Posted on 03/13/2015 7:04:59 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D) said it could have set race relations back by several decades if police had fired back at the shooter of two officers in Ferguson late Wednesday.
Cleaver, the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with Ferguson Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) has offered a $3,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the shooter(s) responsible for wounding two officers outside of the Ferguson Police Department.
Cleaver told CNN today that “what I think most people can agree on including the police in Ferguson is that the shots didn’t come from the demonstrators.”
“It came from a hill. We don’t know race or ethnicity,” he said.
He and Clay “believe that there’s no excuse for shooting at police officers, law enforcement officers who get up in the morning and go out and put their lives on the line to protect us.”
“We don’t know the hearts of the gentlemen who were shot, the police officers who were shot. But we think that it’s something that we all abhor,” the congressman said, adding that they’ll be talking later in the day about potentially raising more reward money. “We think somebody called in. We have a nice sum of money.”
Cleaver stressed that whoever shot at the police officers — wounding one in the shoulder and one in the face — “did a tremendous amount of damage to race relations.”
“Just think about this. What if when the shots were fired the police — just one police officer had picked up to use his revolver shooting into the crowd. Today we would be talking about massacre and we would be talking about race relations dipping back 75, 80 years. And I’m also wondering if that was one of the goals. If somebody, whoever did it, wanted to continue to damage race relations. And all people of good will ought to be about the business of trying to reduce racial tension,” he said.
“It’s kind of like embroidery that I saw my grandmother doing. Racial progress in terms of race relations is made stitch by stitch and we hope that what we just did will be a stitch in a big embroidery piece that no one should tolerate this kind of thing and people ought to speak out,” Cleaver continued.
“I mean, you know, people will make nasty comments about the President or Mrs. Obama and there are people who are asked should they have said that he’s a Muslim. And we have people all the time, well, he says he’s a Christian. Let’s start condemning things that are wrong.”
According to these guys on site, it was .40, with evidence (empties) to prove it. Have a look at the video. See the location of shot officers from the position of the shooter at, say, 5:34? The angular size of regular pistol sights is much larger than the target. The shooter would have to use a telescopic sight, and those are not very common on pistols.
Makes slightly more sense. But still some pretty good shooting.
Is there are way to tell from a recovered bullet whether it was fired from a pistol or rifle, if you don’t have the firearm itself? A .22 long rifle cartridge can be fired from either.
.40 carbines are readily available.
Sure. Either the shooter was a competition-grade marksman, one out of a few hundred on the whole planet, who will never agree to such a thing, or a proper equipment was given to an average shooter. We must set the factor of luck aside, as it cannot be depended upon.
Obviously, gang members are not likely to run around with carbines. At 32" of length these are still bulky weapons, and I presume they are extremely rare on the black market. It could not be a crime of opportunity where a thug with a gun comes across some cops to shoot at. Laser in this case is not needed, and indeed it was not seen. The scope is necessary. A vehicle would make a good shooting platform with zero setup and teardown time. Perhaps it is not by accident that the evidence was found in the road. Everything points at a competent agent provocateur who was informed about the lay of the land, had access to uncommon firearms, and was able to get away cleanly. Except that he left the empties... perhaps for a purpose; one concern is that the weapon will be soon "found" and used to frame someone.
Anyone here really think the DC Snipers were a "lone wolf" operation? Really?
He was probably hopeping it would turn out like Kent State
The president pals around with weather underground terrkrists- their goal was a race war.
Uncommon?
Well, I don't know the sales statistics; all I can say is that I don't have one :-)
But aside from that, .40 or 9mm are not particularly speedy or powerful. A good half of .40 ammo is subsonic, which results in significant bullet drop. Average speed is quoted as 1074 ft/s, which is notably slower than 1127 ft/s that is the speed of sound at a typical temperature. This round is pretty good for a handgun, but quickly becomes underpowered in a carbine. Look at German MP 40. It was running on 9 x 19mm. Its effective range was only 100–200 yards, even though the barrel was long enough to accelerate the bullet to 1312 ft/s. And... it lost to Soviet arms in 1942 and was replaced with StG 44 that was using a far more powerful 7.92×33mm Kurz. 2250 ft/s of that one was nearly twice of the 9x19, and four times as much energy (E = m*v2). Effective range increased to 300-600 yards.
Given all that, carbines chambered for pistol cartridges are specialty weapons. They are not that great for long range shooting, and they are too cumbersome to use in close quarters. They are confined to ranges between 20 and 200 yards (at best) - and at 200 yards you'd have to aim something like 30 inches above the target - not a good idea, considering that the trajectory becomes very steep at that range, and 10 yards of ranging error will ensure a miss. I wouldn't be using one for hunting varmints at 100+ yards, as the maximum error I can afford is about ±0.5" - otherwise the ground squirrel runs away in terror :-) (yes, some of them are pretty small but have excellent eyesight :-)
No shooter can damage race relations any more than Obama/Holder/Sharpton/Jackson/Rangle, etc. have already done. The Blacks who have bought into the crap will make it a self-perpetuating situation until they do something so big and bad that “Joe Citizen” decides that enough is enough...
We can make a pretty good guess.
I would assume a professional shooter wouldn't inflict wounds that allowed both officers to leave the hospital within 24 hours. This more likely some thug who shot at a group of police officers and was lucky to hit anything.
You have to have relations in the first place to damage them.
The shooter got the Marxist memo and acted on it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.