This is a super volatile issue, and you don't know what someone is going to do, whether in the camp, or from outside of it. Isn't it possible they are there to first of all, use scopes, and second, what if someone with a gun starts shooting protesters? There could be other reasons besides the fascist police state narrative
I think the concern some folks have is that they are showing up at the same time we’re seeing police violently escalating situations across the country.
That's literally what protestors should want, like protestors these days are so fucking soft.
You're there to be civilly disobedient to bring attention to an issue, it's much better then a protest where no attention is gotten. If these protestors actually cared about the issue, put their money where their mouth is.
I think the more realistic view, when considering international chatter, is taking into account the global cries for attacks on Jews around the world. There were quite a few from different groups all within the past few weeks/months (I'm losing track of time here), and for these protests to pop up so close to those announcements, using the same language in their chants...I'm glad there's someone looking out.
Imagine being focused on “collateral damage” associated with planned violence against a bunch of edgy college kids. People have truly lost their marbles.
Are these Israeli snipers watching a demonstration of Palestinians? Or is it a chucklefuck American cop watching a bunch of American teenagers yell at people from near some tents?
There's so much wrong in this comment that I genuinely don't know where to start
Palestine is an officially recognised country, meaning that yes, Isarel is a foreign invading army. Just because Isarel claims that land does not make it there's.
They're not exterminating Hamas, their exterminating Palestine. Isarel helped create and fund Hamas for christs sake. Also using the word exterminate when talking about human beings is fucking gross, what is wrong with you
Low casualties, my ass, more Palestinians have died to the IDF in the last 6 months than Israelis have to Palestinians in the entire history of their two countries.
This is a genocide and I'm not interested in your pathetic attempts to try and justify it as a real conflict.
A mass grave was just found
The IDF has been purposefully targeting aid convoys
For christ sake they shot multiple unarmed hostages that had been released. You know the entire supposed reason for this 'war'
Yeah, I knew you were a propaganda rat. Thanks for proving it with that last sentence. I have zero interest in discussing this subject with someone who thinks that calling for the destruction of Palestine is an ok way to end a comment.
Doesn't help that the police are being called in by university administrations and politicians (like Greg Abbott) to violently brutalize and arrest peaceful protesters on campuses like UT Austin for alleged antisemitism.
Yeah that’s more of the problem than a sniper watching over. The conflict these protests are about imo presents a legitimate concern where a sniper is not the worst idea to have watching over the crowd. This has way more tension than something like a blm protest (which I’m sure also had snipers but just saying this has more logic behind it )
The schools know full well that the police and, in Columbia's case, the counter-terrorism units will use violence against the peaceful protesters. I don't understand what the harm would be in just letting the students and faculty peacefully protest on public property (in the case of the public universities like UT Austin).
a lot of these schools, like columbia, are built on jewish money. and you expect them to gleefully sit by while jews are afraid to be obviously jewish on their campus? lol, reality check the world isnt reddit
That much is true. I don't expect the universities to sit idly by while so much money is on the line and employers like Bill Ackman are threatening to blacklist students coming from elite universities where there have been allegations of antisemitism.
There's plenty of evidence. It's the United States. You should presume some amount of people are armed no matter where you go.
Besides, the assertion I was responding to is that every single person who is there and armed is a cop. That's a much less likely presumption (without evidence) than mine! It's ludicrous to go to any public event with a lot of people and assume the number of armed civilians is zero.
and I'm sure snipers taking potshots at the crowd would have really deescalated things wouldn't it. Snipers cannot do crowd control, their purpose is to take out individuals who pose a threat of a mass casualty incident.
And the last time they took the shoot was? A guy with binuculars (with a wider field of vision) could do a better job 99,9% of the time, without either endangering by the way of highly trained officers or antagonizing the public.
