June 21, 2016

Terror with no weapons at all.

"All they said was just, 'Run, run, run, run,'... People getting stampeded, getting trampled, bags flying. It's crazy right now."

Today, on the NY subway.

Once people know about terror attacks, words alone are enough to get ordinary people to unwittingly weaponize their own bodies. (This is the old "shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.")

Meanwhile, also in NYC: "Three people were arrested with multiple loaded guns, rifles and ballistic vests at the Holland Tunnel Tuesday when police stopped them for driving with a cracked windshield.... Two senior law enforcement officials say the three suspects are so-called 'gun enthusiasts' and have no nexus to terror. There is no known threat."

53 comments:

Expat(ish) said...

Hmmm, most "bullet proof vests" are illegal for civilians to own.

And, yes, I know "bullet proof vest" is about as accurate as "assault weapon" but I think it communicates the idea properly even though the description isn't really true.

I suspect there are more details to follow. Like, these are cops. Or they are private security for the Rich and Powerful. I can't imagine a civilian taking guns into NYC and thinking that was going to end well.

-XC

Anonymous said...

"we're not talking about a few guns, we're talking about several guns and rounds of ammunition..."

"rifles and automatic weapons"

Overblown...

Etienne said...

Home of the brave...

Oso Negro said...

New York values in action

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

And it gets worse than that!

"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices – to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill – and suspicion can destroy – and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own – for the children – and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is – that these things cannot be confined – to the Twilight Zone."

-- "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" (The Twilight Zone; S1:E22) (some kind of allegory, apparently)

Michael K said...

"Gun enthusiasts" I wonder if they speak Arabic ?

Just curious.

Quaestor said...

I can't imagine a civilian taking guns into NYC and thinking that was going to end well.

Only career criminals can do that. They check your rap sheet on the Jersey side and wave you on through if you've got the requisite felony charges.

Terror is all the rage now. The Muslims terrorize us over our freedom of conscience and the SJW attack everything else. They're offended so it's cool with MSNBC.

Quaestor said...

I wonder if they speak Arabic ?

They'll be luncheon guests at Gracie Mansion if they do.

Quaestor said...

some kind of allegory, apparently

The kind with teeth that eats toddlers.

Fernandinande said...
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lgv said...

"Hmmm, most "bullet proof vests" are illegal for civilians to own."

This is incorrect. Each state has different laws, but generally citizens not convicted of a felony can buy body armor.

Clayton Hennesey said...

"So-called 'gun enthusiasts'".

Still, I've always loved this movie about Manhattan.

I was so happy for them when they found out what lay beyond.

Fernandinande said...

Two so-called "senior" so-called "law enforcement" so-called "officials" say the three so-called "suspects" are so-called "gun enthusiasts" and have no so-called "nexus" to so-called "terror".

Surely anyone demented enough to possess so-called "guns" is a so-called "terrorist".

The guns seized included long-range weapons

AKA so-called "rifles".

as well as handguns. A camouflage helmet with what appeared to be night goggles was also recovered[sic for the so-called "journalist"].

So what's the problem?

Lewis Wetzel said...

"Three people were arrested with multiple loaded guns, rifles and ballistic vests at the Holland Tunnel Tuesday when police stopped them for driving with a cracked windshield.... Two senior law enforcement officials say the three suspects are so-called 'gun enthusiasts' and have no nexus to terror. There is no known threat."

UK's Daily Fail says it's a drug dealer war thing.

holdfast said...

"Hmmm, most "bullet proof vests" are illegal for civilians to own."

Not so. Even in overly-restrictive CT, anyone can own a bullet-resistant vest, though for some stupid reason you have to buy it in person - you can't buy it over the 'net. Now, it may be the case that the makers of the latest and greatest vests have exclusivity deals with the military so their stuff isn't on the open market, but there's plenty of stuff freely available.

Smilin' Jack said...

"Terror with no weapons at all."

"All they said was just, 'Run, run, run, run,'... People getting stampeded, getting trampled, bags flying. It's crazy right now."


We shouldn't be so quick to blame everything on terror. This could have been just a soccer game.

harrogate said...

