Breaking on the Twitters, machine gun fire reported near the White House. The machine gun, an AK-47, was recovered and was outfitted with a scope. Parts of Constitution Avenue closed due to police chase. The car, a Honda sedan with Idaho plates, appears to be stolen.
Follow local NBC reporter Jackie Bensen for further details.
Crazy.
UPDATE: More from, ABC7 in DC:
Shots have been fired between two cars near the White House, U.S. Park Police confirms.
Authorities tell ABC7 News that two officers heard gunshots and saw two vehicles speeding down Constitution Avenue. One vehicle was found abandoned just before the Roosevelt Bridge. Witnesses saw the driver flee.
An AK-47 assault rifle was found.
Constitution Avenue is closed between 15th and 17th Streets. U.S. Park Police and Security Service are on the scene.
UPDATE 2 I’m at a bar drinking gnarly martinis, but wanted to check in and let y’all know that the U.S. Park Police is saying that the White House does not appear to be the focus of the incident. Check the ABC7 link, above. Just a case of some dumb motherfuckers being dumb motherfuckers.
[cross-posted at ABLC]
Villago Delenda Est
No.
No.
No.
lamh35
Thx ABL. I think it’s weird that I see more coverage of the MLB player being found alive and well and not much about the shots fired at WH.
I’m following the reporter on twitter now.
I guess it’s because the POTUS and FLOTUS are elsewhere.
OMG, just had a thought. But are the WeeMichelles and Grandma Robinson at the WH?
Judas Escargot
@Villago Delenda Est:
I agree with you.
Thrice.
Mnemosyne
Holy crap! Good thing the asshole doesn’t know how to check the White House website. I’d be a hell of a lot more upset if the Obamas weren’t more than 2,500 miles away from the WH right now (they were scheduled to leave SD for Honolulu about an hour ago).
G
Okay, in the interest of speculation…
lone nutjob?
someone part of the fringe right wing 14th ammendment haters the ones who think like the guy who flew the suicide terrorist mission into the IRS building in Austin?
an old fashioned white power group
or some entirely unreleaded washing dc gunplay?
or a teabagger attempting 2nd ammendment remedies
eemom
SO glad I’m not driving home in that shit.
OT: McQueary has been placed on “administrative leave” and won’t be at tomorrow’s game.
Mnemosyne
@G:
Stolen car with Idaho plates immediately makes me think, “white supremicist/Aryan Nations asshole,” but obviously there’s no way to know yet.
ABL
@lamh35: not sure. i’ll try to update as i learn more.
people are assholes.
eemom
@lamh35:
That’s great! Wow.
Violet
Oh no. No, no, no, no, no. They still haven’t caught the suspect? Not good.
General Stuck
Only an idiot would put a scope in an AK 47. Very inaccurate weapon, at any distance. So the teabagger speculation would follow. Hope no one was hit
though it could be an Acorn agent framing republicans
lamh35
someone on twitter saying that if someone is shooting on Constitution av, then it more likely “local issue” near Washington monument not WH. Maybe, but come on who would be so bold as to shoot an AK47 anywhere near the WH?
on a total unsubstantiated note, I’m kinda getting a little tired of what seems to me to be an effort to completely dismiss anything of this nature when it involves this president.
KCinDC
So far on Twitter those of us in DC are pretty skeptical of the White House connection. There’s no real indication that this was near the White House in any sense of “near” that a city dweller would recognize, or that even if it was the shots were directed at it. Some reports have someone in one car shooting at another. My bet is on sensationalism, though it’s certainly possible this is political craziness.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Mnemosyne:
Exactly. I grew up in Spokane, across the border, and the area is infested with white supremacists. One of the many reasons my wife and I got the hell out of there long ago. We may be white but those fuckers are crazy, as evidenced by the attempted bombing of the parade in Spokane.
Unfortunately we both have family up there so that’s the only reason we ever go back. As much as we love to see the family we have no desire to live up there again. The only thing that makes it tolerable is that we are able to stay with one of my sisters who lives outside Deer Park.
Villago Delenda Est
OK, now it sounds like there was a running gunbattle between two vehicles.
