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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   31106 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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https://www.newsweek.com/video-appears-to-show-new-ice-shooting-in-minneapolis-11411971

Ice shooting round 2 has kicked off. Numerous rumors already flying around but will be a bit before we have facts I imagine.

EDIT: I've been asked to add some relevant points, I'll say: this comment has links to various angles: https://www.themotte.org/post/3493/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/405295?context=8#context This comment mentions the "Sig misfire" angle that I've seen a bit: https://www.themotte.org/post/3493/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/405451?context=8#context

Walz has activatedthe national guard: https://x.com/MnDPS_DPS/status/2012614253090619619 The NBA postponed the Minnesota/Golden State game tonight.

I feel like I'm going insane watching news coverage of this event. I've been wondering if I really am a bootlicker or if I'm in an echo chamber or what. I thought I would ask ChatGPT about this. Yesterday's shooting is not in the training data, of course so, while it's still possible to get an untainted answer I thought I would ask.

me

okay so, hypothetically, I am carrying a holstered handgun. I am at a protest. we are protesting a police arrest. the protest gets a bit rowdy. a police officer pushes someone out of the way. I step forward and try to block the police officer from the person they pushed. how much danger am I in? what would a court say if I was killed? answer in one brief paragraph.

ChatGPT

Short version: you’d be in serious, asymmetric danger, both physically and legally. The moment you step into an officer’s path during an active arrest, you’ve likely crossed from “bystander” to interfering/obstructing, and if you’re visibly armed (or they discover you’re armed during the scuffle), you now look—through an officer’s threat model—like “an armed subject interfering with police action.” That combination massively raises the probability of force, up to lethal force, because officers are trained to treat armed interference as a precursor to weapon deployment, not as peaceful protest. If you were killed, a court would mostly analyze it under objective reasonableness (Graham v. Connor): would a reasonable officer believe an armed person stepping toward them in a chaotic scene posed an imminent threat? In that context, juries often side with the officer, even if you never touched the gun; legally it’s less about your intent and more about what a cop could plausibly fear in the moment. In practice: armed + physical interposition near police = you’ve accidentally made yourself look like the most dangerous person in the scene.

Maybe this is what these tools are designed to do at this point but I feel a little less alienated right now.

But the ICE agents didn't shoot him as he was approaching them with gun in holster. They got him down on the ground, one agent took his gun, and the other agent shot him from behind as he was getting up (?).

It does mention scuffle above but let's drill down on your point. I wouldn't normally do this but since this is the game I'm playing, here's my very next prompt in the conversation. This is, I think, as fair and as neutral as I can make it.

me

lets say there's a scuffle. there's 6 or 8 officers on top of me trying to subdue me. my gun is taken by one of the officers but the rest don't necessarily know that. they eventually, in the confusion, open fire on me and kill me. what's the tactical and legal determination? again, answer in one brief paragraph.

ChatGPT

Tactically, once you’re in a pile-on with multiple officers and there’s a report or glimpse of a gun, the scene collapses into pure threat heuristics: fragmented information, adrenaline, shouted “gun!” or “he’s armed!” cues, and officers default to worst-case assumptions—so even if one officer has already secured your weapon, the others may not know that and will treat any movement as a potential draw attempt, which is exactly how blue-on-blue or overkill shootings happen in chaotic arrests. Legally, the analysis is still Graham v. Connor objective reasonableness, judged from each officer’s perspective at that instant, not with hindsight; if they can articulate that they believed you were armed and reaching or resisting during a volatile arrest, courts and juries often deem the shooting justified, even if the gun was already confiscated. In other words: tactically it’s a classic fog-of-war misidentification, and legally it often resolves to “reasonable mistake,” which makes it very hard for a wrongful-death claim to succeed.

Again, I'm not pasting this as if it's some adjudicating authority, just trying to compare to a knowledgeable impartial observer. Since the entire world is telling me I'm thinking like a Chud now .

In the court of public opinion this looks like an execution. In a court of law, maybe not.

Separately, I an reminded of the concealed carry class I took. The most basic message was: having a gun on me required me to be more responsible in public, not less. I don't know if this is universal but it is confirmed by my local monkeysphere of other concealed gun license havers.

"There's a scuffle" and "in the confusion" seem to be doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting.

By this sort of logic, an armed citizen could confuse the ICE agents for a gang of kidnappers from a distance and open fire, killing several. Would that be a "reasonable determination" too, because "there was a scuffle" and "the shooter was confused"?

"There's a scuffle" and "in the confusion" seem to be doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting.

Yes. How is that an issue when there was, in fact, a scuffle, and a lot of confusion caused by the chaos of the protest?

By this sort of logic, an armed citizen could confuse the ICE agents for a gang of kidnappers from a distance and open fire, killing several

No, they couldn't. They're in uniform with big letters spelling out "ICE". Not to mention thr only reason thr protesters are there is because they know ICE is there as well. Also, in this case they didn't open fire at a distance.

If you were going for an analogy, you came with one that is on the dissimilar end of the spectrum, to the point where I don't see how it's useful here.

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