Poll: NWFA and the Finicum shooting: where does the membership stand?

[etrain16]

I agree with those that stated the poll questions are lacking at least one very important response - those that are still looking at the evidence to see what more comes out.

You see, not everyone jumps to an immediate conclusion. Many of us have asked to see more, to learn more. It appears, OP, you have made your decision, based on limited information, and are looking down at others who took the same limited information and drew a different conclusion. You've made it clear what side you're on, and have lumped everyone that doesn't come to the same conclusion you did, together, and, obviously, in a negative light.

Why be insulting to the members here that don't share your exact opinion? Isn't that what you claim to be upset about anyway?

How about you start by editing your poll and see what happens if you add the third option.

 

[Velzey]

^this!

@etrain16 is spot on!

 

[clearconscience]

It was not a traffic stop. It was a planned arrest stop. What was he supposed to do when the cops started shooting at the first stop without provocation? He did what anyone would do, he ran, and they continued shooting at him while he fled toward the roadblock ambush.

He ran.
Did they start shooting at the first stop?
Do you know what transpired? Were you there?
Based off the info we know. He ran from a law enforcement stop. Was it a traffic stop, arrest stop? Doesn't matter. He fled law enforcement which is a crime.
Maybe if they did shoot at the first stop it was because they feared he would run them down.
We don't have answers to that.
Unlike most stops, the feds knew the person/persons were armed. And he ran.

He ran. We know that for a fact.
While the feds and crooks in the capital escalated the chance for violence, finicum made the decision that led to his own death.

 

[Bazooka Joe]

Of course, the other possibility is that NWFA members will swing 80-20 in favor of bad shoot, in which case either the OSP and the FBI admitted that they murdered Finicum on purpose and presented new evidence to support their new claim, or NWFA members are all crazy, or I am an inbred goat.

There is no way to tell from the video that has been presented that the shoot is good or bad. Without audio, everything is conjecture. We don't know if the LEOs were saying "drop the weapon" or if Finicum was reaching for a wound or a firearm. To claim that anyone whose conjecture differs from yours is crazy is silly in itself.

 

[clearconscience]

http://bearingarms.com/lavoy-finicum-murdered-forced-oregon-police-shoot/

This is a decent write up, but still subjective.

 

[clearconscience]

If this administration is pushing body cameras to local LEOs why don't their Feds already have them?
Sure nit going to get any audio from a bird flying 200ft above them.
Would be nice with all the videos these guys had of themselves if they videoed the traffic stop on a gopro or cell phone.

 

[Guilty]

Here's my $.02.
In this situation, everybody knows that everybody is armed.
Rule #1: Everyone who owns a firearm should be familiar with the 21 foot rule. Don't make any fast movements when police have the sights of their firearms on you, especially within the 21 foot rule. It doesn't matter who is right and wrong at this point. What happened? Failure of the above commonsense Rule #1 for survival.

Two vehicles were stopped. The lead vehicle sped away after being stopped by police. When is speeding away from a police traffic stop ever a good idea? The police knew that people were armed and the driver failed to comply by taking off after being stopped and putting the passengers in the vehicle in danger. The same people who are counting on the driver for their safety.

I understand that it can be difficult to walk with one's hands up out of a snowbank, it would be easy to lose one's balance. I will not argue who is right and wrong on the issues, but once the decision to surrender has been made, exit the vehicle and comply, all other occupants of the vehicle managed to exit the vehicle without being shot and when it came time to comply, it appears they did exactly that.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

He ran.
Did they start shooting at the first stop?
Do you know what transpired? Were you there?
Based off the info we know. He ran from a law enforcement stop. Was it a traffic stop, arrest stop? Doesn't matter. He fled law enforcement which is a crime.
Maybe if they did shoot at the first stop it was because they feared he would run them down.
We don't have answers to that.
Unlike most stops, the feds knew the person/persons were armed. And he ran.

He ran. We know that for a fact.
While the feds and crooks in the capital escalated the chance for violence, finicum made the decision that led to his own death.

You might do a little reading before you go off half cocked. We have testimony from TWO eyewitnesses who were in the vehicles that say that the OSP started shooting at Finicum's truck while it was STOPPED at the first checkpoint where the others were arrested. No, I wasn't there but the two eyewitnesses were. How did you manage to miss both of those accounts of what happened?

