Strong disagree. Verbal threats are not a capital offence. If the FBI want to go around shooting every crazy old man who posts in all caps on Facebook, they’d have to start with my dad.
Nothing you say or think ever warrants being shot dead.
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Without all of those in your list, his anger would have been directed at “The Government”, and his comments would probably have never reached the point of targeting any specific individual.
I can’t help but suspect it was more his repeated, specific and credible threats against both public figures and agents of the FBI than for who he wanted to vote for. If they were going in knowing the man was armed and apt to open fire, they went in with guns drawn and ready and all it would have taken at that point is the gaffer reaching for a sidearm.
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Escalation has an endpoint. It’s not possible to keep pushing higher and higher and higher without reaching an ultimate breaking point. I don’t live in the USA but one of the things that worries me about societies globally and where they are heading is that there seems to be vastly fewer inherent chances for de-escalation as time passes.
The internet itself and social media in general have made this worse. Even 25 years ago I remember BBS/forum flame wars raging on and on until admins/mods shut it down for everyone. You can’t reach peaceful agreement by yelling louder than someone else and this sure feels like where it’s all heading.
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His online words weren’t a capital offense in and of themselves, but sharing graphic fantasies about the murder of people he might shortly come into direct contact with certainly did identify him as a possible threat, and it appears his behavior when confronted did not lead him to behave in a prudently cautious and deliberate manner when defying armed authorities. If approaching him about these posts was my job, I would certainly not do it unarmed.
I guarantee you he wasn’t killed over those postings: the postings reasonably put him in a very dangerous situation where he appears to have not have responded in the best manner. I’ll wait for more details about the event itself to decide.
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Sounds like it was not only what he said, but also: what he was holding, who he was pointing it at, and whether or not he dropped it when instructed.
ETA: Ye gods, it feels weird taking the “if he’d only listened to the cops…” line, but this feels like a whole different category to a traffic stop / jumpy cop situation.
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We still don’t know what he did during the arrest, only a couple unofficial statements that he was armed at the time.
Putting all the little pieces together, I’m thinking a 75 year old MAGAt being arrested for making threats against POTUS, maybe he had a stage 4 somethingoma and was trying to martyr himself by getting into a “Gran Torino”-style suicide-by-cop.
And in classic red-hat MAGAt short-sightedness form, he forgot the entire climax of the movie is Clint Eastwood was unarmed when the gang shot him so the bad guys would get arrested for murder. So much for his martyrdom.
EDIT: Torino, not Turismo, thanks @Flossaluzitarin
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Play stupid games… end up never knowing that you won the ultimate stupid prize.
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The complaint said Robertson came to the attention of federal agents in March after he posted a threat against Mr Bragg on Truth Social, the social network owned by Mr Trump. The company alerted the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center.
FBI agents then visited the suspect, who told them that the post was a “dream” and ended the conversation by saying: “We’re done here! Don’t return without a warrant!”
Sounds like TS might have a moderation problem, although they did rat him to the FBI.
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Just to clear up the questions above…
FBI SWAT agents were giving commands to the man when he pointed a gun at them, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the incident.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/09/politics/fbi-utah-man-joe-biden/index.html
Personally, I am at a loss to understand why it’s so difficult for MAGAs to learn from other MAGA’s “find out” part of FAFO, instead of having to figure it out for themselves. 
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My alter ego, SkepticOwl, thinks that Truth Social – appreciating what dropped into their laps – set up the guy for MAGA riot-incducing martyrdom
Shut up, Skep! You’re giving me a headache!
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Both Ruby Ridge and Waco were both examples of clearly justified uses of force. That’s what I’m talking about - those people who “were radicalized” by those events were already there. It’s a fiction that they were ordinary people beforehand. Those events weren’t reasons; they were excuses.
Might as well lump the Oklahoma City Bombing in there. McVeigh and Kazynski were going to do something bad long before RR and Waco. Don’t confuse their “why” for an actual justification.
The Malheur occupation showed us what happens when these events are allowed to escalate. Violent assholes taking a federal building do not get the benefit of the doubt, or they end up doing it again and again.
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Hard disagree. The FBI and other agencies dramatically and unnecessarily escalated the violence in both cases.
The violence at Ruby Ridge started when the FBI shot the family dog for alerting the family to the government’s presence and shortly afterward an FBI sniper took out an unarmed woman holding her baby.
Waco could have remained a nonviolent standoff indefinitely after the compound was surrounded, the Feds just sent agents in (and fired incendiary tear gas cannisters that likely started the fire) because they were afraid of looking weak on TV.
The targets in both raids were dangerous, heavily armed, and dedicated to abhorrent causes but that doesn’t mean the government didn’t fuck things up.
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Yea the lapel pin is nice color but you shot him dead, dudes. Why?
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Maybe we read different reports from those incidents. In the version I read, in both cases kids were actively being harmed within sight of agents. At that point, it’s no longer a standoff and it’s no longer surveillance.
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The sequence of events at Ruby Ridge was:
- FBI shoots family dog for alerting family to agents’ presence during surveillance operation
- Enraged 14-year-old Sammy Weaver shoots at FBI agents in retaliation for killing family dog
- Agents shoot and kill Sammy
- U.S. Marshall William Francis Degan killed in ensuing firefight
- During standoff, FBI agent shoots mourning mother Vicki Weaver in the head while she is holding her baby daughter
That sure as hell doesn’t sound like the FBI protecting children to me. Neither does a military-style raid of a compound involving incendiary tear gas cannisters.
You brought up the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff as if the lack of a heavily armed response was a failure of the Federal government, but I disagree. The (mostly) bloodless end to that standoff is how Ruby Ridge or Waco might have ended if the Feds had shown more patience and restraint. A lot of kids might still be alive today if the Feds had tried more deescalation tactics back in the 90s.
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All of these incidents smack of the “Look what you made me do!” mentality of the violent, armed RWNJs. The initiation of conflict always comes from the poor bewildered fascists.
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I’m no fan of the Weaver family but it doesn’t take a conflict resolution expert to realize that sneaking onto a militia-type family’s property and shooting their dog is a good way to start a violent showdown. Hell, it’s basically the whole premise of the John Wick franchise.
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The Federal LE during the Clinton presidency was pretty wild. I remember the whole seizure of Elian Gonzales was horrible optics, though thankfully no on got hurt. I don’t know if there were similar incidents under Reagan and Bush Sr, but I was too young to be very aware of such events at the time. But I remember Waco as it happened and learned of Ruby Ridge a few years after it happened.
I remember watching a show that LE had learned some lessons from Waco and Ruby Ridge, which lead to the longest stand off in US history that lasted 15 years until the charges were eventually dropped.
But in general - cops haven’t learned how to deal with people holed up. There was a cop who got killed around here this week when a high speed chase over a stolen car ended with the suspect running into a QuikTrip (gas station) bathroom where the cop and suspect had a gun fight and both died. Dude was in the bathroom, he wasn’t going anywhere. Rope it off and wait it out. Everyone lives. 
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That story about the 15-year-long standoff is wild. I have a feeling I’m going to fall into a rabbit hole reading more about that, so thanks for sharing.
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