This may be less than it seems at first report (and first reports are, always, not to be trusted).
The second and third reports are not that reliable, either.
Glad they found the ball player. Good news indeed.
Mnemosyne
@lamh35:
Geez, thanks for giving me nightmares about the girls and grandma. :p
I’m hoping that, since the next stop is Honolulu, the whole family went, especially since today was probably a school holiday.
Warren Terra
Utterly crazy. I mean, I’m glad the Prez is 3000 miles away – it must lessen the circus and remove some of the issues the responding officers would have to immediately deal with – but that’s not really the point. Someone firing an automatic weapon outside the White House wouldn’t get a shot at Obama anyway; it’s pure terrorism, in the sense of “try to scare people witless”.
ETA some reports now seem to say not all that close to the White House, and directed at another car, not at any government symbol. Maybe just some thugs who’ve seen too many bad movies.
dmsilev
No matter what this turns out to be, any bets on how long it takes for the NRA to issue a statement that this demonstrates how Americans must have the right to carry concealed howitzers?
Mark B.
@General Stuck: Add the failure to check the president’s public travel schedule, and we have more evidence to support the moron theory. And I use the word moron interchangeably with teabagger.
A.J.
Meh. Not to worry:
“In a major five-to-four decision last week (2008), the Supreme Court overturned the 32-year-old ban on handguns in the nation’s capital. The Supreme Court says Americans have a right to own and keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense and hunting.”
lamh35
@KCinDC: @Villago Delenda Est:
Not being from DC is there alot of this type of thing in DC near the WH? Gunfire I mean?
Mnemosyne
Since the POTUS and FLOTUS are well out of the line of fire, I just want to speculate that what happened is that some asshole Aryan Nations guy came to DC to try and kill the prez but got so freaked out by DC traffic that he got into a road rage incident with another driver before he even got to the White House.
Because, damn it, that would be funny as hell.
bin Lurkin'
Clearly an act of the ACORN Jihad..
/wingnut
eemom
@General Stuck:
nah, probly one o’ them Occupy Freedom Plaza Nazi Commie Anti-semitic Trustafarians got bored and went out joyriding in daddy’s limo. That place is dead on Friday night and there’s nothing around to loot.
KCinDC
If it was on Constitution Avenue, it’s not particularly near the White House (probably half a mile or so). The “near the White House” part seems to be completely news media spin to get attention to their story.
lamh35
Thx for the updates ABL. I glad to hear that it may be just some local turf war rather than against POTUS.
Still, I wasn’t aware that the neighborhood around the WH was prone to shooting.
BTW, is an AK47 a normal firearm that most “non-military” citizens have?
Maude
@KCinDC:
Drugs dispute?
Villago Delenda Est
@lamh35:
I’m not from DC either, but I’ve visited. I can’t think of any military facility nearby that would have any reason to be discharging weapons any time of the day.
KCinDC
@lamh35, no it’s not common, but in any major US city there are occasional shootings — road rage, shootouts related to the drug trade, random lunatics. It’s not national news.
tkogrumpy
@A.J.: Geez, I never thought to use a hand gun for hunting. (useful when butchering piggies though)
Villago Delenda Est
@Maude:
That’s what I’m thinking as additional information rolls in.
Still early to be sure about anything. “Shots fired” is about all we’ve really got right now.
eemom
@lamh35:
absolutely not.
Not that gunfire anywhere is a good thing, but honestly, nothing dramatic of any kind ever happens in this town. It is boring as all shit-out.
General Stuck
@lamh35:
They are legal, so long as not full auto capable.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@lamh35:
While bad enough, sadly to say, that would be considered ‘normal’ gunfire in America. Which is better than gunfire directed at the White House.
Which is sad to consider and contrast.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
I walked around a corner in Manhattan a long time ago and two jerks were shooting at each other over drugs. I had a 5 year old boy with me. I was furious at those idiots.
eemom
@KCinDC:
also could be someone trying to commit suicide in the Constitution Avenue construction traffic. I almost do every day.
ldrks
@KCinDC: As someone who lives in DC, there’s no reason at all to fire an AK-47 along that stretch unless you were trying to target the President. You’d never hit anything, of course, but it doesn’t mean he’s not the target.