Most powerful country in the world and well on the way to becoming the fraidy-cattest, too.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Smilin' Jack said...

We shouldn't be so quick to blame everything on terror. This could have been just a soccer game.

If it was just a soccer game then the people lying on the ground injured from getting trampled are most likely faking it.

n.n said...
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n.n said...

Were they arrested or reported with the probable hope that they are a threat?

A couples of years ago in Salt Lake City a police offer aborted an unarmed man based on the probable hope that hands by your side are evidence of criminal intent.

Yancey Ward said...

I would bet this is drug related, or the people were weapons sellers going to a buyer. The one detail I have seen so far that might make it terror related is that some of the weapons were already loaded, but I don't necessarily trust that detail's veracity.

Darrell said...

Those people stopped with a trunkful of guns on NYC were going to confront drug dealers, who were supposedly holding a female friend of theirs captive.

Sigivald said...

I rarely trust news reports of "ballistic vests" even via PDs.

Because most of the time it turns out to be either a "tactical vest" (with no armor value at all), or a surplus flak jacket (stops fragments, but not bullets).

(Though this particular report is so weird that I'm willing to believe it might be accurate.)

Fernandinande said...

Here's another panic attack:

According to the reports, the individuals have been seen standing beside roadways and sometimes stepping into roadways as motorists are passing at locations across Muscatine County, in southeastern Iowa.
...
The Muscatine County Sheriff’s Office has taken notice, posting Monday on its Facebook page, “We have had several reports of ‘men dressed in black’ entering the roadway in rural Muscatine County.”
...
The MCSO is now asking anyone who encounters the individuals to “call 911 immediately.”


Rocketeer said...

Most powerful country in the world and well on the way to becoming the fraidy-cattest, too.

I hear you brother - stampedes based on the word "run", calling 911 over black clothing, banning guns based on what they look like - all pretty damned fraidy-catty, knowhatimsayin'?

Michael K said...

Another blank profile. What do you know ?

Robert Cook said...

The Muslims terrorize us over our freedom of conscience...."

Wha---??!!! Oh my god.

Most victims of Islamic terrorism are not us, but other Muslims in the largely Muslim countries where Islmac terrorism occurs, and, to the degree we have been subject to (or intended victims of) Islamic terror plots, it has nothing to do with their alleged "hatred of our freedom" (or of our "freedom of conscience," whatever that might mean).

The government eagerly exaggerates the threat of Islamic terrorism as the latter-day substitute for dire warnings of the "Red Menace," that is, in order to keep us cowed and happy to surrender so much of our tax dollars to the swine who profit from wars and fear of war, (and so many of our civil liberties and privacy to the fantasy of "being kept safe").

Rocketeer said...

(and so many of our civil liberties and privacy to the fantasy of "being kept safe").

Ok then, putting Cook down in the "against" category on this latest round of gun control proposals.

Expat(ish) said...

My bad, thought BPV's were federally regulated, turns out I was ... wrong.

-XC

I Callahan said...

The government eagerly exaggerates the threat of Islamic terrorism as the latter-day substitute for dire warnings of the "Red Menace," that is, in order to keep us cowed and happy to surrender so much of our tax dollars to the swine who profit from wars and fear of war

There couldn't POSSIBLY be a reason to believe that Islamic terrorism or Communism are threats. None at all.

Michael K said...

"The government eagerly exaggerates the threat of Islamic terrorism"

I guess you missed the coverup of Muslim terrorism in Orlando where a "redacted" transcript of the 911 call from the killer omitted any reference to Islam and Allah. The DoJ finally backed down but still changed "Allah" to "God" in the final version.

Gahrie said...

The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" (The Twilight Zone; S1:E22) (some kind of allegory, apparently)

I teach History in a suburban high school. One of my colleagues shows that episode every year when we get to the Cold War.

Meanwhile, I'm telling my kids that Nixon and HUAC were right, Hiss was a Commie liar and the Rosenbergs were guilty. (But they'd never get Old Sparky today.)

Bruce Hayden said...

