joking aside, I hope the best for all involved. Violence sucks.

I’ve picked up some of the details of gun legality from the ever-vocal 2nd Amendment crowd. Is it a crime to carry a gun in a bag if one has a concealed carry permit for it? The university probably has policies that limit 2nd Amendment rights.

It’s unknown if he had a permit and whether he “brandished” a gun at officers. I’ve found only one tweet that suggests that he “brandished” *something*. Most twittering and media coverage indicate that the only shots fired were fired by an officer of BPD, who “feared for his life.”

Who knows? Maybe between the time he was quietly computing and the time he was shot, the student erected a barricade of computer chairs then settled in for a long fire-fight . Maybe he mounted that barricade screaming, “We Shall Eat Cake! Your cake! I just came from Dwinelle Hall and I’m using cake as synecdoche here, so keep in mind that when I say “cake,” I mean all baked goods, including donuts!”

This is not an ideal time for the police to be embroiled in yet another case of responding to a threat with disproportionate violence, even if the officer’s reaction was justified. If the gun owner’s actions left the officer no other option than to fire, the cops’ version of the incident will still likely be met with suspicion and disbelief.

The long history of mild punishments handed out to police who use excessive force, from the Rough Riders and their ilk to Johannes Mehserle, has convinced many citizens that the police are never to be trusted to tell the truth in their initial statements, much less in the results of their internal investigations.

This incident is extremely unfortunate any way you look at it.

***In all sincerity, I hope the guy recovers quickly. This is not a good development even if it’s completely unrelated to Occupy, which appears to be the case. A lack of evidence linking him to Occupy won’t stop the media from using headlines and creatively-phrased articles to popularize the notion that this was a typical example of the violent tactics embraced by the Occupy Movement in their militarized quest to bring down this great nation.

It might have been the start of a coup! Have the power stations, City Hall, Post Office  and the network TV offices been seized by anarchists? What about the train stations and telegraph offices? Has Lenin’s shade proclaimed a Dictatorship of the Proletariat? I might have to walk down to the Finland Station and see who’s come to town. (Edited for wonky paragraph breaks. Apologies.)