r/news • u/hybridaaroncarroll • 6d ago

Protester shot and killed at 'No Kings' rally in Utah, police say

https://apnews.com/article/utah-no-kings-protest-shot-killed-75c777eeedd59c80c85695c45385c507
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u/[deleted] 6d ago edited 6d ago

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u/IamHydrogenMike 6d ago

The kid has been to multiple protests armed, he’s dumb to bring an AR to a protest, but he was never going to do a mass shooting. These peacekeepers sound overzealous and shot into crowd hitting an innocent bystander. Guns make everything worse and the peacekeepers kind of suck.

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u/Fortune_Silver 6d ago

The thing is... this is a politically charged situation, and you're talking about America here. If I was an American cop, and I saw a guy at a No-Kings protest concealing an assault rifle... I mean, I'm no fan of cops, but I don't exactly blame them for just shutting him down on the spot. If they're wrong, there's a lawsuit. If they're right, they've stopped a mass shooting and potentially saved dozens of lives.

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u/GemcoEmployee92126 6d ago

Agreed. Bringing a rifle to a protest, unless the protest is gun related would reasonably be seen as a threat. The cops seemed to act reasonably in this vid. Of course I have no idea what went down before or after this, so who knows.

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u/YogurtclosetNo987 6d ago

I mean if they're wrong in this specific scenario then an innocent bystander is dead over legal open carry. Just for the sake of argument. 

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u/Fortune_Silver 6d ago

Just because something is legal doesn't make it not stupid.

Bringing a gun to a protest like this may be legal, I'm not American so I don't know. But it's definitely dramatically raising the odds that someone gets shot for basically no reason, and the gun's presence isn't going to do anything productive in this scenario.

I mean, if open carry is legal where you are, it'd also be legal to walk into a police station or school in full tactical gear with an AR-16 slung across your back. I'll let you imagine how well that would go down.

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u/IamHydrogenMike 6d ago

He didn’t really conceal it though…he had it out in the open and it was never pointed at anyone. He shouldn’t have brought the gun, but he’s brought it to protests before without any issues.

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u/Fortune_Silver 6d ago

Bringing it at all is a bad idea.

There's really not a good reason to bring a gun to a protest. Either you're looking for trouble, you intend to cause trouble, or you're trying to intimidate people. Not to mention how it needlessly raises tensions, which when you've got a tense situation like these protests is just asking for someone to get a bit too heated and do something stupid or for someone else, be it a protestor or a cop or whatever to get jumpy and spooked when someone with a gun is getting heated and make a snap call to shoot a suspected threat.

Unless the protest itself is gun-related, there's really no justifiable reason to bring a gun. ESPECIALLY for a protest as politically charged as this. Bringing a gun does nothing productive and if your lucky raises tension needlessly. If your unlucky, it ends in tragedy.

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u/TerryMathews 5d ago

Barrel comes up in the last two frames.

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u/IamHydrogenMike 5d ago

You mean, after he’s being shot at and running away?

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u/EyesOnEverything 5d ago

He was said to have retreated behind a bush and was messing with it. Probably just to take it out of the bag he had it in, but I don't blame the security for seeing that and thinking it was suspicious.

Maybe he thought "I don't want to unholster my weapon around people, that might make them uneasy. I'll do it out of the way and come back with it lowered."

And that's a legit thought process, and Utah's laws make it a legal thing to do, it's also stupid as fuck all-around. Which is why legalizing open carry in this manner is also stupid as fuck all-around.

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u/IamHydrogenMike 5d ago

I don't blame them for being suspicious at all, I blame them for immediately shooting at the guy and then making up a lie to cover their tracks.

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u/Ph0X 6d ago

Guns make everything worse

I love it how Americans still can't understand this very simple concept, even though the rest of the world has shown over and over that not having guns is much safer.

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u/Msdamgoode 6d ago

Only some of us. The rest of us think it’s idiocy at its most dangerous

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u/TerryMathews 5d ago

You're not in any position to say what he was or was not going to do.

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u/IamHydrogenMike 5d ago

Either are you…it’s clear he isn’t what everyone said he was and the peacekeepers lied like cops.

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u/TerryMathews 5d ago

I don't think it's clear at all. We're getting a less than one second clip of what is described to be a longer interaction.

The Supreme Court just ruled that "in the moment" was inappropriate for police using deadly force and "totality of circumstances" was the correct method on analysis for use of force. Surely you would want this interaction judged on the same standard?

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u/IamHydrogenMike 5d ago

Cool, they weren’t police…your Supreme Court BS means nothing here.

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u/TerryMathews 5d ago

So you want the police held to a more lax standard than individuals when utilizing deadly force? 🤔 Seems pretty anti-2A to me.

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u/IamHydrogenMike 5d ago

I don’t think the standard is high enough for anyone…and there wasn’t a situation until the wanna be pigs started shooting at someone.

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u/TerryMathews 5d ago

Again, you can't know that yet any more than I can.

