The title looks like it’s trying to imply that the thiefs specifically targeted her, when the article makes it more clear that they likely just tried to steal the car not knowing it was from the Secret Service.
Gotta add that clickbait for the views 🙄
It could be just breaking in and it’s a coincidence, could be that they thought they were in the car or were trying to threaten Biden’s family. The fact that they got away from the secret service, who don’t fuck around, is wild too.
Edit: I took out the part about d’s being targeted in the article. I read the description.
The immediate goal is to protect. They aren’t going to chase them down. MPD is going to find these guys almost certainly.
where in the article does it say that democrats are being targeted? In addition, I feel user Ragdoll is correct that the title makes it seem worse that the situation actually was (though I guess there isn’t an easier way to write the title), the SUV was not occupied when the criminals tried to break in. If you’re targeting someone, you probably at least have an idea of who should be inside and whether they just stepped out of the vehicle or stepped in. I doubt the vehicle literally said Biden or “Biden’s family inside” so I doubt it was a group of people walking around, and taking the opportunity to attack Biden or his family. In addition, the article indicates that car jacking have increased 40% in the area, so it really seems like it was a random car jacking.
I kind of think the bigger story is, why were Secret Service shooting at suspects trying to enter an empty vehicle? Unless there were firearms in the vehicle, feels a bit excessive to potentially kill 1 to 4 people over a car break in where no one’s life was in direct danger.
Maybe there’s more missing details that clear up the story so we’d have to wait and see.
These were both in the article description:
- U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cuellar
- U.S. Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angie_Craig
Also, these:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_plot
- https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-man-charged-in-last-years-attack-against-nancy-pelosis-husband-goes-to-trial-in-san-francisco/ar-AA1jDj9C
I could collect more, but you get the idea.
I kind of think the bigger story is, why were Secret Service shooting at suspects trying to enter an empty vehicle?
Someone can correct me if I am wrong, isn’t law enforcement taught to shoot first and then maybe ask questions later?
No no no, you’re thinking of the Army. The police are trained to shoot first, cover up the shooting, find/make up past crime the victim did to justify the shooting, get acquitted by a grand jury, and receive a full pension later.
No. There’s, generally speaking, rules if engagement.
Why did they shoot at someone trying to enter an empty vehicle?
Maybe from a security perspective the position is that they assume anyone trying to get into a vehicle they are protecting is intending to harm the occupants, even if the occupants are not in the vehicle and the perps don’t know that.
No but thats still, you’re not protecting anyone you’re just shooting
I don’t disagree. However, I’m not the SS.
They were probably pointing their guns at them and one of them turned around to face them way too quickly.
Sad thing is, it probably would have generated as many hits if the headline was more open. I mean that’s freaking hilarious in a morbid way - that the would be thieves just happened to pick the wrong car to try and steal.
The new and improved bait car with active defenses!
How would you have written it?
Not OP
Secret Service agents protecting Biden’s granddaughter open fire when 3 people pick the wrong SUV to streal.
Secret Service Fires Shots at Car Thieves
But we don’t do non sensationalist headlines anymore.
You just made me realize that the original headline doesn’t specify that the SUV is where the granddaughter is. You also make that mistake.
I think we can do better. Let’s see:
Secret Service open fire at thieves who unknowingly attempted to break into SUV carrying Biden’s granddaughter.
And I still think we can do better, but right now I’m le tired.
The vehicle was empty, it wasn’t carrying anyone.
Ah, serves me right for not reading TFA.
In that case I would have simply written what @Maggoty@lemmy.world wrote in this very thread.
That implies that there was a right SUV to steal.
deleted by creator
Yet here you are.
deleted by creator
Pathetic child.
deleted by creator
Imagine just trying to break into a car and you fucking pick the presidents daughter.
Bad fucking luck there.
I’m glad that’s “all” it was - a routine car break-in or stolen vehicle. My first thought was that some fucking domestic terrorists/Trump cultists knew exactly what they were doing. Glad it wasn’t that.
The fact that the car was unoccupied was their saving grace here. One of the agents fired a shot and “missed” which was almost certainly a warning shot. Had someone been in that car, the attempted thieves would almost certainly be dead.
