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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   31308 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.

All this is true, but this doesn't excuse the shooting. An analogy would be the classic one feminists hate, woman walks down the street in a bad neighborhood alone at 2AM drunk in a skimpy outfit, gets raped. She was stupid and this was a predictable outcome of her decisions, but that doesn't mean the rapist is suddenly a good person and his actions are excused and he should get off scot-free. Here, the guy was stupid and his actions predictably resulted in his death. However, the evidence certainly seems to point to the ICE agent shooting him in the back when he was already subdued by about 5 agents, his gun was taken and the agent with the gun was already well clear of the scuffle. There is just no excuse for that. Additionally the administration is obviously lying by calling him a domestic terrorist that tried to assassinate law enforcement. This situation feels very clearcut and easy to interpret.

Most likely the shooter saw the deceased move in a way that appeared like he was going for a gun.

“Guy reaches for gun that was removed five seconds earlier” is almost certainly not a scenario they train for. “Guy reaches for gun” almost certainly is.

When situations turn chaotic people generally fall back to the level of their training.

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