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Media and emergencies
NRO Online takes down the media over Katrina coverage. You know, the 40,000 dead, bodies stacked like cordwood, mass rape, etc.
We older fogies can remember the riots of 1967 (I know -- if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there). Cities terrorized by snipers (which was a major impetus to GCA 68). When they investigated later, it turned out there had been almost no sniping (sniping to media = gunshots somewhere). What had been happening was that from time to time a National Guardsman would feel threatened and fire a shot. That would go zipping or ricocheting for a mile, and every Guardsman who heard it would conclude he'd been fired on and fire back, and those would go zipping and richoceting... sorta like a nuclear chain reaction, with .308s instead of neutrons. Next day would come the story about how several square miles of (insert city name) had been terrorized by snipers in regimental strength. I remember one incident where a gunowner was seen taking rifles into his house (not surprising in the setting), someone called the authorities, and a tank was sent out ... which proceeded to demolish his house with .50 fire. (Luckily, he and his family had time to flee into the basement and survived).
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Comments
I remember reading about the riots while I was visiting the old Newseum in Rosslyn, Va.
I was too young to remember any of it, but the passage in the 1967 Detroit Free Press article that was displayed in the 1960s section of the museum about the Detroit riots was eye-opening.
The story was about a M48 Michigan Nat'l Guard tank opening up on a sniper with its .50 cal Browning M2 machine gun mounted on the turret. I know my military equipment, so I realized the enormous firepower the MI ANG brought to bear on some guy with a rifle in a house.
Reading that a tank--a TANK--respond to an American riot just amazed me. I couldn't believe the authorities would have done that. Times were different back then, I suppose...
Posted by: Poshboy at May 24, 2006 02:54 PM
Different how? Other than the fact that the BATF started the little fracus down in Waco, of course.
Posted by: K at May 25, 2006 06:20 AM