Legally armed black demonstrator misidentified as the Dallas sniper: “Does the 2nd Amendment not apply to us?” https://t.co/4dhainlo0i
— The Trace (@teamtrace) July 17, 2017
Dan Solomon, at Fusion:
Mark Hughes has a sense of humor about what happened to him last summer. On July 7, 2016, Hughes was wrongly identified by Dallas Police and news organizations around the world as a suspect in that day’s sniper attack at a Black Lives Matter march in the city, and when I meet him in the office of the tax prep company he owns in nearby Arlington, Hughes asks me with a straight face: “Are you familiar with the July 7th event?” Then, pointing to his desk neighbor: “You know, he was the one who was actually doing the shooting.”
It’s hard to imagine how Hughes would have survived the past year without cracking a few jokes. Almost everything about his life has been affected by the day his photograph was emblazoned on local news, CNN, and the Dallas Police Department’s official Twitter account, with the words “This is one of our suspects. Please help us find him!” above his photo.
Hughes had seen groups like Open Carry Tarrant County, whose members—and leadership, which is white—carry long-arm rifles on the street in front of his tax-prep business, in accordance with the law. And as he made plans to attend the march he decided, for the first time, that he should do the same. Philando Castile, the Minnesota man whose shooting death had been captured on video prior to the march, had his right to carry a gun violated by the officer who shot him. Hughes decided that meant he had a responsibility to assert his own.
“Does the Second Amendment not apply to us, to bear arms?” Hughes asks. “Here in Arlington, I see the groups on these streets. They’re just displaying their rights publicly.”Hughes read up on the laws regarding open carry, bought a shoulder strap for his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in order to be compliant with the law, and headed to Dallas. Hughes was nervous when he first stepped out of his car with the gun over his shoulder in front of police, but after his first encounter with an officer who stopped him went peacefully, he relaxed. He and his brother marched, and then the chaos started. Hughes didn’t hear gunshots, but he saw people running, and started running, too. Within minutes, his brother realized that the fact that he was carrying a gun while shots were being fired could put him at risk, and urged him to get rid of it….
***********He had gone to the march to stand for racial justice, to insist that black folks shouldn’t be treated as dangerous criminals based on how they looked—and then, because of how he looked, he had been assumed to be a dangerous criminal. Hughes realized that he was an example of exactly the same thing he’d been protesting, but he was alive, breathing, and unhurt—which meant that he had a platform…
A few days before I met with Hughes, a 15-year-old boy named Jordan Edwards was killed by a police officer in the Dallas suburb of Balch Springs. The shooting death was shocking—Edwards was a passenger in a car that was leaving a party, and as the car was driving away, an officer took out his rifle, aimed at the car, and fired, killing the boy. One of the first phone calls Edwards’ family made was to Mark Hughes.
The family reached out to ask for help. There’s no playbook for what to do when your child’s name suddenly becomes a hashtag, but they knew they wanted an attorney. Hughes connected them with Lee Merritt, the lawyer who represents him in his still-pending litigation against the Dallas Police Department, and offered his advice and condolences.
“I get calls like that weekly,” Hughes says. He hears from families seemingly any time there’s a Black Lives Matter issue in the Dallas area. At first, he struggled with how to help—What is there to say to a family that’s reached their boiling point while mourning a loved one?—but he found his way into a leadership role. “I realized that you can’t do everything, but you can always do something.”…
Seriously, read the whole thing. You or I might not make the same choices, under his circumstances, as Mr. Hughes — but then, most of us nice white people are never likely to be where we need to make those choices, are we?
TenguPhule
Speaking of Bad Cops, that story on the Australian Women shot by the cop is getting worse by the hour.
raven
Iowa Old Lady
I wonder if Moran and Lee coordinated their announcements so neither would bear the stigma of being the one who killed the bill.
ETA: Ah yes. Lee tweets “My colleague @JerryMoran and I will not support the MTP to this version of BCRA #HealthcareBill”
Major Major Major Major
@raven: link?
ThresherK
I find The Root, Fusion and Jezebel all pretty useful sites.
debbie
@raven:
The American people demand to see him crying his tears!
Baud
@debbie: Even better, rolled over on the back of his shell and left there.
ThresherK
@Iowa Old Lady: It’s like a Bizarro version of that particular murder mystery type where everyone confesses, leaves fingerprints, and constructs non-alibis so no one of them can be successfully prosecuted.
AnotherBruce
@raven: I’m trying to wipe the smallest tear I have ever had from my eye, but I can’t find it.. Poor Mitch.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Nope. SATQ
raven
@AnotherBruce: He’s such a fucking weasel, hell keep trying.
Major Major Major Major
Maybe he’s been planning all along to lay this at Ted Cruz’s feet as a backup plan if he has to.
Shame we’ll be hijacking a post about an important other topic though.
Baud
I’m going to start a rumor on Twitter that Schumer and Manchin have decided to vote for the Senate bill just to see how many idiots there are out there.
raven
@Major Major Major Major: I know, I hesitated but this is pretty important.
Major Major Major Major
Drudge right now, in red: REPEAL DEAD
Villago Delenda Est
Armed chattel might make a break for it in a hail of gunfire.
So, long history of “blahs no part of militia” in this country.
SiubhanDuinne
@TenguPhule:
I’ve been pretty much iPad-less for the past 24 hours. What Australian women?