 

[ZigZagZeke]

Here's my $.02.
When is speeding away from a police traffic stop ever a good idea?

When they start shooting at you for no apparent reason?

 

[SHPD_Retired]

Although I voted that this was most likely a good shooting I do not believe that it had to occur at all. I feel that since these people were not hurting anybody with their presence at the refuge and from what I have heard that most likely the people that were doing the lurking around town and following people were the FBI, I think it could have been handled differently.

 

[misterarman]

What's "internet tough" got to do with any of the posts in this thread?

I won't answer the poll because it needs a third option... "not enough information as of yet to make a conclusion."

LEFT to the government there never will be.

 

[clearconscience]

You might do a little reading before you go off half cocked. We have testimony from TWO eyewitnesses who were in the vehicles that say that the OSP started shooting at Finicum's truck while it was STOPPED at the first checkpoint where the others were arrested. No, I wasn't there but the two eyewitnesses were. How did you manage to miss both of those accounts of what happened?

I'm not going off half cocked. Nor am I going to believe "eye witnesses" when I haven't seen them say anything.
Please post your source?

And about "eye witnesses"
How many witnesses said poor Mike Brown died because the Officer stood over him and assassinated him? Then came out and said they disn't see anything or came out after the shooting occured.

Again please post video of the witnesses saying that this happened, or the police saying they fired.
And not some written piece from a "reputable" online article.

In the full unedited video I saw no shots fired. I'm not going to say it didn't happen. But I have yet to see proof.

 

[mcfoto]

I saw the video the day it was released and my immediate reaction was that shooting was justified. Like pointed out above, there are certain behaviors necessary for survival when someone has you in the sights at close range. Reaching for my waist is the last thing I'd want to do. One of them (I'm not sure it was the shooter) was almost run over and I'm guessing adrenaline was running pretty high. The LE's with the guns were probably most concerned with seeing their kids again and in a highly emotional volatile situation, all the training in the world can't trump basic survival instinct.

 

[oli700]

There is no way to tell from the video that has been presented that the shoot is good or bad. Without audio, everything is conjecture. We don't know if the LEOs were saying "drop the weapon" or if Finicum was reaching for a wound or a firearm. To claim that anyone whose conjecture differs from yours is crazy is silly in itself.

this is it
I am firmly on the side of we the people but without this , its all opinion
I don't really get the ambush thing
You can see the road block coming so .....anyone who knows anything about setting up a road block is precaution against someone blowing the road block
So in a effort to keep from being out flanked you post personnel on the flanks.

 

[baker3gun]

I agree with those that stated the poll questions are lacking at least one very important response - those that are still looking at the evidence to see what more comes out.
...
How about you start by editing your poll and see what happens if you add the third option.

From the page 98 video analysis:
"Finicum brandished firearms and made threats for weeks.
Finicum ignored lawful orders to exit a vehicle.
Finicum evaded a vehicular stop.
Finicum RAMMED A ROADBLOCK.
Finicum ran around and refused orders to get down.
Finicum looked like he was going for a gun. Three different times. Hands up, hands down, hands up, hands down, hands up, hands down, bang."

I'm gonna add one to that list: Finicum wrote a bad western novel about a government-hating rancher. The novel ended with the quick-draw rancher gunning down 3 evil government employees with his pistol. Okay.

If you don't get why the LE parties involved might have been concerned about Finicum's writings, TV interviews, firearm brandishing, and veiled threats, then you are not a perceptive person. Finicum is not a man whom LE was going idly watch dance around forever while it looked like he was going for a gun. If you don't like that, it doesn't matter. You don't ram a LE roadbloack, ever. Ever. After you do, you don't f*ck around outside the vehicle playing "maybe I'm a quick-draw cowboy" forever. If you want to live, you either freeze in the vehicle or open the door and face-plant. Everyone knows this already, and yet we still have this giant noise about poor Lavoy. Are you serious?

If your driving skills are so poor that you cannot bring a modern automobile to a halt from hwy speed in a 200+ foot stretch of clean pavement, then stay in Arizona! The dude rammed the roadblock on purpose, with women in the car. Finicum is not a martyr to American patriotism. He's a dumb redneck.

