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Possible snipers seen at OSU. Administration says they're not snipers but should be treated like they are.
(midwest.social)
Update, yes there are snipers:
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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Agreed, most of the responses here are ridiculous.
They bring snipers out anytime there's a big event or a major public figure. Michelle Obama visited the University of Akron when I was going there, they had snipers all over the place.
They're not bringing out snipers for some kind of perverted crowd control. It's almost definitely so if someone shows up with a gun and starts firing into the crowd all the protestors don't get shot.
Have you considered what would happen if an active shooter, consider one that's pro-Israel, showed up in that crowd and they didn't have a sniper?
Tell me you wouldn't be over here screaming "ACAB" when the cops are unable to get to the shooter (and have to risk firing through a crowd or do nothing) because there are hundreds of college students between where the cops are standing and where the active shooter is.
Having a sniper on the roof is in no way similar to a tank running someone over in the street. There is no practical application for a tank vs a civilian population. There is 100% a valid reason to use a highly skilled marksman to increase the odds that if something bad does happen, it's stopped quickly, and you can get EMTs to the injured parties.
Your position is offensively wrong.
EDIT: Minor edit to remove a swear and switch to textual emphasis.
You Americans truly live in a weird world.
Give me ONE incident of an active duty US sniper (police or military) EVER shooting a SINGLE protestor with even so much as a rubber bullet. Otherwise your argument is complete bull shit.
Edit: This isn't some "good guy with a gun" or "untrained beat cop" situation. This is a sniper.
Edit 2: For anyone who wants to understand what is almost certainly happening here, watch this video https://youtu.be/PnEB5u2wqEY?si=58MTT_sqv1Tf7Lv6. This is standard procedure when you get these large gatherings to protect people. This person is actively encouraging increased risk to the safety of the protestors (and everyone else involved), while making personal attacks, and completely unfounded claims about this being some form of political persecution. It's IMO ridiculous and indefensible behavior regardless of where you stand on the Israel and Gaza situation.
Does Kent State not count?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
Those are not snipers, they were untrained national guardsman that shouldn't have ever been there. No Kent does not count.
Yea but those were hippy beatniks so it's fine.
/S
In that case it was a bunch of National guardsmen, not snipers so he's not wrong if he's talking just snipers.
Kent state. There's your one. Do you want two?
As I already told the other person: Those were not snipers, they were national guardsman that were untrained for that kind of work and they shouldn't have ever been there.
Why shouldn't they have been there? By the logic of the other poster, having the national guard with rifles lined up would have protected the protesters from an active shooter. Wouldn't everyone be so angry at the police if they didn't stop the active shooter with the national guardsmen?
Is there something special about being a sniper that makes you not a cop? That makes you not part of the same system, the same trainings, the same culture, the same lunch room, that leads regular officers and riot cops to brutalize protesters, especially those on the left? Is there some requirement that to be a sniper you have to be extra nice to leftist causes?
The fact is that absent some specific threat the department received, or some extra-special high value target/event (Superbowl, presidential address, etc) the use of snipers to "protect" the protesters is a farse. We should both know that if anything the snipers are there to "protect the university and its property" much more than the protesters because that's what the rest of the cops are there for.
You can't stop a shooter with a line of national guardsmen. You also can't figure out where they are in a timely fashion without someone with a vantage point.
There is a lot special about a sniper, including more and regular training specifically for the role. A sniper also (typically) is not in the heat of the situation. Nobody is throwing a brick up to the 5th floor. For similar reasons, a sniper can't beat the crap out of someone from the 5th floor.
That's extremely different from a national guardsman, especially like those that were sent to Kent with automatic rifles, minimal training, and placed right next to the protestors. From what I understand this has improved following the Kent State massacre, however the national guard should be a last resort in these situations.
By the time that happens it's too late. You've got a panicked crowd, you have no visibility, and nobody in a position to take a shot. There's a reason they use snipers in big public sporting events, gatherings, and while protecting a public figure.
The thing that's fundamentally wrong with the argument that snipers aren't there to protect protestors is that they're regularly used in these exact same situations for any large public gathering (unlike riot police).
