ICEing on the Cake

I will get back to gaming and more generally “underlying principles” stuff shortly.

Since moving to Substack, I’ve been a lot less inclined to do “reacting to the moment” posts, but this deserves some attention. Like other events in the last few decade, and the last year or so especially, we’ve seen the mask ripped off more and more from those who deem themselves our kinder and gentler superiors. More evolved, as it were. The ones who act like history is at an end and all that is needed is to convince, or educate, or perhaps re-educate, the rest into understanding they were wrong.

This event is significant for one more reason. Where the more liberal people in the communities I personally reside in may have pooh-poohed gun violence over Charlie Kirk’s murder, relatively few gloated about it in person. For this shooting, I’ve had people with the understanding I generally lean rightward bring this up in person to myself and others as if it is so self-evidently and noetically bad that no-one could possibly disagree with them. The shock on their faces when you reply “she shouldn’t have tried to run over a cop” is entirely expected, though. Especially given they thought they had a moral checkmate.

Heads up - while my posts are rarely that short, this is nearly up to John Carter lengths. Hopefully I can make it as insightful as his are wont to be.

Ditto the other recent shooting that’s happened since. Any framing until more facts are known of “ICE shot a married couple”, given the utterly dishonest framing of the shooting in Minnesota, is to be treated with a grain of salt. There have been hundreds of car rammings, several outright armed - with firearms - assaults, one of which instead killed immigrants and not ICE agents, and a number of other attacks that skirt the appearance of obvious malfeasance to generate a reaction that can be mined for propaganda. These efforts are coordinated, with mobile apps and backend infrastructure and supply lines.

So, Why am I bothering.

In large part to get my own thoughts down in one coherent piece. To provide a grounding for others, with pointers to how things actually work, so that you can easier see when you are being manipulated or gaslit.

As to those who think this was ICE acting like a bunch of power-mad brownshirts, it won’t help convince them. A lot of people are captured, and captured in part because of past framings and Hollywood nonsense. People who frame everything in terms of Harry Potter are not likely to distinguish between how fights work in real life and rule-of-cool people blasted back ten feet from buckshot to the chest. Even if you can lay aside arguments on whether or not ICE agents are justified in doing their job, the simple fact of a man being justified in shooting because his life was in danger in that specific instance does not compute. They can look at the same video and come up with a thousand excuses as to what he should have known or done instead of shooting.

I can speculate as to how many talking the progressive line in this and other events are merely following the herd without thought, and how many know they are lying. Even with the specific goal of changing one’s mind if they’re just ignorant, it hardly matters much of the time, but at least in the ignorant case there’s a chance.

If one is trying to convince others, you’re more likely to find fertile ground with the undecided audience.

In the end, one of the best reasons is from Jupplandia, as follows:

Because there’s a certain kind of lie that pisses me off more than any other lie, and it’s the one that says we can do criminal shit and stupid shit and you are a monster if our actions end up with us dead.

Comments I’ve Heard

First were “I can’t believe they just shot a citizen like that.”

A common theme you’ll see through a lot of this, even the NYT “analysis” is the juvenile attitude of “but I/they was/were only just doing ‘x’ .“ At which point if you step back a thousand feet and squint, there may be some commonality or truth to the oversimplification that it could kind of be colored that way.

Cops shoot citizens all the time¹. Much like people charged with murder, they may often not be justified in doing so, but like legitimate cases of self defense, they often are, to protect their own lives and others. Even fudging for “thin blue line,” nonsense the odds are that most shoots by far are justified. It’s sad or darkly funny that the controversial ones we’ve seen in the last decade or two are, given the facts, are often some of the cleanest - but people don’t like who was hurt, and by whom. See also Daniel Penny. Let’s return to the point…

If a person, citizen or otherwise, attacks a law enforcement officer or people around him using deadly force, they are entirely allowed to use deadly force to protect themselves and others.