Warning shots aren’t really a thing in modern law enforcement. Policy is generally if you need to shoot at someone you’re supposed to be trying to neutralize a threat with your bullet and not just attempting to scare someone with it.
True, but this is the Secret Service we’re talking about, not local cops. They are trained to protect high level US government assets. If they were shooting to kill there would have been far more rounds fired, more than one agent would have been firing, and there would be more bodies
True, but this is the Secret Service we’re talking about, not local cops.
Yes ,which is how we knew that whoever fired fucked up. They don’t do warning shots.
Unless its “we need to exit the area now, firing a shot into the pavement may scare off the offenders and let us get into our vehicle immediately” or “we fire a bunch of rounds at three people surrounding our exit vehicle who may be armed, potentially damaging the vehicle and causing them to shoot back.” The secret service’s number 1 job is to protect their assigned assets. In this situation, thinking tactically, they may have determined that trying to deter would be car thieves with minimal confrontation so they could evacuate those involved to somewhere secure was most important. If they wanted to shoot to kill, the thieves never would have made it to their getaway vehicle, but the possibility of getting in a street-level shootout is far more dangerous when it comes to their job rather than scaring guys off and driving away.
…firing a shot into the pavement…
I can’t even deal with the level of absolute ignorance you are displaying. Anyone who is firing guns “into the pavement” needs to be disarmed immediately as they are a CLEAR threat to literally everyone around them. This is not the expected behavior of a maximally trained Federal Law Enforcement Officer.
Here’s another Pro-Tip…you don’t fire warning shots horizonally or into the sky either as those bullets are going SOMEWHERE and you have no idea where. It’s completely possible that your “warning shot” ends up wounding or killing someone 2 blocks away. This is why no one with any serious firearms training does it and why no serious trainers recommend it.
I’ve done training and scenario shooting with everyone from NRA instructors to Law Enforcement to SPECOPS guys. NO ONE with real training does warning shots.
You are trying to create some wildly improbable hypothetical scenario in order to justify reckless and unsafe actions by Federal Law Enforcement. Stop it.
“Thinking tactically”… You’re literally some anonymous person on the internet. I guarantee you know dick all about how the secret service operate in these circumstances.
As for the “shoot to kill” comment, the secret service hasn’t killed anyone in quite a while, yet they have shot a few. The evidence doesn’t corroborate your stance.
potentially damaging the vehicle and causing them to shoot back
Fun fact, the vehicles are bulletproof and can take direct RPG hits. My sister’s ex husband works on them for a living.
50 Cent has (had? Idk with his bankruptcy) an SUV with flamethrowers on the sides and rear
I’d sooner believe a miss in a situation like this then I would believe that secret service is flinging wild shots into the air in order to make sure they’re as kind as possible to someone trying to break into the car of someone they’re protecting.
Which is obvious because scaring someone that you’re going to murder them just means they will fight back
Secret Service, as the name implies, is not a normal law enforcement organization.
deleted by creator
I didn’t say it’s a good idea, just that a single shot fired from a team of three secret service agents was probably intentional. Most likely they fired at the pavement or something, so the sound of the shot would scare off the offenders. Their job is to protect their assets at all costs when on guard duty, not begin placing arrests or detaining suspects (unless that will help their goal in said situation). In this situation, preventing that vehicle from being stolen was important in case they needed to exit the area quickly. All the suspects fled in a red vehicle where the description was passed to capitol police.
Yup. Me too. It would be on brand.
That was my assumption too. Do we have indication one way or the other, that it was targeted or random?
Well, if it was that and Joe Biden’s daughter was in the vehicle, then you might hear random demands being made on her life to either surrender the country to Russia or to the Taliban so it can be changed to either the Russian States of American or the Taliban States of American, which would really have us feeling a mass armed uprising or another civil war is coming.
Do they ever do?
Imagine being an idiot in DC and not knowing how government cars/ protected cars look like.
Yeah if you see a black SUV with tinted windows in DC it should be pretty self explanatory not to fuck with it
I am pretty sure if I steal the tires off the president’s limo he will be so impressed with me I get to be his new sidekick.
R.I.P. JT.
Too soon?
Tiktok has emboldened a new generation of idiots.
You’ve got to pretty unobservant in reality. Like hey this car has a police radio and extra antennas. I should definitely keep going, this won’t go bad at all.