One of the scary things is that in parts of the Muslim community, radicalizing is not uncommon, and is apparently a family thing. The Boston bombing, as well as San Bernadino had the commonality of radicalizing mosques and radicalized families. Arguably, in all three cases, family members were also involved, including radicalized parents and spouses. In the latest case, the wife helped scope out the shooting location, the father helped run the mosque he was radicalized in, as well as being a vocal proponent of the Taliban, and siblings received a quit claim for his house several days before the shooting. These are not lone wolf shooters, despite what Obama and Cook try to tell us.

Here is an interesting factoid for anyone supporting AR type modern sporting rifles - the recent shooting at the gay night club probably raised, on its own, the total number of rifle and carbine homicides for the year by maybe 20% nation wide. Probably by 50% or so for "assault weapon" murders (though they aren't tallied separately from other rifle and carbine caused homicides).

Obama (and probably Cook) makes the point that in the scheme of things, these sorts of Islamic terrorist attacks are not that significant numerically, in a country of more than 300 million. Just guessing, but I would expect more to have died that day from medical malpractice and the like. Or, indeed, in auto crashes, despite airbags, seat belts, crumple zones, etc. But the reason that terrorism works is that the deaths are unexpected and concentrated. It wasn't one person in every state, or 1out of every almost million people, but 50 people in one location, while SWAT sat by and negotiated.

Robert Cook said...

@Michael K:

The mass murder in Orlando was not Islamic terrorism, much as you and others want to see it that way. It was the angry act of a lone malcontent, a person who has been reported as angry and confrontational by many in his life, and who may have been a conflicted, closeted homosexual. That he claimed it as an act of allegiance to ISIS is just a loser's claim to being something greater than he was. (He also claimed support for Hezbollah and for ISIS, two Muslim groups who were enemies of each other. So much for his knowledge of the groups he was claiming allegiance to.)

In short, he was just a garden-variety angry American mass killer. (They are to be feared, as they will kill more of us than Islamic extremists will.)

Bad Lieutenant said...

Robert,

As seems to be the only thing you have to say to others who say things you don't like:

How do you know all that you have just asserted?

Michael said...

Robert Cook

Exactly. And those poseurs in Syria are just middle class Frenchmen and Turks and Iraqis and even Syrians who are struggling with their own inner sexual turmoil and bonding with like-minded troubled young men in acting out their frustrations by killing and maiming and beheading.

Recently divorced housewives and progs inevitably release their inner therapist.

LOL

Static Ping said...

Yes, words can kill lots of people. The Khodynka Tragedy in Russia killed 1,389 people at the tsar's coronation. Most if not all were trampled to death. Rumors flew that there was not enough food, drink, and gift to go around which led to a panic to get theirs before it was too late, which led to panic in general.

Mecca seems to get an extraordinary number of trampling disasters, though I did not research the causes.

Michael K said...

"The mass murder in Orlando was not Islamic terrorism,"

Well, I guess you are more of an expert on Muslim mass killers than we are.

When did you get back from Syria ?

Gabriel said...

@Robert Cook:

The mass murder in Charleston was not white supremacism, much as you and others want to see it that way. It was the angry act of a lone malcontent, a person who has been reported as angry and confrontational by many in his life, and who may have been a conflicted, closeted homosexual.

Michael K said...

The kid in Charleston looked like a schizophrenic to me, similar to the school shooter in Conecticut.

Did you see pictures of his father ?

Darrell said...

Cookie now has a credibility rating of zero. Thanks for playing, but you are the biggest loser! Goodbye.

Gabriel said...

@Michael K:The kid in Charleston looked like a schizophrenic to me

I don't know what schizophrenics "look like" but I do know that diagnoses at a distance aren't worth much. But all that is a distraction.

The important thing to take away here is that a white Southern mass murderer indicts all whites and all Southerners and all gun owners, and a gay Muslim mass murderer indicts all gun owners and all Christians.

narciso said...

nothing to see here,

https://twitter.com/GrabienMedia/status/745370970702020610

Bruce Hayden said...

