Marine vet found on NYC subway with a whole lot of weapons

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ā€œa shotgun, a cache of ammunition, a laser and a machete.ā€

Laser pistol or laser rifle?

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Looks like a pistol to me.

The laser appears to be a ā€œvertical foregripā€ which includes a flashlight and/or laser as pictured. That is an accessory which can be attached to a rifle in most cases; you can attach it to anything that has the corresponding rail for accessories including some pistols.

That is a really disparate bag of incompatible and random gear to be toting around.

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ā€œMarine vet found on NYC subway with a whole lot of weaponsā€

Iā€™m glad they found him. You donā€™t want to lose armed marines on a public subway!

(seriously though, shouldnā€™t this read: ā€œMarine vet on NYC subway found to be carrying a lot of weapons.ā€ I believe the found applies to the weapons found on him.)

All of the magazines (the kind that hold ammunition) in the center-right of the photo are incompatible with the shotgun in the photo. It looks like a he had a box or two of shotgun shells in the bag, not a particularly large amount either. The guy could have mental health issues but the contents of his bag are not uncommon in the rest of America.

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When you said a ā€˜marine with a lot of weaponsā€™, I was expecting a lot more of firepower. Now a shotgunā€™s no joke, but when the phrase ā€˜a whole lot of weaponsā€™ is combined with ā€˜marineā€™, itā€™s meaning is an order of magnitude different than when itā€™s combined with just about any other noun.

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Probably on his way to get a burrito.

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You have to hand it to the Marine PR department: itā€™s impressive how Marines always stay Marines no matter what they do.

ā€œMarine vet found with a whole lot of weaponsā€ / ā€œMarine wins hot dog eating contestā€ / ā€¦

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I donā€™t think itā€™s necessarily PR. My uncle is over 90 years old; and although he is a small, kind, gentle man, who does not volunteer information about his past, people occasionally identify him (correctly) as a Marine simply by the way he carries himself.

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Same thing applies to Harvard alums. Those folks canā€™t take a dump without making a headline.

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Who needs a laser with a shotgun?

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The combination of enough AR-15 magazines for a bad day in Baghdad with a Ye Olde Weste Shotgun is particularly odd. Iā€™m just glad that this one ended with neither a shooting spree nor the NYPD pumping a few hundred rounds into the guy, and anything in the area.

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Iā€™m thinking nothing bad was going to happen until he got his assault rifle.

Did you see his water-bottles?! Combined, they could carry approximately two litres of water. He could have taken-down at least 20 aeroplanes. That Marine vet must have been a terrorist.

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This smells of some kind of private financial exchange, possibly a trip to a pawn shop on public transportation in a city where a lot of people do depend on it to get around and when you canā€™t afford a cab which would relate to you selling or pawning your shit.

Iā€™ve transported, for sale and once when taking the rail system to the airport, firearms on public transport. At one point I was told explicitly that if it is unloaded and in a locked nondescript case it was cool. I can even see the rationale for having ammo close at hand in case someone tries to rob you of an inert weapon with superior numbers or just a knife (which is actually a good weapon to bring to an unloaded gun-fight).

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Well that subway car is no longer the safest subway car in NYC.

His mother also told reporters he served three tours of duty in Iraq, and that he is very kind, and not violent.

Because we all know that the Marines value kindness and non-violence, and donā€™t beat it out of grunts in boot camp before teaching them the most effective ways to commit politically sanctioned murder and sending them off to do it.

He served three tours of duty in Iraq. Itā€™s virtually guaranteed he saw combat, and odds are very high he has PTSD. Even if he was a kind and non-violent person once upon a time, it is highly doubltful he still is - or even if he is, chances are good those personality traits have been marred or buried under trauma and dehumanization.

War destroys people, physically and mentally. Kind, dutiful young people sign up for the military out of a warped sense of obligation and duty, or a chance to get money for college. Those who genuinely donā€™t want to hurt people are morally placated by empty promises of comfortable deployments in non-combat zones, working desk jobs, not being the one to pull the trigger personally. But the war machine runs on viscera, and the fodder must flow. Their comfortable assignments never materialize, they get handed a tin hat and a gun and sent away to the killing fields.

They come home broken, if they come home at all. Even if they donā€™t catch a bullet, or trip a mine, or get a face full of shrapnel, they still have wounds beneath the flesh, deep in the mind. You canā€™t watch people die and not have it affect you. You canā€™t be part of misery and death and not be touched by it.

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Yep, a really impressive looking table, just full ofā€¦ wait a minute, two canteens and two radios count as weapons these days?

Gotta love trying to make the trophy exhibition more impressive. In someoneā€™s mind.

ā€œHe served three tours of duty in Iraq. Itā€™s virtually guaranteed he saw combat, and odds are very high he has PTSDā€ He may have served those three tours behind a desk. Lets not assume too much.

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