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[itisnotlogical]

Shot for exercising constitutionally protected rights?

"Yeah we were going to go file a complaint wearing body armor, carrying a loaded rifle openly and several weapons besides, looking as much like the media image of terrorists as we can manage. There is no way that walking into a police station covered in weaponry from head to toe with our faces covered would arouse any suspicion. Truly we have no freedom if we can't walk into a government building loaded for bear."

[smjjames]

Saw that article weeks ago, and yeah, backfired on them badly. It's like they were thinking 'there's no wrong way to practice my open carry rights.'

Imagine them trying that most elsewhere, they'd get the cops called on them.

[Aklyon]

In other words it was a measured and carefully executed implementation of a law passed by congress, based on the constraints of the law and the assessment of the DHS, designed to minimise the impact on those it might harm.

So in other words, the opposite of whats currently going on in court.

[Rolan7]

It technically would have been wrong if they were shot.

Because people who volunteer to protect our civil liberties accept some pretty extreme dangers, as part of their duties.  And usually get nothing but disdain in return.

Again yeah, these people should not have been shot (and they weren't).

But a lot of people probably believe the intention of this video...  That the officers did something wrong, by resolving a pretty fucking obvious situation *with no harm*.  Considering the circumstances, the officers should get a medal for doing the correct thing at clear risk to their understaffed lives.

Shot for exercising constitutionally protected rights?

"Yeah we were going to go file a complaint wearing body armor, carrying a loaded rifle openly and several weapons besides, looking as much like the media image of terrorists as we can manage. There is no way that walking into a police station covered in weaponry from head to toe with our faces covered would arouse any suspicion. Truly we have no freedom if we can't walk into a government building loaded for bear."

This

[Frumple]

Nah, I'm pretty sure it actually would have been okay if they had been shot, at the absolute least from a legal standpoint. Wouldn't have had much to do with the open-carry part of the equation, though.* Charges the pair are up for should make the why of it obvious enough, methinks.

E: *Mostly by changing noncompliance with police orders to armed noncompliance, which generally does rather painful things to your legal protections. Add on the public space and especially the government/police department part of it and eesh. There damn sure ain't constitutional protection for that shit.

[martinuzz]

It technically would have been wrong if they were shot.

I don't believe that.
The police did not see their intro video. The police had no reasonable indication that the men were just there to 'volunteer to protect our civil liberties'. They suddenly found themselves confronted with two unrecognisable men, of whom at least one extremely heavily armed. If they had had bad intent, it's more than likely one or more police officers would not have been alive now. The police's action in this matter was more reckless than it was commendable, even though it is pretty darn awesome that the situation was resolved without casualties.

In no way would they have been technically in the wrong had they taken out the guy with the arsenal.

EDIT: for some reason I just had the twisted yet funny mental image of a guy walking into a bank with a face mask, body armor and half a dozen assault rifles, saying "I am a volunteer, protecting our civil liberties! Please make a donation!"

[eerr]

Do you want to know what Trump is deliberately doing?

He's distracting everybody!

A thousand seemingly banal events because of trump.

This is a deliberate and calculated move of a manipulator.

I think he is far better at press than anybody gives him credit, he isn't entirely stupid.

Maybe he can be a hothead, maybe it's not all disjointed, but if you go with the flow and follow each move as just as significant as the last, you'll miss out on his true intentions.
You'll be buying into his distraction!

Save the heat for when it matters.

[Rolan7]

@Frumple
@Martinuzz
You're being too compassionate, which is ironically why cops look so bad in certains shootings just because the suspects turned out to be unarmed (but were reaching for something, or grappled).

I could be wrong, but I think *concealed* carry is prominently forbidden for such buildings...  Open carry is not, though they'd have to surrender their weapons at the metal detectors.
They may have been in their legal rights.

Edit:  Though even if it's illegal, is it worth shooting them outright just for being armed?  No, there are rules for escalation.

[smjjames]

@eerr, we're doing one of our own non-Trump distractions atm, not Trumps.

You do have a point though, the media keeps trying to cover everything, including said 'shiny objects' of distraction.

[Frumple]

@Frumple
@Martinuzz
You're being too compassionate, which is ironically why cops look so bad in certains shootings just because the suspects turned out to be unarmed (but were reaching for something, or grappled).

I could be wrong, but I think *concealed* carry is prominently forbidden for such buildings...  Open carry is not, though they'd have to surrender their weapons at the metal detectors.
They may have been in their legal rights.

Edit:  Though even if it's illegal, is it worth shooting them outright just for being armed?  No, there are rules for escalation.

Ah, rol, I didn't really say anything about it being the open carry that would have meant them being shot wouldn't have been particularly out of line, legality wise. Again, as per the article, what they're being charged with isn't misuse of a firearm or whatever the technical term for a carry violation is. They were absolutely not in their rights to walk into a police station and maintain possession of their arms if a police officer told them to relinquish them, nor to commit an act that was very much obviously going to cause a disturbance. The open carry made it so the police had more reason to stop them with lethal force, but it wasn't what would have justified it.

That said, open carry is impermissible in most places concealed carry is as well, at least in michigan, though technically police stations may not qualify as one of those places ("correctional facilities" are, but it's questionable if the station itself counts, there -- the state law (at least the one I noticed and appears to be meaningfully clarified by the courts) in question was pretty specifically aimed at prisons). And that's not getting into the disturbance et al issues.

And yeah, shooting them just for being armed wouldn't have been what got them shot, as per the transcribed lines in the article linked. Not immediately putting down their weapon when the cops told them to, would have. There's relatively few places you can legally deny that kind of command, and pretty much none of them even remotely resemble a public government building being used for law enforcement.

[smjjames]

You know that Russian flag thing at CPAC that I mentioned earlier today? It was a prank by two progressive activists.

[EnigmaticHat]

They brought the flags but it was the other attendees who waved them.

[smjjames]

I know, I'm just saying that's where it originated from. Pretty amazing that the attendees went with it.

[Criptfeind]

Eh, you know, I'm going to say it seems pretty. Like. Pifff. Reasonable to wave a flag you're given at a political thing, even if it's not the US flag, people make flags for tons of things and the Russian flag is pretty dang generic, so I don't really blame anyone for thinking it's a reasonable flag to be waving around.

On the other side, I think it was a funny prank.

All around it seems a funny incident but not really that much more.

[Wolfhunter107]

Ah, so it was a false flag...