Ex-Russian soldier dies of suicide after standoff in Christchurch (over an SKS) - Sensationalist Headlines

You're one to talk, bursting into the thread with nothing to bring but ad hominem attacks. You'd do well to actually read the thread before coming in to grandstand based on inaccurate assumptions. As Riller pointed out, this man didn't face the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison for "owning an object that was legal last week": When you accuse someone of gaslighting, at least try to give consistent information yourself, rather than make a deformed and biased portrayal of what actually happened. So, not really, no. I don't see what's so extreme about the decision to address the fact that a potentially unstable man is in possession of either a weapon that was illegal even prior to recent legislation changes, or an up until recently legal one that would be compensated for and which he currently can't be prosecuted for owning. If the NZ government had done nothing and this man ended up committing a mass shooting as a result of mental issues then you'd be the first to blame them for being aware of his antecedents yet not having acted upon them. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. I generally agree with Riller's stance on the situation. This seems to have been a reasonable decision to make, but it ended badly because of unforeseen circumstances. If you think that's a problematic stance, then you can address his points. As for the weird belief that gun control is somehow the root cause of his suicide, you can simply refer to my response to catbarf.

If his rifle was legal last week, it would also be legal today. As previously pointed out, grace period. He could have handed it in, or given a notice of intend to do so. He did neither. Which is a strong indication that either the rifle itself was illegally modified, he was not legally allowed to own it for some reason, or he was intending to break the law by not handing it in at all. Former two being most likely.

i mean this for example. it's questionable if he would have faced any prison time at all, never mind life imprisonment. this situation is unique because he was actually a danger to police, not because the NZ government has turned authoritarian in the space of a week and just wants any excuse to imprison half its population for arbitrary reasons. perhaps the new gun laws are shitty (i personally think they very much are), but this is a bad place to make that point to begin with and even worse place to extend into some kind of bullshit dystopic fantasy.

Also, a reminder that the man was still armed and dangerous during the standoff, even after they took his SKS. How do I know this, you may ask? Well, my dear Watson, because he managed to stab someone to death. 'Someone' being himself, of course.

Not to mention this man had already spent time in prison for assault. I thought most pro-gun posters here agreed with the idea of restricting weapons access to felons...

i mean if you want to say anything, perhaps make it about how there's clearly a lot of misinformation about the new laws, and the government needs to clear it up before more people get mislead or hurt. i guarantee the fact that his door was kicked in immediately also made the situation much worse, and just goes to show why police militarization needs to be avoided at all costs, all around the world.

This is triple distilled concern trolling. You don't give a shit about this guy and you definitely don't give a shit about shoehorning your agenda and manipulating news to score political points, so give it up already. I read the article. They raided his house because of a toy and tried to detain him for having the SKS. SKSes as a type are 100% legal in NZ or was until recently. He most likely had a category A license which would have limited the rifle's magazine capacity to 7 rounds with a magazine block. The only illegal modification you can make to an SKS (without converting it to full auto) in New Zealand is removing that block to allow for 10 (the factory configuration), so that must be what it was. So the country's in panic mode, someone reports a picture of a toy on Facebook, the police decided to make a big show out of it by locking down the entire block, his house gets raided and his family is detained, they find the SKS ~illegally modified~ to take a whole 3 extra rounds, and they again chose to continue the charade of some kind of massive anti terror sting even though they had the rifle in hand. At no point did this guy represent a threat to the police - there was no standoff, he was just sitting in a car while they pelted him with gas grenades because he didn't want to get out until he talked to his family. Eventually he stabbed himself in the gut. Still continuing the charade, they had the bomb squad check his car and are continuing to "secure the area" even after he's dead. You don't think this was maybe a little over the top? You don't think maybe this guy had cause to believe his life was as good as over as he's surrounded by a SWAT team, pelted with gas grenades and cut off from his family?

I've seen posts from NZ gun owners saying police showed up at their homes or workplaces to talk to them and confiscate their now-banned weapons, so this seems in line with that. There's no reason to think anything about the rifle was already illegal, although you're right in that it's a possibility.

