Alright, that's coming down to a poorly defined hellfire line, again. Can you roll in the bear cats if a few guys at an Occupy protest have rifles slung? One guy?
One guy in his house refusing to pay his property taxes?
I'd argue that in, all of those cases, unless they're shooting at someone, police shouldn't be aggressing things.
I'd mostly agree, but they're again pretty significantly different situations. You might draw parallel with the former if they're explicitly threatening violence during the process and it's not an open carry state, but if they're there peaceably and not breaking any laws, then it's probably not something to be dealt with. This situation... ain't that. This isn't one or two folks showing up at a protest in an open carry area with weapons slung, this is multiple dozen threatening explicit violence (which is by and large the big thing, here, imo -- someone with a gun saying they're going to kill people is roughly where you stop screwing around) and overtly breaking the law in the process. I'd probably guess the closest previous similarity would be some of the Panther action a ways back, but even then most of that was damned different.
The latter, there's not really much parallel at all, and it's something that's relatively likely to get your arse shot if you're armed and belligerent (which, again, this lot
is), and definitely likely to get you put in jail or a psychiatric hospital -- far as I'm aware, police in that situation tend to aggress pretty rapidly if you don't let yourself get talked down pretty quick. They don't just back off and let you twiddle around just because you've got a gun. Firearm ain't gonna' get you out of breakin' the law, especially if you're threatening violence and displayin' capability to inflict it.
... is the concept that armed belligerence is something that needs to be stopped pretty rapidly really something I've having that much difficulty expressing in a way that gets across? Especially when it's as incredibly blatant as something like this situation? Rule of thumb's really kinda' simple -- if you want to use the threat of firearm use to make a point, you make it implicit and don't make the first move. That's pretty much the exact opposite of what happening in this situation. Going past that is what normally gets people shot. Can argue it shouldn't, I guess, but still.
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Though I guess if we're armchairing similar situations, I'd call dead-on being something along the lines of a gang squatting in a post office on the outskirts of a town. Broke in during the hols/weekend, saying they're shoot the first pig that tries to get 'em out. Ain't actually shot, yet, but I'd say we're both pretty damn certain there wouldn't be too terrible much talking or waiting in that situation. Maybe there should be, but there wouldn't be.
