Naw I disagree when you use both videos. Not trying to justify anything but can easily use both videos + physical evidence to make it pretty clear he shot and shot first.

There are plenty of videos/pictures of the damage in Santa Monica if you were interested (I know Goofy/Wookie aren't, as facts that are inconvenient to the narrative are always to be ignored)

This is what the Mayor of Santa Monica said after the damage. Dude is as liberal as they come. The whole city is really.

"Sunday was one of the most distressing days in Santa Monica history. We know better than to let the looters obscure the message of the protesters, who have indeed been heard. What a small and selfish criminal element has done instead is to bring our community more closely together. We will support our local businesses to recover from this. Much was lost on Sunday, including property and innocence. As Mayor, I'm grateful that we did not lose any lives," he wrote.

He also said 95% of those arrested were not locals, which is pretty much a given knowing the Santa Monica demographic (Very liberal wealthy white people, beach bums, and homeless). From watching live, like I said, it was basically like you were watching the Purge the first few hours.

I think the city and police really wanted to give the protestors the benefit of the doubt this was about peaceful protest. But after business after business is being absolutely gutted at some point even the most idealistic politician has to open their eyes and see what is going on.

The video has no proof that he is shooting a gun. The video has no proof he even had a gun in his hand pointing it. It just as easily could have been his cell phone. If we are to believe you that he is allegedly shooting a gun, The video has no proof who fired first because there is no sound. Only the NG/police are saying he fired first because ofcourse they would say that.

Also Benefit of the doubt should not be given to the group that intentionally turned their cameras off so they could do things that they clearly knew they shouldn’t be doing.

The police chief was retiring. Firing him was purely a political stunt I am guessing. I don't know if it works this way with chiefs, but for lower level officers they often accrue a lot of unused vacation time over their careers and basically take month/years off at the end as fully paid vacation before retiring. There is a non zero chance that chief was long gone already.

Kinda like how that video posted above, which is full of plenty of "facts" and was meant to show exactly what you're claiming we don't want to see, seems to be really inconvenient to your narrative?

Kelhus is, as always, giving a masterclass on how his tribal conditioning leads to the coloring of his views

Amazing how Goofyball is still going with the "I didn't see it so it didn't happen" argument, when the super progressive Democrat mayor has already acknowledged it happened. And when all the rest of us can take 5 seconds to plainly see what happened.

Talk about eyes wide shut.

What's "it" here? This is what you posted the Democrat mayor saying:

Seems right? I didn't say there was no looting, lol, is your emotion clouding your ability to read people's posting right now?

But also, nothing there conflicts with what I said in my post. Like I said, maybe I missed it in my perusal of BondTrader's video, feel free to point out what I missed if that's the case. But otherwise you're sitting here like "well the evidence I'm right is out there, even if the video already posted to try to prove my point failed to do so, and the onus is on you to go find it" - which, lololololol, try harder

Nobody cares if some decidedly stupid business owners also advocate criminality either, as it does't suddenly justify criminality or its advocacy. You're simply too thick to grasp this. Tell the advocating business owner to go to the other business owners guarding and trying to protect their businesses and watch him get laughed at. Because nobody cares- and by that I mean normal sane rational people- about you or anyone else's advocacy for criminality. Wookie referred to white looters arsonists and rioters as "admirable white people protesting", when they weren't protesting, they were rioting, looting and burning stuff. Nobody cares about your glorification of crime or conflating criminals with protestors or insistence that Trump said he wanted black people killed when condemning looters rioters and arsonists and secretly meant that, when referring to all of those engaged in criminality of both races as thugs. You're simply idiots, the pair of you.

I'm just wondering why you appealed to business owners to begin with if you never cared about their opinions regardless? It seems like, after some edits, we've gotten your original post that deeply cared about the feelings of business owners down to "well that's a crime, QED". Which, fine? You could just say that, don't know why you needed to invent some monolith of "business owners agree with me" that you'd later have to retract.

Certainly not the only people approaching him as you see dozens of people run into the building on camera and the article mentions the police clearing out the parking lot, implying some people to clear out.

The cops walked up and fired on his restaurant and he returned fire.

This would be a good time to reflect on your 2A views though.

The vast vast majority of business owners don't want to see their business looted and burned after all the long hours and sacrifice they put into it, that's simple common sense.
I've no time for opportunistic criminals hijacking a protest over a very relevant issue for their own selfish ends at other people's expense. It's no different than opportunist anarchists hijacking protests over inequality at G8. I put anyone who works hard at building their own business over any criminal. To breezily cite insurance is a huge f@ck you to their hard work and sacrifice. I put victims over perpetrators which is why I think the McMichaels should be convicted of first degree murder and put the feelings of business owners victimized by criminals over those who advocate for criminals. Arson, rioting and looting are crimes and to advocate for such things is despicable.Fix your moral compass.

I don't think it's a big jump to assume that business owners, in general, prefer not to have their businesses looted or destroyed. I don't think it's a stretch to say that, in the normal day to day life, people would prefer not theft and vandalism not to occur

Also not to big of a stretch to say people would prefer a better, more civilized police force, and aren't getting it.

lol goofy business owners do agree with him regardles of WaPo's ability to find a story

Also lol @ Wookie being a useful idiot for Bezos with his BurnRetailDown schtick, not to mention all of the future capital and wealth transfer opportunities being created

He didn't shoot first. You can see a round hit above the table and when he returns fire you can see them retreat, take cover and fire at the doorway.

They're claiming they were firing pepper balls initially but something hit his wall and that's when he tried to defend himself.

If he mistook pepper balls for live ammo it's a tragedy but whatever hit the wall looks exactly like the rounds that hit the wall when they killed him.

We'll never know if one of those yahoos fired a real round at the door for fun.
It wouldn't be the first time.

The people that were running towards him into his business were all already behind him before he raised his gun. The three police officers were the only ones approaching him at any reasonable distance. There were some guys in the general direction of where his gun was aiming running away 50-75 yards away, but unless you think he was trying to murder a random guy running away from 50+ years it is safe to assume he was shooting the only guys in his general vicinity.

They fired those pepper balls at him. He returned fire with an actual gun.

Just reviewed my stance on 2A: I am still good with people owning guns and am still not ok with people shooting at the police unless they have a good reason.

Sorry, but "what about the property damage?" has been the go-to line for people wanting to deny civil rights for decades. I'm not about to start taking it seriously in 2020, esp not from trolling buffoons who couldn't give a rip about small business owners, esp not when the cops are the ones escalating the situation in 99% of these incidents.

Stop staffing the police with racist thugs and the looting will stop, ez game.

Oh, right, I must defend the Wal-Mart from Bezos! Stop protesting, black people!

Its absolutely amazing to me their names are green and orange, because they are atrocious posters (tbf only judging from posts itt).

That's fair and I wasn't trying to absolve the police's actions here at all

lol yep. Exactly

At least in New York, the looting and property damage is pretty distinct from the protesting. Very little property damage is occurring because of conflicts between the protesters and the police. Blurring the two does a disservice to the protesters. And as you know, I think Kelhus's argument that protection of property should trump free expression is absurd.

Also, I probably would feel the same way you do if the small business owners I knew were Klansmen in Selma, Alabama. But in my neighborhood, they most certainly are not.

Amazing that he thinks crime is the same as protesting and that only black people are protesting...