Do they have any obvious identifying marks anymore? My understanding was that they are intentionally pretty non-descript vehicles, not drawing attention
Yes, they have very distinct license plates which say “US GOVERNMENT VEHICLE” on them.
And this isn’t some diplomatic plate or shit. Any car with the actual fedgov plates is moving VIPs or on their way to do so.
They don’t have a giant label but it’s not hard to tell either.
I’ve spent enough time in arcades to know that’s just the plot to a kickass beat-em-up side scroller.
*granddaughter. Bad luck either way.
FTA:
Secret Service agents protecting President Joe Biden’s granddaughter opened fire after three people tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle in the nation’s capital, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.
Awesome that they were trying to break into a car, and it turned out to be an unmarked Secret Service vehicle.
Note to self: Don’t fuck with Naomi’s car
As illegal and unlawful as it would be, I think it would have been infinitely funnier if they had succeeded in car jacking a Secret Service SUV.
Can you imagine seeing some tutorial get uploaded explaining how to bypass the key starter like a KIA lmao
Good. If you try to break into someone else’s shit, you should reasonably expect to get shot at.
It is worrying to me that the supposedly highest trained security guards in the world couldn’t actually hit their target. I would expect better in terms of both accuracy and fire discipline.
It is also worrying that if a citizen like you or me tried to defend ourselves and our property in the same way in much of these nation including DC, we would go to jail. I think we deserve the same rights as ‘important people’.
Imagine living in a country where people are so obsessed with guns that everybody has guns and everyone is a potential threat or one insult away from doing a mass shooting. It’s gotten so bad that America has become a parody of Grand Theft Auto, where you can actually feel safer as a character in a video game that glorifies violence and crime.
Your nation has gone beyond ape shit.
There isn’t another developed nation in the world where gun violence is as big a problem as in America.
This ISN’T NORMAL.
Age-adjusted firearm homicide rates in the US are 33 times greater than in Australia and 77 times greater than in Germany. Gun violence accounts for over 8% of deaths in the US among those under age 20.
https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/insights-blog/acting-data/gun-violence-united-states-outlier
Gun violence accounts for over 8% of deaths in the US among those under age 20.
Break out the ‘firearm deaths of under 20yos’ stat by income, or average income of residential area where they live. You’ll see a STRONG correlation. That’s because an awful lot of our gun crime is by violent drug gangs in inner city areas.
That link has a great breakdown though of firearm homicide rate by state. I’ll point out there’s little or no correlation between gun control policy and firearm homicide rate there. Washington, DC and Maryland have some of the strictest gun control in the country, and the most firearm homicides. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Utah have among the least gun control and highest gun ownership rate, but among the lowest firearm homicide rate. Then there are states that have the expected effect- Hawaii (very anti-gun) with low gun death rate, Alaska (lots of guns) with high gun death rate.
But what that all says is that there’s not a causation between gun ownership or gun policy and gun homicide rate. I suspect you’d find a better correlation with poverty than with gun ownership.What about the other two more important statistics? Stop killing kids with your emotional support weapons you fucking cowards.
the ‘key statistics’ at the top–
I addressed the which state is which, I addressed the under-20s dying of gun homicide. If I didn’t address them enough please feel free to ask for detail on whatever part of it you wish to focus on.
As for the other key point (US has more gun homicide than Germany or AU)- that one’s more complicated.
There’s an obvious answer that there’s more guns in USA, thus more gun homicide- much the same as you get more drownings in Miami (where everyone’s at the beach) than Kansas (where there’s no water).
However I think focusing on homicide rate by weapon is of limited use. I think overall homicide rate is more important-- if in one place the homicide rate is 1/10million and most of them are stabbings and in another place the homicide rate is 1/10million and most of them are shootings, neither one is safer than the other.
I suspect USA has higher overall homicide rate than either of those two places. But I think the root causes for that are the ‘hard problems’ we ignore- poverty, drugs, gangs, hopelessness, etc. DE and AU have decent modern health care systems and actually take care of their population. Mental health care is available and affordable. Strong social safety net keeps people out of extreme poverty. Thus- less drug use, less gangs, and of course less violence from the gangs.
I’m sure there’s some part of that difference that comes from side effects of our gun policies, so don’t think I’m being obtuse. Just that I don’t think it’s anywhere near the direct causation you seem to be claiming.It doesn’t matter what you think when there’s evidence of what works.