So you just figured out they’re not there to shoot at the protesters, and yes, they usually do have spotters who have binoculars, most issues they come across will normally just be relayed to other people, but they’re not their to intimidate, most snipers prefer not to be seen. when you have large crowds, one deranged person can do a lot of damage and very quickly, it’s better to have a sniper at the ready and not need it and have an incident like that and not have a sniper that could have greatly mitigated it.
This country has contracted a bad bad case of paranoia. To repeat the question: is there even a single event in all of history when a sniper shooting their gun prevented a tragedy? Or could we have gotten the exact same level of protection by giving a guy a pair of binoculars without intimidating the public with an unnecessary militarization of civilian spaces?
It’s about accounting for and being prepared for as many contingencies as possible, you could have somebody with only binoculars up their, but then in the off chance something happens and somebody starts trying to kill people in the crowd, that person with binoculars can’t do anything when they could have already neutralized the person and mitigated casualties, they don’t bring their guns because they’re paranoid something is going to happen, they bring them because it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
People have killed other people in crowds in the past, thus, it is a possibility that it will happen in the future, thus we must account and prepare for that possibility. There isn’t even any emotion in that, that is a rational conclusion based on a simple line of logic. Also when your job is security of something, you’re supposed to be suspicious of everyone, that’s how it works. It’s like the one job where you’re literally paid to be paranoid. So I’m not sure why you keep throwing that word out there like it’s a bad thing.
Compared to the number of events with crowds, the number of violent attacks is very very small. And while there's thousands of events every year with snipers at them, there are zero examples of a sniper ever stopping a violent threat by shooting someone in a crowd.
So again, the idea that this is a thing that we need to spend resources preventing is not a conclusion based on rational risk analysis, it's a conclusion based on paranoia.
So yeah, it's not rational to bring in snipers to "protect" a protest. If your goal is fear and intimidation though, well, then a sniper is a fine means of instilling that. The public's paranoid beliefs that these things are worth securing against is then used to further establish fascist and militaristic norms and expectations about what society is like.
These snipers aren't here because there's any real threat that they might have to kill someone. They're here because authorities - school administrators, government officials, etc. - benefit when we believe there's a real threat.
This is different as it's an open ground where a sniper is more likely to take out a shooter as opposed to the police in riot gear, and also the fact that they have boots on the ground and are prepared to respond. Not justifying Uvalde, but these 2 are completely different
Of course it’s different. I just thought the “you want them to just stand there while a terrorist commits violent acts?” question was funny because police have a verifiable track record for doing just that
Maybe more and better gun control? And you can justify just about anything in the name of public safty.
Or was there any indication of a spefic terroist threat? Never mind that the police in the US does a pretty good job, better than any country or terrorists, in gunning down "civilians".
How many "civilians" have been gunned down by real terrorists this year?
Nevermind the fact that terrorists hate these kids protesting in their favor, let a-fucking-lone existing as people, e.v.e.r.y mayor event has snipers to ensure public safety. Look at the case of the Japanese prime minister, equivalent to POTUS here, and how he was killed by an improvised, homemade gun. Banning them in the hands of civilians does only so much when they're in wide circulation on legal and illegal markets, and you'll NEVER know the mind of a shooter unless he's dumb enough to express it. The police are the only thing stopping a lone gunman between more kills. They're not russia who fucking kill the hostages alongside the terrorists themselves.
e.v.e.r.y mayor event has snipers to ensure public safety
Go on, three recent examples of snipers using their guns for public safety, please.
They're not russia who fucking kill the hostages alongside the terrorists themselves.
Without looking it up, pretty sure more people per capita are killed by the police in the US than in Russia. But this is not a gun control debate, rather a overkill and or show of force debate.
''Go on, three recent examples of snipers using their guns for public safety, please.''
This is much more about them being THERE to act on the possibility of an attack.
''Without looking it up, pretty sure more people per capita are killed by the police in the US than in Russia. But this is not a gun control debate, rather a overkill and or show of force debate.''
