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Prayers for the deceased.

‏@RobertWilonsky
Statement from @DPDChief on tonight's shooting in downtown Dallas

Appears to be domestic terrorism...

hoooooly gak man.

This got so ugly so fast.

Holy gakkers and holy feth

What the hell is going on here?

i am going to remain outside any major city for a while.

Looks like 3 dead now?

That won't help deescalate anything.

This is all kinds of bad.

Got off the phone with my aunt who lives there...

That area is in total lockdown.

Also, just read this:

Dianne GallagherVerified account
‏@DianneG
.@DallasPD just said they believe the suspects have threatened to plant a bomb in downtown #Dallas.

O.o

Jeebus.

At least 11 officer shot now. I'm really glad I left Dallas yesterday.

There's a video of the news reporters realizing there is a sniper on the roof.

I'm seriously impressed with how Fox News is handling this though.

4 deceased now, apparently the cops are in a shootout with a suspect. Appears to have happened after the protest which was otherwise peaceful.

5 dead: 4 Dallas PD and a Transit Officer.

My god this is horrifying...

I don't think many people are going to be walking in dallas tomorrow or anywhere near the city.

this is not good and I had family there the past week but they came back yesterday thank god, but seriously its hard to tell if this is a terrorist terrorist or anti-cop terrorists, and people wonder why some cops go a little gun crazy, things lately have been getting bad and it might end up either being a war between people like this and the cops or cops quitting their jobs and then where will this country be? martial law?

https://www.reddit.com/live/x7xfgo3k9jp7

Well my my.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
A sniper is in custody

This is just awful.

Man, this is awful. My condolences to the police and their families.

As a black man in America, I empathize with the growing concern over police brutality and I support the need for a public discussion over what law enforcement means and how it should be varied out, but holy gak dude, violence doesn't solve anything. I wonder if the people responsible for this know or even care about how much incidents like this set-back progress in making positive changes. It's completely senseless.

Both snipers are in custody now.

Also: Holy gak
https://twitter.com/SooperMexican/status/751278082158321664

o.O

I hope there wasn't another shooter, or the bombs that were believed to be active weren't active.

Sounds like these guys had military training. ISIS is probably fairly happy with this situation.

 whembly wrote:
Both snipers are in custody now.

Also: Holy gak
https://twitter.com/SooperMexican/status/751278082158321664

o.O

"Military training" ? Why ?

And it seems both of them were arrested. Is the presence of a bomb confirmed ?

He gets out of cover, fires some distraction shoots to the left side of the pillar and then engages the officer from the right side. I a situation like this, pumped with adrenalin you don't do a textbook assault without proper training.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
I wonder if the people responsible for this know or even care about how much incidents like this set-back progress in making positive changes.

Ultimately, the people who do these kinds of things only care about themselves, no matter what they might proclaim to the contrary.

I'm glad I live on the Fort Worth side of the D/FW metroplex.

 LethalShade wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Both snipers are in custody now.

Also: Holy gak
https://twitter.com/SooperMexican/status/751278082158321664

o.O

"Military training" ? Why ?

And it seems both of them were arrested. Is the presence of a bomb confirmed ?

A bomb squad was deployed to deal with a suspicious package.

And considering the fact they were using sniper rifles it is entirely possible.

I don't know what is going on .I was following the live thread I posted: https://www.reddit.com/live/x7xfgo3k9jp7

If you go down you can read tweets from officals and people at the event.

Local NBC has a national alert on right now.

Did they actually have "sniper rifles", or was is like "assault rifles"? Just wondering if they had your standard rifle with a scope you can buy from anywhere.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 LethalShade wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Both snipers are in custody now.

Also: Holy gak
https://twitter.com/SooperMexican/status/751278082158321664

o.O

"Military training" ? Why ?

And it seems both of them were arrested. Is the presence of a bomb confirmed ?

A bomb squad was deployed to deal with a suspicious package.

And considering the fact they were using sniper rifles it is entirely possible.

