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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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While it was a bad shoot the current theory is his gun fired on its own.

To my knowledge, the evidence that his gun fired on its own consists of:

  • His pistol being a SIG 320, which has a controversial reputation for uncommanded discharges
  • Some people thinking they see the slide move in a handful of frames in a very grainy video.

From what I've seen, the latter point is very shaky, and is very pointedly not a claim the agency has made, to my knowledge. Digital video of this sort is not good at capturing gun mechanics at long range, poor lighting and in a confused environment. This same problem came up with the Mangioni shooting when people claimed the gun was a station-six or "welrod", as opposed to a semi-auto malfunctioning because it wasn't set up to work with a suppressor properly.

Yes the gun fired itself narrative seems to be weakening. A civil settlement though I’m not sure on. I am about 50-50 that this was suicide by ICE. I would put it at 20% chance he would have shot ICE if he had not been disarmed as the video seems to show him reaching where his gun would have been.

It’s a bad shoot in that when the shot was taken he was not a threat. But if you do his behavior 100 times you probably end up shot twice. Pay out in those situations creates a bad precedent.