(Off to google….)
efgoldman
@raven:
As I said a thread or two below, I believe there’s a significant number of RWNJ senators who really don’t want to take a recorded vote on this pig shit bill at all.
debit
@TenguPhule: I live in Minneapolis and can’t think of any circumstance where I would call the police. That poor woman.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: He’s turned us all into replicants, he has.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: “But you’re not helping.”
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: They have their phony-baloney jobs to think about!
??? Martin
Apparently Mitch’s assurances to moderates that the Medicaid cuts were bullshit and wouldn’t go into effect pissed off the hardliners.
geg6
Holy shit, Moran and Lee are out on Trumpcare. McConnell must be fit to be tied.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: I was in the mood for company this evening and BJ was so quiet.
Baud
No way Cruz doesn’t also vote no now.
AnotherBruce
@raven: Sure he will, but it’s kind of a downward spiral right now, which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be wary. Keep pushing until he falls off the cliff.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Maybe this is a lesson on why open carry laws are a bad idea in the first place…
raven
@AnotherBruce: I’m witcha. . .
geg6
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
This.
Another Scott
@raven: Just like Ben predicted.
Oh wait. I think it was the opposite of what he predicted.
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: We’re here for you, Baud!.
SiubhanDuinne
@TenguPhule:
@SiubhanDuinne:
Just read about it. First I had heard. How awful and sad and fucking senseless.
TenguPhule
@SiubhanDuinne: And its getting worse as the details leak.
The son of a bitch shot her while she was in her pajamas after she called them to report a suspected rape in progress in her neighborhood. Of course all of their body cameras were off. And stayed off.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@raven: Awesome. It seems on healthcare at lest, Mitch is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. He can’t seem to please “moderates” or more reactionary elements of the Senate
@TenguPhule:
Linky?
liberal
@TenguPhule: I don’t see any new information. Is there anything beyond “Cops execute yet another person, this time a white female Australian”?
SiubhanDuinne
@TenguPhule: Awful. Devastating for her family and the community. And all of us.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Thanks. Some days, the universe wins.
TenguPhule
@liberal: You’re welcome.
Baud
@TenguPhule: I heard that news this morning.
liberal
@TenguPhule: Only thing I hadn’t seen is the claim that more than one shot was fired. Looking myself just now, the other thing I hadn’t heard is that the shooter cop is a Somali immigrant (not that that matters).
liberal
@raven: somehow that word “devastating” made me LOL.
Baud
@liberal: May change the usual acquittal to a guilty verdict.
TenguPhule
@Baud: What gets me is the son of a bitch fired ACROSS his own partner who was talking to her at the time according to reports.
Baud
@TenguPhule: Yep. That’s messed up.
raven
@Major Major Major Major: link
Mike J
@Baud:
Post turtle
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: That is horrible – unless it was just done for the photo op and the poor guy was sent on his merry way unharmed. If that’s the case, it is quite amusing.
Major Major Major Major
@raven: danke.
@Mike J: it’s post turtles all the way down, this Congress.
trollhattan
At 18 I legally changed my name from Lee Harry Oswald. You may call me mister Smith.
That stinks and I’d really consider decamping Texas. I’d actually recommend that anyway.
HRA
Ms Damond had dual citizenship -Australian and US. She was raised in the Buffalo, NY area according to local news.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m sure it was done just to illustrate the joke. “When you’re driving down a country road and you see a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a post turtle. You know he didn’t get up there by himself. He doesn’t belong there; you wonder who put him there; he can’t get anything done while he’s up there; and you just want to help the poor, dumb thing down.”
lamh36
@liberal: of course it shouldn’t matter, but Brown immigrant police officer kills white woman…the outrage in some circles will be interesting in comparison to other police shooting…
Sad for this woman and her family, but…
liberal
@lamh36: In my hometown, there was a case of (I presume) white officers killing a white guy. County DA refused to file charges.
Of course, this is brown killing white, and not just “white”, but “middle or higher class white.” So yeah, it will be interesting.
Bottom line for me is that yeah, a lot of cops are racist, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of them are head cases or just downright fucking dumb. I reckon they’re not paid well. You get what you pay for.
J R in WV
@Mike J:
Around here woven wire fences are very common around gardens and barnyards – 6 inch squares mostly. Many of them have been up for decades, and the associated farm buildings are long gone. A friend had a cabin on a ridge top, no farmer he. But there were old fences around his place.
One day he took me out to the edge of this place, and showed me one of the saddest turtle scenes I’ve ever seen. A local common box turtle had tried to go through a woven wire fence. His shell was just a little too big to fit through the square of wire, and became caught, with fence wires in depressions along the edge of his shell.
The turtle’s mummified remains were hanging in the air, and it had dug away the dirt beneath in a futile attempt to push through the wire to be a free turtle again. So sad. I wonder from time to time how long it took the turtle to pass there in his wire trap. They’re pretty hardy, obviously.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: The joke is new to me.
Matt McIrvin
McConnell is now announcing he’s going to go back to their original idea of repeal-now-replace-later, as Trump has been urging over and over. Create an artificial crisis and force everyone to do something because of the ticking clock: that’s always worked out great before! Very Shock Doctrine, actually.
Why does he think this is going to work better than it did last time?