Let me rephrase that. In the US, self-defense law entitles you to use deadly force if you are in imminent danger of grave bodily harm or death from an attack with a deadly weapon. The intentions of the “attacker” don’t really matter, insomuch as whether the person defending him or herself is subjectively in fear of their life or grave harm, and the objective facts of what they know can reasonably interpreted that way.

And a car is a deadly weapon, when used with such intent, or apparent intent. Just ask the people at Waukesha if you don’t want to believe the feds. There’s a reason Christmas markets have taken up bollards and checkpoints in parts of Europe, if not shutting down entirely. There is more than enough case law to support this, nevermind common sense.

Law enforcement gets a broader leeway. You or I cannot start the altercation, cops have broad leeway to do just that - because criminals or even those simply drunk and disorderly or disturbing the peace seldom come along meekly. In some states - Minnesota is one - there is a duty to retreat, though only if one can do so safely. This likely applies to you and me, but does not apply to law enforcement.

Then I’ve heard variants on “Why’d he have to shoot? He could have dodged! They’re trained!”

First of all, cops have a job to do. That includes stopping and detaining those breaking the law. Even an agency with a limited scope of authority has the ability to detain and arrest those interfering with their job. Some twitter layers doubt this, but it’s true. As more evidence comes out it is becoming clearer that she was deliberately working to hold up and stop the ICE agents, but even the position of the vehicles, with her across the road and in between two ICE vehicles is almost certainly not an “oops.” Just going on that alone they have reason to tell her to get out of the vehicle and / or question her.

Even if there wasn’t a cop in front of her, her speeding off like that after being ordered to exit the vehicle was a crime, and with the road conditions, a threat to the lives of others in the vicinity and down the road. I suspect they wouldn’t have shot in that case, as they already had her plate information, but they very likely could have.

Admittedly that doesn’t quite answer the question, but it’s not much of a stretch to say that they likely could have shot anyway and been in the right, even if the cop wasn’t directly in front of her.

Part of the issue though was the surface conditions. He was on ice, not the best footing. Fortunately for him, even degraded the footing was better for him than the traction was for her - you can see the wheel spin - so the car was much slower in getting started, and even then he was still struck.

And pedestrian strikes happen all the time, even with relatively slow moving vehicles. Insisting he could have dodged is to expect a consistently superhuman amount of agility and awareness out of ICE agents or law enforcement in general.

Worse, car rammings have been a common occurrence in these protests. At least one officer has been killed, and others struck or dragged. This one specifically had been dragged. Since the lady took off with the other officers hand in the window, there was a probability of him being dragged as well if she hadn’t spun the tires on ice first. That loss of traction may have prevented two officers from being more seriously injured.

That leaves aside that in the window where he had to decide, where the car started accelerating, the car was obviously still pointed at him. In that window, even any random passerby without a near-guaranteed safe avenue of retreat, was objectively in the way of a lethal threat, and had the right to shoot. Even at low speeds cars have a ton (or in this case, more than two…) of momentum.

“She was no longer a threat” - because he turned. Even assuming he wasn’t in the path, see the above discussion of context for law enforcement. If I had shot after the car had completely passed me and was obviously going down the road, then you could make that argument. If I made the decision to shoot when I was still ahead of the car in its probable line of travel, even without the additional duties of law enforcement, especially if I ended up struck, if the car is just starting to pass me, the car and its driver are not yet “no longer a threat.”

“But the tires were pointed away.”

From the position of the officer, difficult if not outright impossible to see - and the likely / possible path of the vehicle wasn’t sufficient to clear him even if he read - and more importantly assumed - that its path would miss him on the turn he couldn’t predict.

That said, he ended up struck. You can see the legs get shifted away from his center of gravity, and the limp he walks with.

“Why the head ?” - or some variants thereof. Have they even considered what a person in a SUV looks like? Even male drivers won’t present much more than shoulders and head above the hood and dash. If you’re shooting at what’s visible, that is the target. And that’s ignoring how the windshield will affect the bullet trajectory. .