I don't know what is going on .I was following the live thread I posted: https://www.reddit.com/live/x7xfgo3k9jp7

If you go down you can read tweets from officals and people at the event.

Local NBC has a national alert on right now.

There's very little difference between a "sniper rifle" and a typical hunting rifle, rifles that are readily available in states like Texas where hunting is prevalent. I don't think it's wise to start theorizing about the murderers having military training until a lot more information is released to the public.

 d-usa wrote:
Did they actually have "sniper rifles", or was is like "assault rifles"? Just wondering if they had your standard rifle with a scope you can buy from anywhere.

depending on location and the fact 11 officers were shot indicates some form of rifle training, if so they would not use an Assault rifle since they are not reliable for sniper shooting, but like I said it also depends on distance but the reports say there were 2 snipers in different locations at a raised height catching the police in a classic ambush situation.

so i'm gonna say some military training, whether these snipers were part of the BLM or if they were terrorists taking advantage of a situation is another thing.

but either way they are terrorists inciting terror the way they did.

also news is saying they are unsure if the 2 suspects in custody are the snipers or not, one of them the brother claims is not a shooter.

Live right now, the police are negotiating with one of the snipers in a second floor garage. furthermore he has exchanged gunfire with the police, stating the end is coming and that there are bombs all over the place and city.

Asterios wrote:
depending on location and the fact 11 officers were shot indicates some form of rifle training, if so they would not use an Assault rifle since they are not reliable for sniper shooting.

While the AR15 isn't accurate or punchy enough enough for the Wimbledon Cup, it's more than adequate for 100 yards or so even with a relatively untrained shooter, and comes with the benefit of greater magazine capacity and faster rate of fire.

I wonder if this is going to turn out to be ISIL, or just a crazyperson, or what. The coordination that seems to be involved would lean towards the former.

 Ouze wrote:

Asterios wrote:
depending on location and the fact 11 officers were shot indicates some form of rifle training, if so they would not use an Assault rifle since they are not reliable for sniper shooting.

While the AR15 isn't accurate or punchy enough enough for the Wimbledon Cup, it's more than adequate for 100 yards or so even with a relatively untrained shooter, and comes with the benefit of greater magazine capacity and faster rate of fire.

I wonder if this is going to turn out to be ISIL, or just a crazyperson, or what. The coordination that seems to be involved would lean towards the former.

not crazy person, it was someone who knew the route of the march so they had inside knowledge, but evidently there may have been more then 2 snipers since the police chief was talking about triangulation of fire on the police, also he stated that the snipers had inside knowledge of the march route and where it would go.

http://fox40.com/2016/07/07/report-at-least-2-dallas-officers-shot-at-protest-over-police-shootings/

Asterios wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Did they actually have "sniper rifles", or was is like "assault rifles"? Just wondering if they had your standard rifle with a scope you can buy from anywhere.

depending on location and the fact 11 officers were shot indicates some form of rifle training, if so they would not use an Assault rifle since they are not reliable for sniper shooting, but like I said it also depends on distance but the reports say there were 2 snipers in different locations at a raised height catching the police in a classic ambush situation.

so i'm gonna say some military training, whether these snipers were part of the BLM or if they were terrorists taking advantage of a situation is another thing.

but either way they are terrorists inciting terror the way they did.

also news is saying they are unsure if the 2 suspects in custody are the snipers or not, one of them the brother claims is not a shooter.

Our military issues semiauto rifles to snipers and DMs so I'm not sure why you think they're unreliable for precision shooting.

You can draw your own conclusions but the information released to the public so far details a level of marksmanship and proficiency that most of the people I meet and shoot with at my club's private gun range and most of those people have no military training at all. Any modern rifle you pick up in a decent caliber is going to essentially shoot on a flat trajectory for at least the first few hundred yards. Decent optics and a few hours of practice will have you consistently making scoring hits on your target within a few hundred yards. Hitting a stationary target the size of a person isn't that difficult and since Dallas PD wasn't expecting anything like this the officers were probably standing still at strategic locations scanning the crowd. The willingness of the murderers to target cops and do so on such a large scale is disturbing, frightening and thankfully rare. The level of skill involved in carrying out the murders isn't.

