Officers shot in Dallas

[23JAZ]

I was born on post and grew up as an Army brat. We moved often. Many of my friends were black. A couple of my best friends were black as were some of my baseball coaches. (They would come straight from work to our practices still wearing green fatigues.) I don't know if it's different now, but color just didn't matter. We didn't even think about it. It was like having brown hair or blue eyes - - a characteristic a person happened to have.

Despite my color blind background, there's nothing I can do to change the situation in the black community. That's up to good, sensible black men & women to do. It doesn't appear that those considered their 'leadership' today have the bests interests of people in mind.

Clinton and people like her are dead set on keeping blacks down by giving them handouts so they can win their vote, while blaming everything bad that happens on whites, Republicans, and guns.

[BaiHu]

Clinton and people like her are dead set on keeping blacks down by giving them handouts so they can win their vote, while blaming everything bad that happens on whites and Republicans and guns.

Sadly, it's working.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[Tamara]

I will be charitable and say that that "conservative treehouse" site plays fast and loose with sloppy research, because that would be kinder than calling them a pack of liars.

[TCinVA]

I will be charitable and say that that "conservative treehouse" site plays fast and loose with sloppy research, because that would be kinder than calling them a pack of liars.

Right. I've been trying to independently verify the information they have on that site, so far without much success.

I still have no idea if Mr. Castile had a legit permit or not. What I have discovered is that Minnesota has weird CCW permit laws. If you change your address, you are supposed to report that to the local Sheriff's office within 30 days. Failing to do so is, at the very least, a minor misdemeanor. I think...and I want to emphasize think here...it also nullifies the permit.

Given that structure it's entirely possible that Mr. Castile did not have a valid permit, but entirely due to administrative stuff rather than any criminal background.

Even if he didn't have a valid permit, that doesn't tell us a goddamn thing about how the interaction between the officer and Mr. Castile went down...which is where all the important stuff happened.

My instincts so far tell me that the officer's state of mind that the guy looked broadly similar to an armed robbery suspect from a few days before + the guy telling him he had a gun = over-reaction.

I don't like the BLM bullshit narrative any more than anyone else, but we can't fall subject to an alternate-reality version of the same thing. People hearing stories that they want to hear is not how we fix any of this.

[Tamara]

I still have no idea if Mr. Castile had a legit permit or not. What I have discovered is that Minnesota has weird CCW permit laws.

Star Tribune says they are sure he does.

I love how "Conservative Treehouse" posts the tweet from Ramsey County S.O. as though it's dispositive of anything. Star Tribune says he got permit while living in Robbinsdale, which is in Hennepin County. But, yeah, if he moved and it got invalidated, he might not even have realized that. You know how John Q. Citizen is about carry laws in general, even people who have taken the time to get a toter's permit.

His criminal record, also according to Star Tribune, is 31 misdemeanors and petty misdemeanors, apparently all low level traffic offenses: No proof of insurance, driving while suspended, parking violations, that sort of thing. By that standard, I have a badass rap sheet myself.

[TCinVA]

I love how "Conservative Treehouse" posts the tweet from Ramsey County S.O. as though it's dispositive of anything. Star Tribune says he got permit while living in Robbinsdale, which is in Hennepin County. But, yeah, if he moved and it got invalidated, he might not even have realized that. You know how John Q. Citizen is about carry laws in general, even people who have taken the time to get a toter's permit.

Right.

And I don't think that people running around pushing that story really want to live in a world where "You failed to check all appropriate boxes" means that you are essentially green-lit.

[Tamara]

I like how "he's a crip" is apparently Ouija-boarded from the fact that he is black and wears blue clothing in more than 50% of the photos we have of him. I guess the headline photo at this story must show him at one of his gang meetings, because the gang bangers in the background are all wearing shades of blue, too.

[Erik]

I don't like the BLM bullshit narrative any more than anyone else, but we can't fall subject to an alternate-reality version of the same thing. People hearing stories that they want to hear is not how we fix any of this.

This is so key, and astonishingly hard to convey to someone who thinks they already know what happened because, you know, they already knew it was going to happen because that's what always happens and hey, they're all [pigs, criminals - pick your slant]. It astonishes me how virulently people react when you suggest that all the facts aren't in yet.

[Tiffany Johnson]

Why is NO ONE talking about who is really killing all the black people? I mean...no one.

They are. I assume you're referencing street crime/drugs. Black folks and people of all races organize events aimed at reducing street crime (including "black-on-black crime") in local urban areas all the time. It is not considered newsworthy and typically does not make the rounds over social media and internet forums.

BLM is totally silent on the slaughter of black Americans unless a cop was involved. That feels like complete hypocrisy.

I understand how folks could wonder about this, but it's kind of like complaining that the NRA doesn't do enough to protect the First Amendment or the 13th or 19th Amendments (after all, it bills itself as "the nation's largest and oldest civil rights organization" and vows in part to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," which includes a lot more than the Second Amendment). While that's the general mission, of course the NRA has a more specific focus, as do most non profits. So, IMHO, if BLM doesn't place equal or even proportional emphasis on every conceivable threat to black lives, that might mean they've chosen an imprecise name, but it doesn't necessarily make them hypocrites (they might be hypocritical for other reasons, of course).

Or have I missed a march for a dead man killed by his neighbors? Not sarcasm, legitimate question.

Yes. Here's one example. Here's another. Here's another. A Google search will reveal others, though they might be buried under more sensational headlines. Again, those events don't often make the news, unfortunately.

[Tiffany Johnson]

[T]he present fact is this; the drug trade and criminal activities thereof is integral to the modern black culture. In the black community packing a Beretta doesn't mean you're a law abiding person. It means you're in The Game. Folks raised in that world abide by the rules of that trade, not the rules of society as understood elsewhere. If you're a young black kid who reads math books and studies you are mocked as a sellout loser. Because "real black people" act like Alton, robbing and dealing and fighting cops.

While I agree 1,000,000% about the concept of "slavery of the mind," suffice it to say that my personal experience in "the black community" has been very different from GardoneVT's. Of course, that doesn't mean he's wrong. It just means that we have been exposed to different parts of the spectrum. I would caution everyone here to be wary of broad strokes and over-generalizations. It's cliche and presumably understood, but it bears repeating: No group is monolithic. Not a one.