Cook ignores that the Orlando shooter pledged allegiance to an Islamic terrorist group in the Middle East, that he dedicated the shooting to Allah (which the Administration changed to "God" in the transcripts), he belonged to a relatively militant mosque (that his father helped run), was in touch with other Islamic terrorists/militants, his family was involved, etc. And what does Cook have that he wasn't a homegrown Muslim terrorist? Assertions by Obama and AG Lynch? Sorry - I think that Cook is in serious denial here.

Paul Snively said...

"Run, run, run, run." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySO-gryuO-c

Quaestor said...
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Quaestor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Robert Cook said...

"The mass murder in Charleston was not white supremacism, much as you and others want to see it that way. It was the angry act of a lone malcontent, a person who has been reported as angry and confrontational by many in his life, and who may have been a conflicted, closeted homosexual."

Are there reports of particulars of his life suggesting he may have been a conflicted, closeted homosexual? There is such information reported about Mateen. I also don't think it was primarily an act of white supremacism. Most white supremacists, no matter how virulent their racism, are not driven to walk into a black gathering and commit mass murder. Again, another angry, maladjusted American loner, inflicting his internal chaos and anger on the world outside himself. That he picked blacks as the target of his murderous anger is secondary; what is primary is his anger, which might have focused on any or no particular targets, depending on the circumstances that pushed him into going amok.

All these guys are versions of Travis Bickle, the Rober DeNiro-played protagonist of Scorcese's TAXI DRIVER. They're empty, drifting, frustrated, impotent...until they decide upon a decisive, destructive act to impress themselves on existence.

IgnatzEsq said...

"It's not clear if anyone was hurt in the commotion..." That's good. Even in a fit of mass hysteria there is apparently some order in NYC.

In Saudia Arabia, however, you don't need weapons or terrorism or even a fire in a crowded theatre to wind up with thousands of people dead in a stampede: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Mina_stampede, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_Mecca_tunnel_tragedy.

Paul said...

My understanding of the NYC gun/drug bust is the one who rented the SUV was a 'undocumented alien'. That and a dozen knives? Night vision? Bullet resistant vest? And drugs?

Yet they won't even describe the individuals nor give their names? Makes you wonder if their name stared with Muhammad or Esteban.

Quaestor said...

...he was just a garden-variety angry American mass killer.

Cookie does not understand Islam, ergo his opinions are worthless.

Omar Mateen may have been a closeted gay, there's some evidence to believe that. If so it's important, but not in the way Robert Cook believes. In Islam homosexuality is a "mortal sin", I put that in quotes because Islam does not distinguish between venal and mortal sin. Islam has no purgatory, the fate of sinners who have not submitted to Allah is hellfire. Homosexuals, not just those who practice but those who harbor the desire as well, must either suffer death by the ummah, or hellfire in the hereafter — this is why the imam Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar could say that killing gays is an act of compassion, better death in this world than hellfire in the next.

Harsh as Islam appears there, however, is a get out of hell free card; it's called martyrdom. Only the martyr can escape the Last Day, all other souls, including the Prophet himself must await the general resurrection and the Last Judgment before they can enter Paradise. Not so the martyrs, the instant they die they awaken in Paradise with all their sins forgiven. We call it terrorism, but from Mateen's point of view he was engaged in a martyrdom operation. By dying for the caliphate he dealt directly with his homosexual tendencies by erasing their stain and simultaneously gaining the highest reward Allah may grant. To understand this more fully I suggest you read up on the lifestyles of the 9-11 terrorists in the days leading up to their attacks — they drank alcohol, they hired prostitutes, they smoked hashish, anything they wanted, whether seemly for a faithful Muslim or not, they indulged in because they knew their martyrdom would erase their transgressions.

tim in vermont said...

Cookie does not understand Islam, ergo his opinions are worthless

Cookie hates America, so the fact that other Muslims knew about this attack is irrelevant, actually, it was other *Americans* who knew about the attack.

tim in vermont said...

The killer in Charleston was frustrated that he could not get in contact with people who shared his beliefs, despite the media's constant assurance that they are common as cow shit in a pasture. Mateen had no such problems.