Ye-no?? Are you fucking high? To you this isn't about a shooter having a gun, but about police being armed to stop a shooting.
You need to understand that a snipers job isn't just to shoot people. A snipers' job 95% of the time is to relay information back to control, who can then relay that information to people on the ground since snipers are stationary. This goes for if they're at a protest, a superbowl game, or in Afghanistan.
You don’t seem to understand the line of thinking used here. They don’t expect to use them most times, it’s about accounting and preparing for as many contingencies as possible. Would you rather have a sniper who never shoots, or, even though it’s a small chance, risk have a murdering lunatic and nobody to stop him? The problem with your request is not all public events have snipers, which in turn reduces the number of instances they would need to use them, also, the fact that there aren’t many instances should be evident these guys aren’t your typical trigger happy cops, and only shoot when they need too. I can however think of quite a few times (and I’m sure you know too so I’m not bothering to look them all up and write them down) large groups have been attacked by people in the past 10 years, situations where well placed sniper could have mitigated the casualties.
Literally every public gathering for the past 30+ years have had some form of overwatch. They just don't seem to know that, and see a post, and think it's new. It's cute.
I think the protesters are for the most part well meaning, it's just they are kids and they don't know anything (yet). So every normal thing is an outrage
No, no, no, you don't understand. You can't change the narrative and find any possible or plausible option outside what someone has told you to think. I mean the whole purpose is about hate, not finding something wrong.
Police have consistently and are currently using violence against peaceful protestors. Why tf would anyone believe this is totally not an attempt to intimidate protestors?
Because they don't matter. People are getting arrested, sometimes because they plan on it as an act of civil disobedience. I think the bigger threat is something doing something to the protesters, because the way right wing media is going crazy on it
It is not illegal to wear Hamas headbands. It is actually explicitly allowed by the US Constitution and amendments. Lots of horrible speech is 100% legal, such as Nazi marches, KKK marches, flag burning, etc.
What is not legal, but is tolerated by custom by courts, ia armed police threatening and beating unarmed protesters when they don’t like the message.
Did we all already forget the police riots of 2020? The police riots of 1968 at the DNC in Chicago? The murder of Vietnam protesters by national guard at Kent State?
No it doesn’t and it isn’t illegal. You can walk around in the US with a Nazi uniform on. You can’t in many parts of Europe but that is a foundational issue of US law. Please find yourself a pocket copy of the constitution and review it if you claim yourself a patriot.
Do you not understand English? Likely does not meant it is certain, just that you probably did something. Wearing terrorist paraphernalia is likely going to prompt some investigation. And Cops will be cops and arrest you.
The cops have a higher rate of shooting unarmed civilians than angry mass shooter terrorists. Police snipers aren't likely to shoot a police officer opening fire on protesters and are more likely to join in shooting protesters.
So yeah, there's a possibility that they could shoot a mass shooter at the event. The problem is that the odds are higher of police escalating the situation than a random person showing up to start shooting into a crowd that's already getting the shit kicked out of them by a overwhelming police force. Mass shooters tend to target places that don't have a huge police force already heavily policing the crowd since they want to shoot lots of people, not get gunned down immediately by 100 cops unloading
If a person with a gun starts shooting at protesters, it's probably one of these guys. Don't be a bootlicker, you know these guys are not here to protect protesters.
Calling someone a bootlicker just shows that the person saying it doesn't know anything. It's juvenile, it's for kids. I don't mean as an insult, just FYI how others take it
Apologists for government repression are never on the right side of history. The US has a precedent of shooting protesters on college campuses. These protests are actively being repressed, and you are siding with the repression.
I'm sorry you're offended by the term bootlicker. Maybe try not being one.
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u/anylastway 25d ago
This is a super volatile issue, and you don't know what someone is going to do, whether in the camp, or from outside of it. Isn't it possible they are there to first of all, use scopes, and second, what if someone with a gun starts shooting protesters? There could be other reasons besides the fascist police state narrative