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The Highly Baffling Mystery of the Garland Shootings
I’m as perplexed as you must be:
Two gunmen have been shot dead after opening fire outside a conference on cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a suburb of Dallas, US police say.
They drove to the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland as the event was ending, and began shooting at a security officer before being killed by police.
The bomb squad has been called in to search their vehicle for explosives.
The event, organised by a group critical of Islam, included a contest for drawings of the Prophet.
Security had been high around the centre because of the controversial nature of the event, which included Dutch anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders as one of the keynote speakers.
But Garland Police Department spokesman Joe Harn said there had been no credible threats in advance, and it was not immediately clear if the shootings were related to the event.
I applaud Mr. Harn’s open-mindedness and unwillingness to rush to judgment. After all, there are so many other obvious reasons two men might be inspired to attack this event. Here are my top ten theories:
1) They were sore that Pamela unfriended them on Facebook.
2) Someone in the audience stole their parking space.
3) When they said, “Stop eating your popcorn so loudly, it’s ruining the exhibition for me,” they meant it.
4) They were in love with Jodie Foster.
5) That’s what too many Twinkies will do to you, everyone knows that.
6) Pacquiao was robbed, man.
7) Yet another out-of-control iPhone-v-Android feud.
8) That’ll show Geert that you can’t go through the express lane with more than 20 items in Texas!
9) They told Geller to stop playing “Hotel California,” but would she listen?
10) Geert should have known better than to mess with their Dungeons & Dragons character.
All equally plausible, right? We’ll just have to wait for the results of the investigation, I guess, but in the meantime, what’s your theory?
Published in General
So has Obama and friends found a YouTube video to blame this on yet?
It’s good to see all those hours of professional development bearing fruit, PL.
Has anyone, anywhere, seen a photo of the cartoons in question? Or have they succeeded in censoring them without any aid from our government?
Excellent, Mike! Cannot “Like” enough.
This tragedy could have been averted had the officers been trained to deal with these men in a respectful and honoring way….
The tragedy was averted, and the men were dealt with most respectfully: both kills were clean, with minimal suffering. A righteous shoot, indeed.
Eric Hines
From the story you linked to :
“We had a SWAT react team in the back that very quickly responded within seconds and helped secure the scene.”
It’s been a little while since I’ve seen the word “SWAT” used with any sort of positive context. Looks like Texas was prepared.
Here are some, disappointingly few. A couple of others, from the Hebdo event are reprinted here.
Eric Hines
This was the winner. I can’t objectively say it deserved to win without seeing the competition. With that caveat, I think it’s pretty good.
Claire, remember when you wrote in your shock at experiencing the Charlie Hebdo massacre:
The assailants are as yet at liberty. I hope they’ll be dead by the time you read this. But if not: You want me too? Come get me. Because nothing short of killing me — and many more of my kind — will ever shut us up.
And if you don’t believe that now, you’ll believe it very soon. Because there are more of us willing to die for that freedom than those of you eager to take it from us. And soon you will find out that those of us willing to die for that freedom are also much better at killing than you.
Well, Pamela Geller didn’t shut up, instead saying, “Come and get me.” And your end statement was truer than you perhaps thought: Texans proved to be “much better at killing” than heavily armed Muslims.
In Texas it is “Come and Take It.” We even have a flag:
Seawriter
Molon Labe. I have a coin with that on it.
If anyone is interested in seeing the artwork entered at this show, Breitbart has them here.
Seawriter
Having seen them, I think I would have voted for the gay wedding cake. That’s just my opinion. But I can understand why they chose the winner.