“We’ve tried nothing, and it hasn’t worked!” Says only country where this happens regularly.
Are you from the US? I’m assuming not. I mean no offense by this.
What most people from other places don’t recognize is that the US is in effect 50 different countries. Each state has their own regulations, that in some cases are wildly different from the next.
That applies to gun laws also.So it’s most incorrect to say ‘we tried nothing and it didn’t work’, when in reality we’ve tried 50 different things. That is the beauty of your link, if you look at the state by state data. There’s 50 different visions of what gun policy should be, and 50 different outcomes. And this really does run the gamut. There are a few national-level laws, for example every gun store purchase must have a background check, and some case law that has defined what the government can and can’t do to regulate, but for the most part it’s up to each state to write their own policy.
In DC for example, you had a scheme that would fit in well anywhere in Europe- you need training and licensing to even get a permit to buy a gun, each gun has to be registered and test-fired before it can be delivered to the buyer. From beginning to end the process of buying a gun (which you couldn’t even carry) took months and a dozen visits to various government agencies. I’ve heard it’s since gotten a bit less strict, but it was like that for a LONG time.
DC has the highest rate of gun violence in the nation and has for a very long time.
Hawaii has gun control that’s similarly strict, and has among the lowest gun homicide rate in the nation.In Vermont for example you have what everyone accuses the entire USA of having- anyone can buy as many guns as they want with no training or licensing, and you can carry your gun loaded without a permit or proof of training. This is sometimes called ‘Constitutional Carry’ (the Constitution is your carry permit). Buying a gun is easy, other than the Federally-mandated background check, you can walk into a gun store and walk out with a gun in less than an hour.
Vermont has among the highest gun ownership rate, but among the lowest gun homicide rate.
Alaska is similar to Vermont (Constitutional Carry, high gun ownership rate) but among the highest gun homicide rate.What those 4 states should tell you, is that gun policy or gun ownership rate are not necessarily drivers of gun homicide rate. Something else is going on that drives gun homicide rate.
Imagine living in a country where people are so obsessed with guns that everybody has guns and everyone is a potential threat or one insult away from doing a mass shooting.
I don’t know what nation you’re from but America is nothing at all like this. Gun owners aren’t like this.
People who don’t understand American gun culture expect it’s like GTA- everybody’s strapped, fender-benders at traffic lights turn into firefights, don’t dare tell anyone anything negative because they’ll shoot you if they don’t like what you say. This isn’t at all the case though. Not even close.Gun owners who carry guns look at it like a seat belt or fire extinguisher-- you hope to god you never need it, but if ever you do, having it might save your life. There is no action movie attitude of ‘who do I shoot today?’. Gun owners recognize how serious a responsibility it is, and petty arguments rarely involve weapons fire, even in situations where everyone involved is armed.
We have a big problem with gun violence- but the majority of it is caused by our bigger problem of poverty and hopelessness in many areas. People turn to drugs, that are supplied by violent gangs who are all armed with illegal guns. Those guys commit the lion’s share of our gun homicide.
Problem is, fixing it is a slow and expensive generational process. You need better schools, mental health care, child care, reproductive care, and real jobs for people to aspire to (not just flipping burgers). This costs billions.
If you want to criticize us for something- criticize us for spending billions/trillions on military (we have more military force than the next 10 nations combined, including all our major enemies) when our budgets are fucked and we can’t even seem to take care of our own citizens. THAT is worthy of your criticism (and mine).
I’m not aware of another developed nation where getting cancer means you’ve got a good chance of going bankrupt. THAT ISN’T NORMAL and we should be fixing that shit.
What you say in this comment seems inconsistent with what you said in the previous one, namely that if you try to break into someone’s stuff (e.g. an unoccupied parked car in this case) you should expect to be shot at. Going straight to deadly force to protect one’s property is the bit people (at least, many non-Americans) think is not normal.
Finally a somewhat intelligent comment that isn’t just restating a talking point.