Villago Delenda Est
@lamh35:
The AK-47 is the infamous Soviet assault rifle, there are gazillions of them all over the planet, freely handed out during the cold war to any revolutionary cell that could get some attention from the Kremlin.
They are a good weapon for tossing a lot of lead in a general direction in a very short period of time, but as with all semi and full automatic weapons, the noise they produce is just as important as the lead they spew as a psychological boost for the person using the weapon, and a “get your head down, now!” message to anyone they’re used against.
As outlined by another poster, in the semi-auto mode, they are legal. Not so legal in the auto mode.
Plus, they look badass. Don’t discount this as a reason for using one. I recall when I was in ROTC, we were out in some hills NE of Eugene practicing tactics, carrying M-16s (with blanks, not live rounds) and came across a couple of hunters with hunting rifles, who remarked that what we were carrying “looked a lot like deadly weapons”. Mind you, they had live rounds, we did not…but our M-16’s looked badder than their hunting rifles.
MikeJ
@KCinDC: .
Constitution is on the other side of the Elipse from the South lawn. A looooong, loong way.
Which isn’t to say it positively wasn’t idiot white supremacists. By definition they’re morons.
Mike in NC
Eric Cantor packs an AK-47? Seen stranger things from my time on Capitol Hill.
Mnemosyne
@MikeJ:
The Twitter feed that ABL linked to said it was 23rd and Constitution, which Google Maps tells me is a heck of a lot nearer to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial than the White House.
I stand by my “road rage when idiot Aryan Nations jerk got caught in traffic” theory, because it’s way funnier than the other theories.
soonergrunt
@General Stuck: Depending on the manufacture, AK can be pretty good inside 250m. A reflex sight (red dot, no magnification) could be pretty useful on an AK at that range. Hell, even a 4x scope with a decent sized eyepiece, like say an ACOG could be very useful at that range.
General Stuck
@soonergrunt:
I always have heard the AK 47 was a very tough weapon as in durable, but was inaccurate at distance due to the fact that the rounds fired tumble end over end through the air.
MikeJ
@soonergrunt: If you were at the gate with a .50 you might be able to shatter the windows in the White House. An AK from a kilometre away? I think it’s likely that somebody in the WH could stand in the window and wave their dick at you and no harm would come to them.
Yutsano
@MikeJ:
Symbolic move against the IRS? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
(For informational purposes, HQ of the IRS is 1111 Constitution.)
scav
@Yutsano: 1111 Constitution on 11/11/11? Speculate away!
KCinDC
Just saw it referred to as “White House shooting” on Twitter. Seems about as inaccurate as “Ground Zero Mosque”.
Waterballon
One of my favorite stories from George Stephanopoulos’ book on his time working for Clinton is about the time some guy flew a plane into the White House. George was hoping to get a good quote from Clinton saying something witty, like Reagan did after he got shot. It was a perfect chance to show Clinton being cool and collected during a potential crisis. As it turned out though, Clinton had been asleep when it happened and when the secret service woke him up and told him what was going on, he just belched and went back to sleep. No great quote in the next day’s papers.
General Stuck
@General Stuck:
Just googled and rounds from AK don’t tumble end over end. another urban myth done in by Google
Waterballoon
One of my favorite stories from George Stephanopoulos’ book on his time working for Clinton is about the time some guy flew a plane into the White House. George was hoping to get a good quote from Clinton saying something witty, like Reagan did after he got shot. It was a perfect chance to show Clinton being cool and collected during a potential crisis. As it turned out though, Clinton had been asleep when it happened and when the secret service woke him up and told him what was going on, he just belched and went back to sleep. No great quote in the next day’s papers.
Waterballoon
One of my favorite stories from George Stephanopoulos’ book on his time working for Clinton is about the time some guy flew a plane into the White House. George was hoping to get a good quote from Clinton saying something witty, like Reagan did after he got shot. It was a perfect chance to show Clinton being cool and collected during a potential crisis. As it turned out though, Clinton had been asleep when it happened and when the secret service woke him up and told him what was going on, he just belched and went back to sleep. No great quote in the next day’s papers.
