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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31679 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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The detainee's gun goes off in the agents hands. One of the infamous Uncommanded Discharges from a Sig.

It's highly highly questionable whether this actually happened -- certainly it's an appealing narrative in some kind of Chekhov's (unreliable) Gun way, but the guy carrying it away just does not act remotely like a gun just went off in his hand.

Also shouldn't we hear it go off at the right time in at least one of the videos? People keep point to a super grainy slowed down part of the video, when there should be much clearer evidence.

At the time of the solo beginning shot (which itself is weird, they seem to shoot in threes), I cannot for the life of me see who's shooting. The guy who got his gun out isn't really angled in a good way to shoot at Pretti. The Uncommanded discharge theory just seems to fill in a lot of gaps.

Yeah to me it explains both why the agents started shooting and why Pretti decided to reach for what was potentially his weapon. A random gunshot makes sense, otherwise it's hard to see the catalyst of the escalation both ways.

And it might not have been the Sig. I remember in the Rittenhouse case, it turns out that he didn't even fire the first shot. Someone else walking by on a nearby sidewalk fired a gun right when Rittenhouse was running away from the first guy who was trying to kill him. It's not impossible something else like that happened here. With Rittenhouse, we were lucky so much was caught on video. In this case, with the scene so contaminated, we might never know.

I saw a video where it visibly jumped in the guy's hand, but who knows if it was doctored. I think the rest of the description still works, just hearing someone say, "GUN!" in the loud chaotic environment could be enough to make some jumpy exhausted people shoot, even if the true statement was, "I grabbed his gun!"

After the shooting they were all looking around asking, "Where is the gun! Where is the gun!" so they clearly thought the gun was in play at the time.

I saw a video where it visibly jumped in the guy's hand,

That's not what I'm talking about though -- I've never had a gun go 'bang' when I was expecting a 'click' (or worse yet, nothing) but even an unexpected 'click' really get's your attention.

If the guy had just accidentally shot the ground next to his feet we wouldn't be doing a frame-by-frame analysis to see if the slide moved; he would have stopped what he was doing, looked at the gun in horror, etc. As it stands he just keeps running across the street; it's completely implausible that he would be this cool having just plucked somebody else's gun from it's holster and having it AD in his hand.

The agent grabbed the gun and ran away from the scuffle. Presumably he felt it is dangerous for the gun to remain in the vicinity of the scuffle so he wanted to get it away as quickly as possible. If the gun goes off in his hand, I think that a likely response is to take that as confirmation that he had to get the gun away from the scuffle as quickly as possible, and continue running.

Sometimes drivers, after trying to hit the brakes and accidentally hitting the gas instead, will mash the gas pedal into the floor as hard as they can to try to get the car to stop. When people are frightened, they often double down rather than pause and re-evaluate.

Sometimes people will freeze if they are startled or frightened. I think that’s an instinctual response to avoid attracting the attention of large predators. This “freeze” response won’t occur in a person who is already running, so it wouldn’t apply here.

I thought he looked back, towards Pretti, but also towards where the proposed shot would have gone. Would you be more likely to look at the gun or the direction it shot? I think a case could be made for either.

Pistols are really loud, like ‘agent is now temporarily deaf and probably has permanent hearing damage’ loud. Looking elsewhere doesn’t seem likely.

No dude -- guns are loud, when one goes off unexpectedly in your hand you do not look elsewhere first. Looking back is in fact much more consistent with the shot coming from some other gun in the area.

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