Out of Pod Experience

I have to ask, do you have a selection of "witty" comebacks and responses for any occasion that you just pick at random regardless of the context of the conversation?

Well, when I reach your grand age and I can't come up with something better than a knee-jerk response where my brain suddenly loses all coherency; I'll kill myself. I have never had Doritos or Hot Pockets, but I can only assume it is really bad when America's biggest export is stupidity.

But I am touched by your concern for me to become an upstanding member of society though.

I wonder if Reckless Endangerment involving deadly weapons can be applicable. Even if death isn't the intent, and no shots are fired, people who do this are still putting lives in danger.

It's true, this is EVE. Can I have your stuff now?

Had a U.S. immigration (USCIS) officer visit our office once, wearing a Glock in a holster. We employ bilingual Spanish-English speech language pathologists on H-1B Professional visas. He was there on a random check to see if we were actually employing a certain Ms. Rios, H-1B visa speech pathologist, as we'd said on our visa petition.

Consider this, maybe:
-When my nephew was five year old, we once called 911 because his parents denied letting him do something he wanted to do. (911 is the consolidated emergency dispatch number in the U.S.) His parents came close to being criminally charged for allowing the emergency response system to be tied up by a frivolous call. In other words, for failure to prevent a call by a little kid under your control. That's how serious 911 calls were taken.

Well hell yeah, I hope if my family members ever have to call 911, people will take it as an emergency and respond appropriately. Not, "OK, here's another. Three false alarms today, probably just another one. Let me finish my coffee."

-A law enforcement long-term acquaintance of mine and his patrol car partner once made the news. They put 40-something pistol rounds into a fleeing convenience store robbery suspects car. Luckily, no one was hurt.

-Back in my recent graduate and broke single guy days (no furniture, no ashtray even, etc.), I created a smoldering trash can incident. In other words, the cig butt I put in my kitchen trash can caused a paper towel to start to slowly releasing some smoke. I put it out by pulling the paper out and dowsing it in the sink. No big deal, I think.

But no. The next thing, firefighters are about to beat my door down, or else hack through it with axes. I let them in, they come in, trooping. One guy takes the offending trash can out and blasts it with high pressure water hose. The other guys check all of the closets and pantries for.... what? Illegal activity? Dead bodies? More smoldering stuff? Maybe more smoldering stuff, but it really seemed more like, "You've got a smoldering trash can, who knows what kind of prevert you are? We'd better check it out? OK, good enough. I did manage to keep them from axing all of the window panes for ventilation, or hosing down the whole little apartment. All neighbors hearing this and on midnight high alert, of course. Especially the smeller of the smell.

Anyway, the next day, the first thing all of us early morning commuters saw was a parking lot full of my water-blasted garbage. And one little clump of slightly charred paper towel.

Sure glad I didn't have a SWATTING "He's got a gun!" report instead, eh?

I cannot debate on the kind of terrorism that would be in relation to case law since it may be out of bounds of this forum scope.

However, if the target had an office in NATO's cyber-security HQ, albeit $400 to $900 per month (or less), it could very well be towards the other end of the scale. (Compared to the 25y domestic.)

(Depending on military grounds , of course...)

However, given my US relation, I cannot disagree and understand more than fully.

this exactly, when guns get involved like this anything could end up happening.

So you compare SWATing with some guys trying to get someone to sing songs for his stuff on TS?

Anyway, this sounds like if you want to murder someone in your country you just call the police? Is that right? Sounds a bit broken to me.

Pretty much. As I have stated before, myself and other firearms instructors have been warning against military style operant conditioning training for police for over 10 years now. What works for a soldier in a battlefield does not work for a police officer in a community. So yes, it is actually broken because police training has gone overboard. Contact with police in the USA has a greater chance of being fatal than contact with street thugs. Most of the gang members and people involved in illegal drug trades killed on the street are from other gangs or drug dealers, victim and victimizers tending to already have existing criminal records. But now even people with no record of criminal affiliation can get killed, beaten, or falsely charged. In just about every case now the police are investigated by other police and no wrongdoing is deemed (imagine that).

I have had a few run-ins with what we commonly refer to as "Roid-raging PTSD cops", mainly ex soldiers who spent one too many tours in the sandbox, and they are trained to escalate.

And in the manner of raids and Swatting, in my circles I have known a lot of veterans who, if you get a few beers in them, will admit to all those raids they did in Iraq where they tossed in a grenade first even if they already knew there was a family in there, or shot people outright and or saw that happen and it was not the terrorist or insurgent they were looking for (so they plopped an AK-47 next to the body... you know the rest).

Hence I'm not trying to be dramatic when I call this attempted murder. But in order for this to be treated like attempted murder, both the police unions (an insular and elitist group that tries to make it impossible to fire bad cops) and the "copsuckers" - people who worship all things police and military and think that they can do no wrong and anybody who gets killed by a cop must have "deserved it in some way" - will have to admit there is a problem in some way.

Add to that the fact that admitting that Swatting is attempted murder can reopen a lot of past cases where innocents were killed in wrong-house raids because in an indirect manner the system will be indirectly admitting that SWAT raids are life-threatening (instead of denying it as they continue to do).

You made my day.


But I get what you are saying otherwise, dunno why this other guy doesn't. People can be trained to be twitchy on the gun, it only takes a squeeze of the finger if you are already gun up and ready to defend yourself.


If that barrier from you shooting and hurting somebody is thin for some reason it just becomes that much easier. Maybe some places just have mentally unfit people as police. Maybe some people just get spooked and accidental shootings happen. Some people are just assholes, I dunno but it happens. Police do shoot people, and if they think some suicidial murder is holding a person hostage with a bomb of COURSE they are probably ready to shoot to save a life, ready to be quick and save a life. All person in the house has to do is make a quick movement and BAM hes dead.


It should be concidered attempted murder. You do not call armed police officers ready to shoot to someone innocents house. Guns pointed at innocent people is attempted murder, especially if you SENT someone else to do it with no other knowlage and the CHANCE someone could get shot.