 Ouze wrote:

I wonder if this is going to turn out to be ISIL, or just a crazyperson, or what. The coordination that seems to be involved would lean towards the former.

I worry that in the end, it really won't matter all that much.

The Orlando shooter was, for all practical purposes, just our "average" spree shooter who acted out for personal reasons and tried to come up with some justification for his decision to be an idiot. But yet, he is still referred to as an ISIS terrorist.

For Dallas, I don't really have much to go by, but I'm not really getting any Islamist Terrorist feelings so far. If they wanted to, they had the perfect opportunity to take out a very large number of people, but they chose instead to focus on police officers. There were no bombs. Ramadan is over. So far this feels more like domestic anti-government/anti-authority terror, rather than Islamic extremist terror.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Prestor Jon wrote:
. Any modern rifle you pick up in a decent caliber is going to essentially shoot on a flat trajectory for at least the first few hundred yards. Decent optics and a few hours of practice will have you consistently making scoring hits on your target within a few hundred yards.

That's what I was thinking about when I was wondering about "sniper rifles" as compared to "assault rifles". Anything we can pick off the rack could be called either by the usual folks, even though it's the same semi-automatic rifle with a scope.

Prestor Jon wrote:

Asterios wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Did they actually have "sniper rifles", or was is like "assault rifles"? Just wondering if they had your standard rifle with a scope you can buy from anywhere.

depending on location and the fact 11 officers were shot indicates some form of rifle training, if so they would not use an Assault rifle since they are not reliable for sniper shooting, but like I said it also depends on distance but the reports say there were 2 snipers in different locations at a raised height catching the police in a classic ambush situation.

so i'm gonna say some military training, whether these snipers were part of the BLM or if they were terrorists taking advantage of a situation is another thing.

but either way they are terrorists inciting terror the way they did.

also news is saying they are unsure if the 2 suspects in custody are the snipers or not, one of them the brother claims is not a shooter.

Our military issues semiauto rifles to snipers and DMs so I'm not sure why you think they're unreliable for precision shooting.

You can draw your own conclusions but the information released to the public so far details a level of marksmanship and proficiency that most of the people I meet and shoot with at my club's private gun range and most of those people have no military training at all. Any modern rifle you pick up in a decent caliber is going to essentially shoot on a flat trajectory for at least the first few hundred yards. Decent optics and a few hours of practice will have you consistently making scoring hits on your target within a few hundred yards. Hitting a stationary target the size of a person isn't that difficult and since Dallas PD wasn't expecting anything like this the officers were probably standing still at strategic locations scanning the crowd. The willingness of the murderers to target cops and do so on such a large scale is disturbing, frightening and thankfully rare. The level of skill involved in carrying out the murders isn't.

wrong as a sniper in the military I was not issued a Semi-Auto rifle, but then again my sniper rifle was a M24 a bolt action rifle, unless I needed better distance, then I brought out my Archangel, as to planning this, they knew where the route would go, they used a triangle configuration to take out targets in an ambush style attack, these are not typical shooter behavior, thats trained behavior, plus it was dark when it happened, or dusk which is not as easy on targetting from a distance, furthermore having to wing it without wind directionals is not easy either unless you knew the route and had them in place, or someone in the crowd with a flag or something to give wind direction and speed.

Asterios wrote:
wrong as a sniper in the military I was not issued a Semi-Auto rifle, but then again my sniper rifle was a M24 a bolt action rifle, unless I needed better distance, then I brought out my Archangel.

I'm familiar with the M24, but what is an Archangel?

I agree.

An organised ISIL attack would have indiscriminately sprayed the crowd of protestors, aiming to cause maximum loss of life, and it is unlikely the shooters would have let themselves be captured.

At this early stage I would guess it could be black guerillas taking revenge for the shooting of black people, or white supremacists angry at the police abetting a black protest march.

Either way it is very bad news indeed.