• RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    The armed, yellow-vested “peacekeepers” at the Utah 50501 protest in Salt Lake City opened fire into a crowd, hitting two people:

    A Sāmoan fashion designer with two young kids, who died.

    A second-generation Venezuelan immigrant and antiracist protester who was legally carrying. Cops charged HIM.

    Unless I’m not reading this correctly. There was no “frothing chud” who “tried to do a mass shooting”. There was an open carry protester, who the “peacekeepers” believed to be a gunman. They engaged him, he fled, they shot at him, hitting him and killing another.

    Utah is a permitless carry state. SLC has an open carry ordinance, and protests frequently see AR-15s being carried openly.

    This environment makes threat assessment more challenging, which is why having armed “security” volunteers who lack extensive training is an incredibly reckless idea.

        • tocopherol [any]@hexbear.net
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          1 day ago

          The volunteer “peacekeepers” with clearly no training for this situation hold the most blame from what I’ve seen. According to what I could surmise from reports and photos, they shot at a leftist who was non-threateningly carrying a rifle, in an open carry state where protesters have been openly armed a number of times, before even saying anything to him or warning anyone. He was in all black with a balaclava so I understand why they were afraid, really the blame more falls on whoever let them be “security” for such an event that definitely would have had threats against it from chuds.