myself. It’s not as simple as “you could’ve quit anytime you wanted,” trying to do that with alcohol is extraordinarily dangerous, BUT I did indeed do this to myself. It would be galactic levels of unethical and immoral for me to be trying to take a donor liver away from ANYONE.

I have since recovered way past the expectations of any medical personnel who worked on me during that time. July 1 will be two years alcohol-free for me.

My point in all of this is that I’m honestly having trouble believing this guy got this transplant at all, let alone so fast.

Unless there are some miracle worker surgeons nearby, yeah…whew buddy.

I work in security, have dealt with people ODing, people with gnarly injuries; that’s definitely a gnarly injury.

USA here. Eeeyup.

We’re more incarcerative (word?) than basically anywhere else in the world; certainly more than any western country by a longs….eh, bad timing for that phrase.

It doesn’t help us. In fact, it might be a factor making us the most violent place in the western world. (We’d have to be put side by side with South Africa to check numbers.)

Our prisons get people tortured and killed; the ones who survive come out as better criminals, often with zero “life” left; spouse is probably gone with the kids, house foreclosed, job long gone and prospects of getting one with a record severely damaged.

What is there left to do? Shit that’s illegal. Gotta survive somehow, it’s your only way left to stick it to a system that has strongly indicated it would prefer if you were dead.

They will argue that a toddler has all three.

Comments like this are the whole reason I’m here. Got banned from Reddit for talking self-defense against armed people trying to rip your family apart.

I’d like to think realistic discussion is safer here.