You’re (understandably) conflating as one position what is actually two
I think in general it should be legal to use deadly force to defend major property. IE I don’t think it should be legal to shoot someone for stealing a pack of gum, but I think in many cases it should be legal to shoot someone for stealing larger items that make up a person’s livelihood. I take this position not because I think human life is worth less than tools or cars (I don’t feel that way) but because if you take any other position, you have a situation where the lawful owner of said property is legally required to basically sit there and watch while a criminal steals their shit.
Police aren’t always seconds away. In much of the USA, police are tens of minutes or hours away.What should be legal is one half of the coin, the other half is what I as a gun owner want to actually do.
To make an extreme example- I’m a strong advocate of the 1st Amendment (free speech). I believe I should have the right to take off all my clothes, cover the bare minimum in duct tape and cardboard, and walk down public streets telling all passers-by that I am the reincarnation of Napoleon and they should join my new army and help take over the world.
But while I support the right to do that, while I’d strongly advocate for that right, I have no desire to do such a thing myself.As a gun owner, I have no desire to kill anyone ever. The same is true of virtually all gun owners I know, both online and off. (The one notable exception is a slightly nutty friend of mine who ended up joining the military and volunteered to go fight in Iraq/Afghanistan). There is nothing in my car that’s worth taking a life for- even if the perpetrator is a lowlife criminal.
But I also take that as my choice to make for myself. Millions of gun owners would make the same choice- go on any gun forum or subreddit that deals with such things and you’ll find few if any people suggesting that just shooting a guy who’s stealing your unoccupied car is a good plan.Does that make sense?
Thanks for the reply. It makes sense, though I would jump off at a different point from you. I tend to feel that if it comes to life vs property, even the life of a robber who is making others miserable and afraid, life generally wins no matter what the property is. That is, I don’t myself feel like it is ever worth taking a life to preserve property, and I hope that if I found myself in the situation of being robbed of something dear to me, I would be able to let the property go and the robber live, painful though it would be. But I also don’t believe ethical questions can arrive at a final answer. There’s too much nuance in every situation so I wouldn’t propose this as “the right answer”. It’s just how I currently feel on the matter. Another aspect of this view is that while I wouldn’t condemn in advance anyone who shoots in such a situation, I’d understand it better if they were afraid for themselves rather than just for their property.
Thankfully I’m not a legislator so I don’t need to try to codify this into law, and I appreciate your position, which seems that be that although you probably wouldn’t yourself shoot in this situation, you don’t think others should be branded criminals for doing so. I don’t want to pronounce on that matter, but just to observe that your position is probably more common in the USA than in, for example, many European countries, hence it seeming unusual to many of us non-Americans.
while I wouldn’t condemn in advance anyone who shoots in such a situation, I’d understand it better if they were afraid for themselves rather than just for their property.
And that is my position exactly.
Go on various self-defense subreddits or online forums, like /r/CCW, and you’ll find a very similar attitude. There will be a couple who’d say ‘shoot the thief’ but the overwhelming majority take the position of ‘you shoot to stop the threat, in self defense, only when necessary’ and many would even take the position that it’s a ‘bad shoot’ to shoot someone just breaking into a car. Confront them maybe, shoot them if they move to attack, but don’t just shoot the guy in the back as he’s stealing your MacBook.The other issue is- while I’m not a legislator, I am a citizen of a representative democracy. So in a sense, it is my job to write the law, or at least, to make educated choices in what laws and policies I advocate for and against.
To that end, anyone making any law must consider that there will be times it backfires, doesn’t apply correctly, etc. And whenever that happens, I’d always rather err on the side of giving the citizen defending themself or their property more leeway than providing additional protections to a criminal who’s engaged in clearly illegal acts against said citizen (which necessarily means punishments for the citizen defending against said criminal).
Right. Except everybody leaves their fire extinguishers at home. And their fire extinguishers don’t cause other fires. And they’re not widely used by stupid incompetent people to cause harm either.
Your argument doesn’t make any sense to any other normal sane person outside of the United States.
Using deadly force to kill someone should be hard to access and only be used when your own life is in danger. Which can be anytime, anywhere by anybody in the US because of how accessible it is.
Ending a life shouldn’t be something anybody can do.
“It is not the tool that determines it’s work, it is the mind of the man that holds the tool that does.” --Brannon LaBouef
Like any tool, a gun can be used for good or evil. The vast majority of gun uses in the USA are ‘defensive gun uses’, which are legal gun owners stopping or preventing a crime. There’s minimum 10x more DGUs than firearm homicides, perhaps 100x or even more.