Police showing up at work

So illegally modifying weapons is okay to do now? What happened to the 'law abiding' in 'law abiding gun owner' that people keep talking about when arguing against gun control? If we assume that all he did was cut out the mag limiter, he still broke the law and build an illegal weapon. Are we going by some sort of relativistic law-definitions where it's okay to break laws we disagree with or what? While reporting a facebook-photo for toy guns is indeed silly, consider the following: How the fuck do you intend to tell happy airsoft kids with lifelike replicas from mentally unstable alt-right kids with actual weapons on photographs? Given the current events in New Zealand, it seems like a case of 'reasonable concern gone wrong'. Kid shouldn't be reported, but I can totally follow the reasoning it takes to report him. Police being on high alert is also understandable in this event, when responding to possible firearms-related crimes. You don't knock on someone's door and go 'Howdy there do you happen to be armed and dangerous? Cause someone told us you were'. That's a good way to get your officers shot. Also, nice meme-wiggles to make the actual illegal rifle seem innocent, mate. As for continuing the operation, they might have had the rifle, but they didn't know if there were more weapons and they didn't have the suspect in custody. The suspect who might be armed. With say, a knife, perhaps? Armed non-compliance seems pretty threatening to me. Refusing non-negotiators or law-enforcement personel contact with a suspect is pretty standard procedure, you never know what either suspect or third-party might say to escalate or complicate situations. Then he tragically killed himself. And the police, still on high-alert, made sure the area was safe. Because by now, they had both illegal weapons, non-compliance and unstable behaviour to go on as reasons to be on-edge. It's excessive only in hindsight, and even then, it was the man's refusal to comply that escalated events to the point where he was being pelted with gas and refused contact. The man was still armed, non-compliant and unstable right to the end.

My point is it certainly doesn't warrant this kind of response. This is a pay-a-fine-and-carry-on situation. It's still a toy dude. Check it out, sure. Be prepared, sure. Detaining everyone even after you confirmed it was just a toy? Also, again, a bypassed magazine limit isn't that big of a deal. The meme wiggles are mocking the wording which is attempting to make it sound a lot scarier than it is. You can't do anything else illegal to an SKS in NZ. Armed... with a knife... inside of a vehicle. This isn't a guy walking around brandishing a knife at officers. He's inside of a vehicle. He doesn't want to come out because of the extreme force being leveled at him. He wants to talk to his son. It was excessive from the outset.

I assume you and I can agree that the man needed to be brought back to the station because of firearms charges and resisting arrest, yes? That much is, hopefully, not up for discussion. Now, how then, would you go about doing this, once the man has barricaded himself inside a vehicle and is brandishing a bladed weapon, evidently refusing to come out? Do you send an officer over to open the window and hope the guy acting irrationally doesn't stab the officer in the face? Do you just sit about and wait for him to come out? Do you hope his son and ex-wife who are not trained negotiators and by all likelihood very emotionally invested one way or the other somehow talk him down? Bonus challenge: You're not allowed to use non-lethal gas grenades to pacify him, because that is, by your own definition, excessive force in the situation.

Do not lock down the entire block, wait for him to come home and explain the situation neutrally?

Except you removed circumstance by saying it was never okay. I also find it disheartening that you're trying to say I'm 'introducing other suffering people' when you're the one who made such an unsympathetic blanket statement.

Right, thanks for the projection. At no point in any of my post do I make any argument seeking to claim that supports gun control, so I still have no fucking idea where the shoehorning of some imaginary agenda of mine comes into view. The only thing my posts address is the absurd claim that gun laws are somehow responsible for the death of this person. If pointing out the hypocrisy of pinning this on gun laws while saying the root cause of mass shootings is improper mental healthcare is "trying to score political points", then I don't know what isn't in your eyes. If you actually do give a shit about people like this guy then you should focus on what ought to be done to protect mentally other vulnerable persons from self-harm, not use this news piece as a way to spread fear about some gun control boogeyman. And where in the article does it say that the man had no choice other than either face a lifetime in prison or kill himself? You've made the claim, I expect you to back it up. You didn't address the fact that this man had been to prison for assault. Under your own gun laws that's enough to face restrictions from acquiring a weapon. You didn't address the fact that government inaction is something you decry when it leads to mass shootings by perpetrators who were already spotted as dangerous by authorities. You can say what you want about the way authorities intervened. Yes, they handled it poorly, and police in general should always seek to deescalate situations to avoid violence, whether self-harm or inflicted upon others. But to claim that they shouldn't have done anything? That gun control is responsible for this man's death? That is patently ridiculous.

OK, as you wish - I'll pretend you don't pop into any thread tangentially related to firearms to try and explain why they're bad and should be banned. Now we can move on. More gaslighting - I didn't make that claim. I made the claim that the ridiculous way the police chose to showboat the situation caused this man to act irrationally, thereby creating in his mind the perception that he had no way out. Assault isn't always a felony. Under my own gun laws, only felonies preclude you from acquiring a weapon. But that's OK. My own gun laws don't apply in New Zealand. I suppose there's no vast gulf of possibilities between "literally doing nothing" and "shutting down city blocks and bridges and raiding multiple homes + detaining uninvolved family members over a boy's toy gun someone saw on Facebook". You're right, I totally claimed that they shouldn't have done anything rather than done something in the vast gulf of possibilities between "literally doing nothing" and "shutting down city blocks and bridges and raiding multiple homes + detaining uninvolved family members over a boy's toy gun someone saw on Facebook".