They had snipers at the Marietta Sternwheel Festival the last few years. This isn't some fringe thing, it has nothing to do with the fact they're protestors or protecting property. It's about protecting people by keeping an eye on the situation and (possibly) taking an individual threatening the gathering out quickly if necessary.
The 40ish arrests kinda lean towards this being intimidation. Also I think shooting into a crowd (where these teams where pointing) has never been a good idea and as far as I can tell no evidence exists of even a single time a sniper team has been successfully used in any crowded area. (If you find some please share)
It's not intimidation because it's normal for any large crowd. The snipers are not there to arrest anybody. The snipers are not going to assassinate some random college student.
You're also not going to find "the snipers really saved the day" articles because they're just going to say "the police" in pretty much any article praising a police response. They also don't normally shoot their guns and are more to assist the folks on the ground with figuring out where trouble is and how to get to it.
You could do a lot of the same job with a pair of binoculars. I'm sure they don't because it's just another expense and then you need to switch from binoculars to a rifle and find the target again if something does go sideways.
Did you even read the article you linked? A dude shot his girlfriend in the head with a shotgun. Then was taking shots in the dark (literally) shooting from a building while he had a baby in his arms. That could not be more different of a situation from stopping an active shooter in a public gathering. It also has absolutely nothing to do with using snipers as some means of intimidating protestors or suppressing political speech. This was a very tricky domestic situation that went wrong.
This article also says:
Don't you dare start talking about maturity. You've been more than happy to make numerous personal attacks and inflammatory remarks.
I'm done with this conversation. You can believe what you want but you are very very wrong about the facts and risks of this situation and the personal attacks do nothing to help your argument.
Has any shooting to your knowledge been stopped by anything other than a self defender, a cop, or the guy shooting himself to avoid said cops? The common denominator in any of those is "a gun held by someone intending to stop the shooter." (In the case of the shooter shooting himself, it is generally still to avoid a group of guys with guns intending to stop the shooter, the cops.)
You're one of those "harvard says the good guy with a gun is a myth" guys, aren't you? I can smell it in your comment. Seems you missed an important note from that study however: While defensive gun use is "more accurately estimated at 100,000 DGU/yr," instead of the CDC's reported estimates by Kleck and Lott, all gun deaths including suicide and accidents are still around 60,000 a year, adjusting for intentional homicide only gets 12,000/yr, and just for fun those scary black rifles that are "the problem" are only used in ~500 deaths/yr. Furthermore their study discounted entirely what is likely the most common form of defensive gun use, defensive display, in which the sight of the firearm is enough to scare off the attacker. This means that Harvards 100,000 estimate would be low if we included them. Still though, even with them pretending defensive display is all lies, 100,000>60,000>12,000>500, meaning guns are used far more for defense than murder or suicide.
What can we take away from this? Well, if 100,000 is SO infrequent that we can categorize it as a "myth," what then is 60,000 or 12,000 or 500? If 100,000 dgu is a myth, so to must be our 60,000 gun deaths at 40,000 less.
Bro this is literally standard practice. Most planned large events get all kinds of police presence. Including snipers and plainclothes.
Lol this is lemmy, Tienanmen Square "never happened" here. According to .ml, hexbear, and grad, anyway..
Edit: lmao, point proven tankies!
If you've ever been to a professional sporting event, you have almost certainly been at the business end of a rifle scope.
Wait they put up snipers in my bedroom whenever it’s time to “do the hanky-panky”?
Nah, they just have Google monitor you.
Because when my HPP and me get down to bizniz, you’d think it’s a professional sporting event, because of the passion dripping from the walls!!!
Yeah, I'm not even from the USA and even I know that you guys do that a lot.
I'm really not sure a sniper would be super useful in that situation. Obviously, different environment than the 2017 las vegas shooting, but I don't really think that those snipers on rooftops would really be effective at all in taking out a committed shooter, which could just shack up in one of the many buildings with windows facing the crowd and fire down or into the crowd. Maybe in that case, a sniper might be able to peep out where the shooter is, or might be able to get a shooter on the way in or out, but with the level of people there and the level of surrounding buildings, I'm really not sure they'd be able to do very much. Obviously if someone just walks in off the street and opens up on everyone, then a sniper might be more effective, but I dunno.