Ending a life shouldn’t be something anybody can do.
But ending a life IS something anybody can do, and you don’t need a gun to do it.
Good. If you try to break into someone else’s shit, you should reasonably expect to get shot at.
In many other contexts this would be downvoted to oblivion on Lemmy.
Good. If you try to break into someone else’s shit, you should reasonably expect to get shot at.
In many other contexts this would be downvoted to oblivion on Lemmy.
In many other contexts, this is fucking insane.
Why? Serious question. I’m getting down votes, if you disagree, then please engage and tell me why?
I’ve noticed a significant correlation between people who reject all contemplation of violence as ethical behavior, and those who refuse to engage in debate with those holding differing beliefs about ethics.
Well said.
In the words of Aristotle, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Lot of not very educated minds in the world these days :(
And robbing someone’s car isn’t insane?
Exactly right. If the article says “home owner shoots armed robber attempting to kidnap children” you’d have people losing their minds about guns and violence. Also people would be upset that the person owned a home…
Who has ever been upset at people owning their own home?
I think it was a joke, made me laugh anyway.
Communists?
deleted by creator
Yeah I’ve noticed :-( Lemmy overall seems much less tolerant of gun ownership or use of force than Reddit. Even when it is obviously justified.
The headline could be, “Good Samaritan opens fire to defend disabled orphan POC child and her blind 3-legged rescue kitten from white supremacist pedophile rape gang” and half the comments would be how the stupid hick Republican ammosexual who wants more school shootings is so worthless he needs to carry around a lethal penis extender.
But throw in a little criticism of government or police… Heh
Because a world where people are firing guns at each other all the time is INSANE, regardless of the context. Most of the developed world has figured this out.
If you look at the data, the vast majority of people who are ‘firing guns at each other all the time’ are gang members in low-income inner cities.
To distill a bunch of stats, half the people of the US own guns, and they own enough guns to arm the other half and have plenty left over.
Per FBI, there’s about 10k-15k firearm homicides per year. That means on average an American has a 0.005% chance of being killed by a gun in any given year.If we truly were ‘firing guns at each other all the time’ that number would be WAY WAY WAY WAY higher.
The whole point of equality is that we’re all supposed to have the same rights and responsibilities.
Couldn’t agree more. Biden gets to protect his family with guns. I think you and me should have that right also.
If I take a shot without being sure I’m gonna hit a criminal, I’m in big trouble. But if a cop/guard does the same, oh well.I don’t like double standards.
Glad this was just a stupid GTA cosplay and not something much worse.
Area has an increase of car jackings, according to the article, so it was probably some unlucky thieves breaking into the unoccupied SUV.
I kind of think the bigger story is, why were Secret Service shooting at suspects trying to enter an empty vehicle? Unless there were firearms in the vehicle, feels a bit excessive to potentially kill 1 to 4 people over a car break in where no one’s life was in direct danger.
Maybe there’s more missing details that clear up the story so we’d have to wait and see.
I kind of think the bigger story is, why were Secret Service shooting at suspects trying to enter an empty vehicle?
My thoughts, from a layman. I could be totally off base here.
-
A secret service vehicle is likely armed and armored to the teeth, and the last thing anyone wants is 3 idiots cruisng around town in the equivalent of a soccer mom’s tank. Also, it’s probably bad enough that they have egg on their face from shooting at the suspect and missing; can you imagine the embarrassment of 3 secret service agents allowing one of their vehicles to be stolen by a group of randoms? There’s also the fact that if they were successful, it would be a national security issue at the very least.
-
It’s very likely that the windows are heavily tinted in order to make it impossible to see who or what is in the car, and the agents are likely trained to treat any attempt at breaking into or damaging the car as if the person under protection is inside of it, whether or not they actually are. Had the secret service not acted this way and this was actually a targeted attack, the bad actors would then know that the Secret Service doesn’t respond the same way when the vehicle is empty, which is information that could be used in future attacks.
-
There is also the possibility that there’s more to the story than we’re being informed about, such as the possibility of a credible threat against Biden’s granddaughter. If that’s the case, those are details that we’ll likely never, ever know about.