Shouldn't be hard to pretend that something you pretend happens didn't. You've made this claim: Which is, as we've shown, false. I doubt non-felony assault can net you prison time. Yes, you haven't made those claims yourself. However, if you actually paid attention to my original post: These are claims that posters here have made or implied. You'll also notice that catbarf then attempts to address this head-on, he didn't try to deny it. When you respond to my post, I expect your response to be relevant to my point. It's not my fault if you shift the goalposts and try to make it about the specifics of how police behaved in this situation. That's irrelevant to my original argument.

It doesn't really make sense to say "something is NEVER okay" and then follow it up with "I meant only in very specific circumstances is it not okay" That's... Not what your post meant dude.

Someone reports a picture of what they thought was a real rifle on Facebook. We don't know what the picture was, because this is the only news site reporting the situation, and the son wasn't named. "Members of the public who heard what they thought were explosions were hearing police deploying gas at the scene." There is no confirmation in the article of gas being used anywhere. Securing a non-compliant person's vehicle is-or should be- standard procedure. You don't know what the state of the car is, especially since your only experience of a man is "not talking to us, then stabbed himself". You don't know if he's a sane individual, and I don't want the police to make a bet between "unstable self destructive but harmless to others guy" vs "unstable self destructive guy that rigged his car to blow" This is misleading. The article says they had a negotiation team talking to him for several hours. More than enough for high emotions to cool off, in an ideal world. I also don't know where the gas grenades are coming from, there's no mention of any proof of them being used ever. Same as above. The response was entirely appropriate and not extreme. Several hours of negotiation with backup SWAT at midnight to 3 AM is as calm as can happen. And if you look at it from the police's point of view, here's what they know, as far as we know: They get reports of a child's facebook picture which can be mistaken for a real gun (otherwise the cops would just tell the reporter "that looks like airsoft" and dismiss it) they found an illegal, modified rifle in his dad's room, along with a number of other guns Along with lots of world war 2 German memorabilia, in a time where they just had a neo-nazi shooting The father, with a history of assault, is holed up in his car They don't know anything about his mental state They don't know what his motivations are for being there, or for having any of that gear. They could believe the family, or play it safe and negotiate They don't know what his car contains or how he's prepared, if at all The guy tries to call his family several times, which they can either read as "harmless" or "attempt at emotional manipulation", among other options The guy is apparently worried about going back to jail, which they would tell the negotiating team. So you have a guy with an unknown mental state, in an unknown situation, who you know collects weapons and German WW2 memorabilia Even with everything we learned from the article and in hindsight, the guy could STILL have turned out to be a proper white supremacist nutcase murderer, even with his son saying he wasn't. But we don't know. These are just the facts, my opinions on guns, whatever they may or may not be right now, don't matter.

Yeah because this isn't about anyone else considering the original topic so let's go back to that? Idk man you've put me in an awkward position making it neigh impossible to have a say without harming my own opinion through "gotcha" or "why would you blanket this"!! Probably because it wasn't relevant to mention otherwise. It doesn't matter now because anything else i do say is just going to get picked away and that's pretty fucked sorry.

Here’s the problem I’m having with the whole situation. At least half of the people responding to this are trying to dismiss the whole thing as some one off instance while speculating about the person’s mental health INSTEAD of questioning why a report on a Facebook profile picture led to such a heavy handed response. Everyone so far has failed to mention the possibility of police standoffs becoming a common occurrence once the transition period expires and anyone who refuses to comply has guns pointed at them over the knee jerk reaction of outlawing something which was previously legal and had very little involvement with criminal activity to begin with. From the responses here I feel like half of you would be totally complacent with the idea of the authorities going Ruby Ridge on anyone who is non-compliant, which scares me.

It is baffling to me that you can think this situation was handled well it isn't even about "in hindsight". He was in a fucking car. He could kill people if he wanted to. None of this arugment makes coherent sense to me.

I'm not sure what your point even is here. Should they have shot him while he was in the car because he could still be a threat? What are you saying they should have done here instead exactly?

Its almost as if this entire thing is being used by posters ss a way to flash political points.

I love watching the world slide slowly into authoritarianism.

Case in point:

The cops were the ones who escalated this, they essentially acted like the American Police. There was a good way to end this and Grendiac pointed it out.

Irrelevant to the post I quoted, which basically accuses NZ's gun laws of being responsible for this person's death. That post doesn't claim that the cops should have done this in a better way, it claims they shouldn't have done anything at all. Again, how is that not an example of using this event to score political points?

What is it that you think you're trying to accomplish in this thread exactly other than look like a giant asshole?

Okay, so I get insulted, accused of pushing an agenda, flamed, gaslighted, and rating spammed while people don't even bother addressing my arguments. But somehow I'm the giant asshole here for pointing out that pro-gun posters in this thread have tried to use this event for political grandstanding? Literally what even is wrong with the post you've quoted?