Waterballoon
Whoops sorry. First time posting from an iPad.
Mark B.
@Waterballoon: Yep, same thing happened to me the first time I posted from the iPad. When you press the ‘submit’ button, it looks like nothing happened, so you press it again. Heh.
blahblah
SHOOTING AT THE WHITE HOUSE!
[Cross posted link to MY BLOG]
Give it a rest for maybe one breaking news story, we all know where to go if we want to read your stuff.
When it’s about something potentially serious it just seems like poor taste to shill for your blog.
Calouste
@General Stuck:
Reliable, easy to mass-manufacture, simple to maintain. In short, everything the Soviets wanted in an infantry weapon, except 6 years too late.
soonergrunt
@General Stuck: @MikeJ: Any range over 250m, an AK pattern weapon sucks ass.
Inside that range, they are scary shit–full auto and lots of them.
Because the weapon has no buffer assembly, there is nothing to mitigate muzzle jump. Between that and the famous loose tolerances that make the weapon so reliable, an AK shooter is more likely to hit his target by throwing the damn thing at it.
Dr. Squid
@dmsilev: I’m waiting for Wayne Lapierre to issue a statement saying that Obama arranged this incident so he can ban guns.
soonergrunt
Under the heading of ‘it never rains but it pours’ my monitor on my desktop computer (the one I was using to play the beta for Star Wars The Old Republic) just emitted a cloud of smoke and a burnt plastic smell and it died.
Well, I was wanting to replace the 19″ with a 24″ one anyway, so there you are.
Warren Terra
@blahblah:
Golly, it’s really unethical and tasteless of ABL to cross-post, and to generally mention when she does so. Burn her, I say!
(or maybe you could just dismount the high horse, chum?)
Redshift
@Mnemosyne: 23rd is the last real street before you start going onto Roosevelt Bridge. So from the description above, that’s where one car was abandoned, which sounds like the end of the incident, but maybe not necessarily where the shots were fired. It’s about seven blocks from there to where Constitution goes by the White House.
clayton
@blahblah:
Something most people would care about, including many on this blog.
Normal information given in a blog post.
Testy and insufferable nonessential comment that NO ONE CARES ABOUT. Were you so quippy when John Cole wrote about his struggles with a mop?
About face!
So what is it? Important or not? Are you less than acquainted with internet traditions?
I think so.
soonergrunt
@blahblah: WHO’S a snooty little jackass?
You are!
Yes! Yes you are! Yes you ARE a snooty little jackass!
Good boy! Good snooty little jackass!
Now play dead.
Yutsano
@soonergrunt: At least you didn’t give him a cookie. We’d have to talk with the VA about changing your pain meds then.
eemom
oh, a machine gun. The thingie was a MACHINE gun. Now I get it.
I told my husband that someone was firing a SHOTGUN near the WH, and he kept looking at me like I was nuts. Then I reported that it was an AK-47 shotgun, which didn’t help at all.
blahblah
I am familiar with all internet traditions, past, present and future.
A link to the personal blog in the bio is fine for most people.
I’ve written a chrome script to remove the annoying link client-side, so never mind.
Chris
I just got back from touring the monuments at night with a couple friends from out of town. Yep, half of Constitution Avenue was blocked with police cars… we didn’t realize what it was about until we crossed Constitution at about the level of the Lincoln Memorial (saw the police lights, but we just thought they were setting up for a motorcade).
Finally realized what was happening when we crossed a news crew rehearsing what they were about to say on-air – seems like whoever did the shooting dumped the body out of the car about there.
Damn.
magurakurin
@blahblah:
Jesus. You got fuckin’ issues.
Suffern ACE
@eemom: Was that the carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model AK 47 with a compass in the stock and a thing which tells time?
soonergrunt
@blahblah: You bitch about her cross-post link. Then you code a script to make it disappear client side because it annoys you so. (Fast work, btw) Then you post that you wrote the script.