“Why not shoot to disable” - Cops, and shooters in general, are taught to aim at center of mass and not aim for appendages, no matter what Hollywood tells you. Sure, snipers sometimes, and some special circumstances may require a more specific part of the body be targeted, but for the sake of simply hitting your target in the first place, will aim at the center of the available target - see above on “why the head”.

Shooting to “disable” is a fools game. Shooting a hand or “just an arm” is just not going to happen except by happenstance. Shooting at an arm you’re likely to miss, and either hit something else beyond your target, or hit somewhere lethal anyway such as the abdomen or chest. Consider for a moment how many shots miss utterly in a real gunfight or firefight.

“Why three shots? He was trying to kill her, one was enough” - You shoot until the threat is stopped.

Let me repeat that - because in the event you’re ever required to shoot in self defense, this mindset will do a lot to keep yourself from screwing yourself over.

You shoot until the threat is stopped.

If the person you’re shooting at bolts out the door and across the yard, headed for the street, shooting him in the back is a great way to go to prison.

If the person who barges into a restaurant deserves a shot, but once he’s on the ground and disarmed you walk up and put a bullet in him, you’re going to jail.

If on the other hand they’re circling around the house, back up to another room and not out the front door, are still shooting, or still advancing, or you have no way of knowing because they’re in the drivers seat and there’s no obvious blood or slumping or loss of control in that split second…. you keep shooting.

That mindset is a simple rule that will give you a fairly clean - prosecutors like the ones presiding over Rittenhouse will still find ways to argue otherwise - stopping point that makes it more difficult to argue that “you wanted to kill him.” instead of defending your life. That mindset reduces the chances you say something dumb to the cops during whatever minimum interaction you have when they get on scene before your lawyer is present, and you have to tell them enough about what happened to let them investigate and secure the scene.

In the literal second or so the officer had to decide to shoot, see what happened, and stop if justified, he got off three shots. He didn’t have time to consider “gee, is she still functional behind the wheel.” He didn’t mag dump. He didn’t keep shooting as the car drove past possibly further endangering others in or around the vehicle. Nor did he shoot at it as it drove away until it crashed.

“She didn’t mean to” - No-one knows her intentions. We can only read them however imperfectly from her actions. I for one doubt she set out that morning to run over a police officer. I find it much more likely that she panicked at the realization she was about to get detained and likely arrested, egged on by her “wife” who said to the effect of “drive baby drive,” than she saw the guy in front of her and decided he was the target rather than escape.

That said, she was looking right at him when she started moving forward.

In the end though, it doesn’t matter, even if she had been peaceful moment before - one reason no-one already had guns drawn. She pulled back, the car was pointed at the agent, she accelerated forward. He could hear and see it start to move, and a car is a lethal force threat. Even if she never screamed “I’m going to kill you” to broadcast intent,² the actions she took were indistinguishable from a deliberate attempt to strike the agent with her car to cause harm.

And that leaves out the broader context of her previous behavior that caused them to note down license plates, other agents run over, that agent’s history with car strikes, and so on.

“You’d run too from masked thugs pointing guns.” - that you’d been following. Your “wife” or whoever clearly knew you were LE. So did the driver. You deliberately parked in the road for minutes. You were about to be detained. Running from LE when lawfully detaining you is…. a crime. They are allowed to arrest you. They are not obligated to be a punching bag or a crash test dummy.

Of course, the more recently released videos from the struck officer and door camera footage completely blows this narrative out of the water. They were parked there for minutes, even just from the external view. They were mocking the officers, “we’ll still have the same plates tomorrow,” and so on. It wasn’t until shit got real and they were ordered out of the car that everything changed.

Only an idiot believes that you treat masked unidentified thugs who are threatening you like that.

But then, even before the more recent video releases, only an idiot would buy that excuse, even as major media outlets and politicians made it. They may have masks - and as Asmongold and others have said, “I wonder why” - especially when many of the protesters are themselves masked, especially the ones pushing the boundaries the furthest or blatantly provocating over the legal lines. They also had multiple vehicles with lights, body armor, law enforcement markings. It’s obvious even in the original clips no-one thought they were random thugs. And that she didn’t take off until they tried to detain her.