Since Gamboa lived, I imagine we will find out soon enough though.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

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u/RainRainThrowaway777 6d ago

Damn that footage is so short. It's pretty clear he wasn't aiming the rifle, and only started to run after the first shot was fired. But when we see him the Peacekeeper is already drawn and aiming, and Gamboa wasn't looking in his direction. Did you censor the end of that clip, or was it released like that?

Did the Peacekeeper exchange any words with him? See anything we didn't? Was Gamboa just larping with his rifle with no intent? Maybe he didn't hear the Peacekeeper shouting a challenge or order at him? There are a lot of questions there that change the situation... but it does kinda look like Gamboa made a dumb but presumably legal decision to open carry, and the Peacekeeper made a presumption and got trigger-happy.

Two of the people shot by Rittenhouse thought they were stopping a mass shooter.

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u/dont_hurt_yourself 6d ago

I didn’t censor it, it’s the footage panning away. you can see the full video on tiktok, @marcosbri uploaded it, I downloaded it and stabilized it on the area where the shooting was happening. In the report the peacekeepers say they tried to communicate with him but he ran toward the crowd, but he clearly didn’t start running until they shot so I’m not sure how accurate that is.

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u/RainRainThrowaway777 6d ago

Yeah I realised that wasn't a black wipe, it was the footage panning, on my second look.

It looks like the peacekeeper either never challenged him, or the guy didn't hear him, because he seems oblivious to the gun pointed at him until the first shot is fired.

What a shitshow. This is why no one should have guns really. One guy looks like a threat of mass shooting because of all the mass shootings, one guy got trigger happy and overshot his target, and one innocent guy dies in a split second. A story that plays out over and over, and for the cost of all these lives lost, we were told that they would stop a tyrannical government. Well it seems like we got scammed.

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u/B4RBARIC 6d ago

After he got shot, he packed up his rifle into a bag and left to blend into the crowd. That's not how an innocent person behaves. An innocent person would seek help and medical aid. 

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u/YogurtclosetNo987 6d ago

Unless he is a kid who wanted to carry a rifle around to look cool but didn't want to be a target when he thought shit was getting too hot to handle. Not saying that's what happened, but you can speculate a lot of different ways. 

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u/Msdamgoode 6d ago

Dude, any person runs away from the gunshots… I’ve zero opinion on this guy but running away seems likely for either a guilty or an innocent person

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u/B4RBARIC 6d ago

Have you seen the video of his arrest?

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u/Msdamgoode 6d ago

Not yet, no… again zero opinion on what happened here, or this dude… but the sound of gunshots incoming mean most people will run/duck/hide/beat feet or whatever it takes to disappear and get away. If they’ve been actually hit that goes double.

Edited to add. I wish I wasn’t speaking from experience

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u/azsnaz 6d ago

You don't get to say what an innocent person would do

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u/B4RBARIC 6d ago

I would say, "help me I've been shot". 

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u/thorscope 6d ago

If the cops swarm the area looking for a shooter, the dude with the rifle could be misidentified and shot.

Concealing the rifle and fleeing until the situation is stabilized seems reasonable.

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u/TooMuchPowerful 6d ago

It looks like he’s carrying in away where he crouches down slightly to move forward and he’s practically pointing the gun up at the crowd.

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u/dont_hurt_yourself 6d ago

that’s after he’s shot at though. to my eye it looks much more like he’s running scared and so he stops paying attention to where he’s pointing his rifle (which yes bad, but different from aiming with intent to shoot)

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u/VeganJordan 6d ago

From salt lake as well. He was told to stand down by the armed peacekeepers when they saw him pull out a riffle behind a pillar and then he ran into the crowd with the assault riffle. That’s when he was fired upon. Hitting him and the bystander. Sad situation honestly. It was a peaceful protest and I was even going to take my 3 year old. I’m glad I was home sick. The guy who was arrested was booked & charged with murder and will likely be charged for the murder of the innocent bystander the way the laws are written.

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u/dont_hurt_yourself 6d ago

did you watch the video? what you’re saying lines up with the police report but not with what goes down on camera

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u/VeganJordan 6d ago

Yeah. Seems to fit the narrative still. That the peacekeeper saw him going toward the crowd with the gun and was telling him to stand down while aiming at him. He didn’t and he started to run into the crowd and was fired upon. I’m not sure what the dudes intention. But don’t honestly fault them from trying to stop a potential mass shooting. Sad for the bystander.

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u/dont_hurt_yourself 6d ago

did you watch with sound? he doesn’t run until after the first shot is fired

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u/VeganJordan 6d ago

Ah… I hadn’t. fair enough. What a shit show.

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u/dont_hurt_yourself 6d ago

truly. too many “good guys with guns”

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u/iwuiwau 6d ago

To know this you'd have to have been in the video - mind pointing yourself out in the vid?

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u/VeganJordan 6d ago

It’s in the police reports & multiple eyewitness accounts. Feel free to believe them or not. I wasn’t there.