Has anyone ever suggested to you that you might lack social skills?
soonergrunt
@Suffern ACE: The very same. And when you shoot Black Bart’s minions with it, their eyes become black X’s.
eemom
@Suffern ACE:
um, yeah.
The husband just showed me a bunch of videos of AK47s firing to demonstrate……something.
Maybe I should just put him on the phone….
Gwangung
@blahblah:
Evidence not readily apparent.
Plenty of evidence you’re a vainglorious asshole, though. Pathetic that you need this sort of attention.
ABL
@soonergrunt: it doesn’t even make sense. s/he coded a script to make my cross-post link disappear? the same cross-post link that i post on everything i post here? as do other front-pagers who have their own blogs? why would anyone code such a thing? i call bullshit.
in other news, scotch > pear spiced martinis.
blech! i hate girly drinks.
Jebediah
@General Stuck:
Unless you want to get a good look at what you ain’t hitting.
Anoniminous
@eemom:
ooh! …. ooh!
I know this answer to this one!
He’s trying to be helpful.
He got on YouTube (I assume) to show you the difference between an AK-47 and a shotgun so the next time the topic comes up you’ll know. After watching one, maybe two, he got interested, forgot why he started, and is now watching for himself.
By this time he’s completely forgotten your existence and is now off on a YouTube weaponry rampage. Come back in an hour and he’ll be watching a video on the blacksmithing of Anglo-Saxon swords in the 7th Century.
He’s a guy.
It’s what we do.
Anoniminous
@General Stuck:
Could be a laser sight. To the untrained eye they look like a scope.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@ABL:
What?
MikeJ
@ABL:
This seems so obvious that it shouldn’t need to be said, but some people still need to hear it. A sad indictment of our society.
Martinis are good. Pears are good. Martinis have gin and vermouth, but the only fruit is a lemon twist.
Mnemosyne
@soonergrunt:
Apparently the game was SO AWESOME that your monitor never wanted to be used for anything less ever again. Hence the monitor suicide.
Mnemosyne
I like hard cider. It’s like beer for kids!
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: Sparkling cider = great toasting drink for kids at parties. Plus, well, YUM.
@blahblah: I am important. I shall demonstrate so by showing how awesome I am with no supporting evidence. Because, well, you should already know.
So tell me: are you working on a horse for Senate too?
MikeJ
OK, I’m annoyed. Six months ago I was out walking through the forest, tra la la la la, and a stinging nettle leapt out and embedded itself in the middle finger of my right hand, buried in the skin next to my fingernail and actually going under it. Finger swole. Swelled. Finger swelled up and was painful and unnatural finger colour. Two or three days later, everything was back to normal.
Tonight, while sitting at my computer, the exact same spot swole swelled in the exact same way and my finger turned the exact same wrong colour. As if the damned nettle from six months ago were still there. This is annoying.
Ouchie.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: I guess it’s possible. If the nettle left a deep enough needle that isn’t expressing until now. But I’ve never heard of that.
Calouste
@Yutsano:
I had my chin stitched when I was a kid and the hospital forgot to take one or two stitches out (this was before the biodegradable stitches), and they grew out 3 or 4 years later.
somegayname
@eemom: well, the Saiga 12 is A THING. Also too, it was likely a semi auto AK pattern like a WASR10, nothing in the reports I saw suggest automatic fire. Also too, don’t think some yahoo with a TASCO scope on a rifle that fires a lower powered round than most deer rifles is going to breach the White House. Something that stupid is an attempt at suicide by agent.
Joey Maloney
@MikeJ:
Unless the shooter was Kenneth Starr.
S. cerevisiae
As a hunter I just want to state that anyone who hunts with an AK-47 is a fucking idiot.
Lojasmo
A bullet fired from an AK from constitution avenue would bounce off the windows at the back of the WH…even if they were made of regular glass, which they are not.
eemom
@Anoniminous:
Quite right. This morning he announced that he and our son are off to the shooting range.
Anoniminous
@eemom:
LOL
nitpicker
An AK-47 is not a machine gun.
Catsy
So did they recover an AK-47, or an AK-47?
Canon Xa10 Camcorder
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