-
There is a chance that documents regarding schedules and other sensitive matters may be in the vehicle. A security leak of that nature could be life threatening to a bigger target. Alternatively, being stranded would leave Naomi vulnerable to kidnapping and assault.
Not saying the shooting was an appropriate response given the location, but the agents are right to be aggravated given the line of work and stakes involved.
Something I haven’t seen yet is there’s the possibility (in the split second decision making, not hindsight) that they were attempting to sabotage the vehicle in some way. That vehicle would be their primary escape and disabling or trapping it could be the prelude to an attack or kidnapping attempt.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secret Service agents protecting President Joe Biden’s granddaughter opened fire after three people tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle in the nation’s capital, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.
The agents, assigned to protect Naomi Biden, were out with her in the Georgetown neighborhood late Sunday night when they saw the three people breaking a window of the parked and unoccupied SUV, the official said.
The official could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on Monday on the condition of anonymity.
The three people were seen fleeing in a red car, and the Secret Service said it put out a regional bulletin to Metropolitan Police to be on the lookout for it.
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas was carjacked near the Capitol last month by three armed assailants, who stole his car but didn’t physically harm him.
In February, U.S. Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota was assaulted in her apartment building, suffering bruises while escaping serious injury.
The original article contains 249 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 31%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
What a shit title.
TIL objective facts are shit
Did they blow any lungs out?
deleted by creator
Name a country without crime. Go on. Democratic or otherwise. News flash: by your definition the world is a crime-ridden hellhole.
“The cradle of our democracy” refers to Washington DC in particular which is directly governed by the House/Senate. It also consistently ranks as one of the top cities in crime in the US by almost any metric (although ranking crime by city gets murky). Additionally it is notoriously poorly governed and has some really strange local laws that are almost entirely nationally political in origin. It also doesn’t really help that the people living in D.C. get a diminished political voice by default.
I don’t know if there’s really grander conclusions to make other than having people govern a city that have no vested interest in the locals, with their actual constituents possibly 1000s of miles away, is a terrible idea. As for what it says about our government as a whole, I really think it’s a better case for MORE democracy for the locals in D.C. rather than an indictment of the idea…
To read about D.C. and how it is governed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C.
Basic crime stats for D.C.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Washington,_D.C.
deleted by creator
It doesn’t have to be zero crime, but Washington DC is a crime-ridden hell hole. Just for starters, the 2021 homicide rate was 32.78 per 100k people. Paris was 1.1, London was 1.1, New York was around 5, Los Angeles around 10.
It is uniquely awful, both within the US and elsewhere.
Isn’t it though?
Crime is a human condition of civilization it would seem. Just how much there is and the economic level of those committing it changes.
North Korea? You don’t even have to commit a crime and you go to a forced labor prison.
This happened in Georgetown, where the most likely crime you’d ever experience is how much the shops charge for a mediocre cupcake or expecting reservations to actually matter at Founding Farmers. It’s a city like any other and, depending on the year, usually averages a bit lower in crime rates.
DC is alright I really wouldn’t call it a hell hole. but I don’t use superlatives to describe some regular type of shit. car hoppers are a normal thing in pretty much any city.
I refuse to accept this and carjacking as “regular type of shit.” Hell, I refuse to accept littering as “regular type of shit.” Soon we’ll be like Juarez or Rio but with more guns.
it’s just population density, not politics or guns. try london or paris, for example? you need to be smart about where and how you park in a city.
Take a chill pill, Rorschach
Things are getting better, not worse
Technically Philadelphia would be the cradle of US democracy.
Guarantee you this dude is a rural PNW prepper lol
deleted by creator
This is not relevant to my comment.
You wanna confirm for me tho?
deleted by creator
Imagine opening fire on people trying to break into an unoccupied parked car. That’s the reaction in a normal country. /s
deleted by creator
Wait…so if I see someone breaking a window on an unoccupied vehicle I can just go ahead and start shooting at them?
Don’t break the window of a vehicle belonging to the Presidents family.
It was unmarked.
A thing can be two things.
So?
In Texas you can.
No, you are first supposed to go up to them, putting yourself in unnecessary danger, so they have a chance of getting your gun and then shoot them. Rittenhouse style.
Also be white.
One of the agents opened fire, but no one was struck by the gunfire, the Secret Service said in a statement.
Sad news.