This counts as not just ignorance of how things work, but a blatant lie for propaganda purposes. And the many politicians calling for blood and “accountability” are doubly vile for not only spinning variants of the story above, but also doubling down on labels they’ve applied (as many have said, they call you a nazi so that it’s OK to hurt you"), and worse, promising accountability, some of them the very politicians responsible for overlooking fraud and if whistleblower reports are to be believed, going after the people trying to prevent it.

The NYT and other sources have jumped in, spinning a narrative along the lines of “they approached her car and shot her” - without really explaining the steps in between. Handwaving the “he was struck” - you can see the legs get shifted separate from the body in several angles and him limping - ignoring the context of why she was there, and so on. As stated above, even if her intent was NOT to hit him but to escape, he had no way of knowing that while in front of a vehicle that suddenly accelerated toward him with a comrade exhorting “drive, baby, drive”.

If your best argument was “the shoot wasn’t justified because between how her wheel was turned, the ice that prevented her from accelerating faster, and everything else, she just barely missed him” I’ll remind you that a guy pointing a knife at you is a deadly threat and you’re not required for him to start swinging³ much less stab you before using deadly force. They don’t get a free pass because you dodged or “they were jsut kidding” and barely missed.

In Sum

This was sadly predictable. The tactic on the part of antifa and protesters was to be as aggressive as deniably possible to provoke reactions they can use for propaganda. As I said in a recent note, this may not be what we classically think of in terms of bombings and armed assaults - though the latter did happen in Texas - but it is the use of violence (even if it’s passive aggressive, barely over the line violence) to provoke government responses that can be used to drive political change by making the government so oppressive (or appear to be) that it loses the backing of the people.

They have the martyr they wanted. Accuse me of being ghoulish on that if you will. I’ll grant they likely would have preferred to have no-one killed on the protestor side, but they fully wanted a reaction they could use, rooted in a situation ambiguous enough that they could message it as tyranny in action. And any adult - sadly many involved in these are only so biologically - would know the risks being run in this game of chicken.

In the end it’s a tragedy a life was lost, but my sympathy to the lady is limited. In the Navy we used to say “play stupid games, win stupid prizes”. The same sentiment drives the schadenfreude engendered by the Darwin Awards. I feel more sorry for her kids, and if reports are that their dad had custody, in this day and age of family court systems presupposing the mother should keep the children unless something is horribly wrong, that also implies something about the dead woman’s common sense and empathy, or lack therof.

It was a good shot.

Update -

As part of the PR from the ICE protesters, with the new video out from the officer’s phone, there are memes going around that the last words from Good were "along the lines of “we’re not mad at you”, and the reply from the ICE officer after shooting her were to call her a bitch.

This is dishonest in the extreme, because the part in the middle where she gunned the car at him, whether with intent to kill or not, and struck him, is relevant. I personally would be pissed both at being hit by the car and the fact that he had to shoot her.

Of course, if you believe that the ICE agents are thugs who get off on hitting people, then you likely wouldn’t believe he’d be upset about being put in the position of shooting someone who could have walked away alive, if under arrest. But even in that context, can the left model someone’s thought processes enough through the supposed empathy they have to udnerstand why someone would be pissed at someone hitting them with a car?

Apparently not.

I don’t know if the meme of “I’m not mad” vs “Bitch” is a winner for the left. If someone doesn’t think he was hit in between those two moments, maybe. If they know the guy said it after being hit by her recklessly or deliberately driving into him - I think most will think it’s utterly human.

1. Don’t be a moron. I mean “it is a common occurrence”.”

2. And even then I’m sure apologists would say “It was figurative, she didn’t mean it” - as they already excuse such rhetoric from protestors who aren’t presenting an immediate deadly threat. To underscore the point, there are people gleefully gloating that even if he had been struck and killed, it would be a good thing.

3. Remember the cop they were vilifying a few years back, who shot a girl that was literally in the middle of stabbing another?