Major Incident at Trump Rally - Shots Fired

[WinterMorn]

Looks like some sort of injury to Trump, likely superficial.

There are a lot of batshit people online, who would probably benefit from some time offline; there's nothing remotely interesting about that.

You've missed the entire point (ie differentiation).

The young man who did the shooting looks more like a typical troubled school shooter rather than Carlos the Jackal. The west has been so obsessed with young Muslims and young right-wingers being radicalised that it has lost sight of left-wing radicalisation. Antifa in the US is insane. We've seen individuals attached to pro-Palestine, transactivist and environmentalist groups who seem unhinged or nasty. The left is just as capable of attracting dangerous, damaged and disenfranchised people as the right. Anyone who has pointed this out has been written off as a right-winger or a boomer or a culture war obsessed bigot. We need to wake up to people on the fringes of left-wing radicalism. We need to remember the role of young people in the horrors of Cambodia, the Cultural Revolution, Soviet Russia and East Germany.

I don’t have a view on the conspiracy stuff but on the BBC a minute ago they were interviewing a man who had attended the rally and he was describing how they were all pointing out the man on the roof to the police and the man at the rally was describing the gun he had, how the security services were on the roof opposite and still nothing was being done, he did say that the Police may not have been able to see the gunman due to where they were standing- pretty slack security really.

The shooter had previously donated to a Democrat cause. I suspect he registered as a Republican latterly so he could attend rallies and do something like this. I suspect he was a damaged person looking for what he was told was a righteous cause.

They didn't. The shooter was on a building outside like a sniper

Well your point wasn't clear. The only relevance to left and right is people actively aligning themselves to their political persuasion and using that as a springboard for demented rhetoric. What this is about principally is acceptance of violence as a means to disrupt democracy.

We often register for a party here based on local politics so that we can vote in the primaries. It’s the party that’s in control/likely to win locally that matters most. You cannot for instance, really choose a mayor in a big R city if you are registered a D but the Rs always win.

Most of Rural Pennsylvania is Republican now, I think. Not historically but more recently.

But this is absolutely tragic. This 20 year old shooter was the product of years of political ugliness. He wasn’t even alive on 9/11. It’s not a surprise that he would be so muddled up after witnessing what we’ve seen here since then.

I think this will be the end of the massive outdoor rallies for a while. These rallies have contributed to the climate here. I despise them, independent of which party is holding them. Not that Biden would be able to manage anyway now.

A lot of us here in America are shook up by this.

I respectfully disagree. Think back to JFK, to Regan's attempted assassination. Just a few sources of news & 'the public' largely accepted what they were told ('batshit' theories came later, I think?). Now there are many sources of news, & bystanders filming. Feed all that into 'the Internet'.
Add in a very polarised political time. It is certainly interesting that 'the public' are less willing to accept mainstream news. This is how we become more polarised. That's bad news for us all. Understanding this, (rather than dismissing a sizeable chunk as 'batshit people') it may help to reduce it, which can only be a good thing as it may lead to less incidents like this.

Apologies @Goldenbear my reply was to @SloaneStreetVandal post. (I'm not sure how I managed to repeat yours!)

You can suspect what you like, I suppose, but given that he did not "attend the rally" there is a hole in your theory. A "let's try to find a way to blame the Democrats" sized hole.

I thought this! Why didn't everyone try to run away? So weird.

There was a good account from a reporter there who recounts people’s reactions

On R4. It makes sense when you hear it

Everyone was shouting get down. I assume people felt safer down on the ground, maybe protected by benches, etc?

Well, I want the Democrats to win the election but now they are well and truly fucked. They need to get a viable candidate more than ever now.

But the images we saw on the news shows them half-ducking, then within seconds they get back up and start cheering.
No thoughts that there could have been a number of shooters or further danger

I think if you are ever in an emergency situation it can take a while to twig to what is going on. I remember reading about a mass shooting in Australia which initially began in café. Some of the survivors said they hadn't even turned around in their seats to see what all the commotion was and yet several people had already been shot dead.

If you look at the people in the crowd behind Trump they are rather boxed in to that stand. The shooter was shooting across the front of the stand from their right. Running forward would have taken them straight into the path of the shooter, running right or left would have involved pushing through the crowd and then into the path of the shooter, and running towards the back would have involved pushing through the crowd and then climbing over the back of the stand.

But one person's deranged extremist is another person's reasonable politician. Just because some people think it doesn't mean it's true and murder can be justified.

In the UK Rosie Duffield is viewed as a deranged extremist by some people as is Patrick Harvie. Neither of them should be threatened with violence or worse and the same goes for Trump IMO.

It's one of the signs of a democracy that politicians and their supporters should be able to congregate and campaign without the fear of violence.

I saw a woman being interviewed saying she was on the front row and they stood back up because they wanted to protect Trump and that she’d happily take a bullet for him. Bonkers.

Agree. Anyone who thinks somebody deserves to be executed for their perceived wrongdoings is essentially advocating for capital punishment, because what’s the difference? Just come out and own it?

@BloodyHellKenAgain Just because some people think it doesn't mean it's true and murder can be justified.

Well, yes this is what I also said. The greater problem here is that there seems to be an acceptance of extremist rhetoric, violence and murder if it aligns with your views of the person. Left/right is just a distraction.

A cursory glance at social media suggests a lot of people think that if Trump had been assassinated last night they'd be like "well thank fuck for that, he had it coming let's party, of course murder isn't OK but for me that is secondary to the fact the person I hate has been murdered".

I'm sorry for this. It was an awful shock.

You cannot know how you'd behave in a life-threatening situation like a shooting until it happens. The panic response is one or more of fight, flight, fawn, freeze, flop, so these people probably froze. It can also take the brain a little while to catch up with what's happening, so they may have been slow to react.

This armchair "well I'd have done X" commentary really annoys me because it's rooted in utter ignorance of how panic works.