{"id":51966,"date":"2015-03-13T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T17:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=51966"},"modified":"2015-03-13T07:36:40","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T12:36:40","slug":"an-ugly-new-wrinkle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=51966","title":{"rendered":"An Ugly New Wrinkle"},"content":{"rendered":"

The shootings in Ferguson earlier this week were an ugly, new-ish wrinkle in the situation.<\/p>\n

Among all the\u00a0sturm und drang\u00a0<\/em>from the left about America’s gun laws and the sheer number of guns available in the US, the use of guns in demonstrations, even riots, is relatively rare. \u00a0It happens, of course; my old colleague John MacDougall reported carrying a gun with him when he covered the riots in North Minneapolis in 1968; some rioters shot at police during the LA riots.<\/p>\n

But for the number of guns available in the US, very few of them over come out during periods of unrest.<\/p>\n

Now, \u00a0I’m sure the shooters in the audience took note of this part of the story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said one officer was shot in the face, just below his right eye, with the bullet lodging behind his ear. The other officer was hit in the shoulder, and the bullet came out his back…Authorities believe the shots came from a handgun fired about 120 yards away<\/strong>. There were no suspects in custody.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

120 yards? \u00a0With a handgun?<\/p>\n

Either there’s a rogue SAS trooper or Olympic marksman in Ferguson, \u00a0or the “luckiest”, fluke-iest crook in the US, or two of the unluckiest cops – or someone was firing a pistol-caliber scoped carbine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The shootings in Ferguson earlier this week were an ugly, new-ish wrinkle in the situation. Among all the\u00a0sturm und drang\u00a0from the left about America’s gun laws and the sheer number of guns available in the US, the use of guns in demonstrations, even riots, is relatively rare. \u00a0It happens, of course; my old colleague John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51966"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51990,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51966\/revisions\/51990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}