Anyway, if you need a 3rd poll option (undecided), this means that you entertain two notions:
1 - Finicum's known cumulative actions were NOT adequate cause for the response he rec'd from LE.
2 - OSP and FBI may be inherently bad. They may fire on citizens without justification and then release videos of same, they may intentionally obscure or withhold evidence to protect their future ability to murder citizens, they may conspire against the citizenry for the purpose of violating the civil rights of the citizenry, and they may be doing a big coverup right now to cover their bubblegum after murdering poor Finicum, and we need more info so we can find out whether they are bad.

If you really entertain these notions, you belong in group two. Click the button already.

BUT, you don't have to worry. This poll is flexible. It allows the participant to change his mind at some future date. And, it doesn't have an expiration date. So you can wait as long as you want to make up your mind. If you're undecided, I personally refer you to my 5th & 6th paragraph above.

Why does my content seem mildly insulting or condescending to some? Well, why not? We've got people on here claiming that FBI snipers in the woods shot Finicum with a pellet gun or a .17 to get him to grab his belt so that they could murder him. When a person makes up conjecture that stupid, another person may come along and call a spade a spade. It's actually okay to say, "Hey, that's stupid!". If you think FBI and OSP conspired to murder Finicum and then engineer a video of the event to release to the public, you may probably be stupid. If they really wanted to murder him, wouldn't it be easier to just kill everyone there and not release a video?

Other things:

Finicum had a lot of foster kids. AZ pays $828 per month per kid to foster parents (probably less for each additional kid). Catholic Charities paid Finicum $115,000 for foster parenting in 2009. Finicum sez foster parenting was his main source of income. Link. You know what, if you wanna be a real anti-govt guy, maybe you should pull your own weight instead of sucking the govt teet. Maybe if he had a real full-time job, he wouldn't have had time to drive to Oregon to participate in the siege of an un-staffed winterized duck refuge for the purpose of making veiled threats on TV and generally being a nuisance in a county where none of the residents wanted him there anyway.

The goal here isn't character assassination, but at the same time, come on. What's up with sucking the teet while kicking the cow? Foster parenting is an honorable endeavor, but do we want the Lavoy Finicum's of the world for that job? Didn't he drive across two states and provoke LE into shooting him dead while accomplishing nothing? Is that a good qualification for foster parenting?

Sorry, but Finicum is not immune to scrutiny. He publicly and unlawfully conquered an unoccupied federal duck marsh in Oregon, so he lost that immunity. I'm scrutinizing. IMO, he wasn't very bright, and no, we don't need people like him serving as a foster dad to troubled youth.

Let's touch on ad hominem attack. It is a popular and ancient form of fallacy, first documented over 2000 years ago.
Valid logical argument is the basis for the advancement of human civilization. It dates back over 2000 years in written human history. Fallacy is a recognized invalid form of argument. It also dates back to the same era. Here's why: human scholars and leaders long ago recognized that logical argument was the path to peace and advancement, and they also recognized that the process was susceptible to disruption by unsound or invalid or illogical arguments or responses. So they made a written list of these various invalid tactics (now known as fallacies), and they banned their use. Here's why: they got tired of repeatedly demonstrating why an invalid form of argument was invalid. So they made a list, and any time someone presented a fallacy as argument, they simply vetoed it. It was a time-saving step. You don't have to win an argument against fallacy, you just point at the fallacy and laugh, and you automatically win. It's great! This is all true. Look it up. It is your history (if you're human).

Here's an example: a guy named Dave gets online and presents reasonably sound arguments for why the Finicum outcome was a good shoot.

1 - A guy named Bill replies, "No, Dave is a dumb*ss, it was a bad shoot."
Bill's counter-argument was an ad hominem attack. It ignored the actual argument and instead attempted to refute the argument by undermining the person who presented the argument. (You will recognize this as a favored tool of the political left. They hate logical argument. Their favored approach is an ad hominem attack on anyone who disagrees with their leftist views. They don't argue logic, they just call us names.)

2 - A guy named Taco sez, "I will ignore his argument."
Taco's fallacy is head-in-the-sand. He didn't shut up, he just ignored a logical counter argument and kept right on spewing nonsense.

Fallacy is the tool of the fool. If you want to argue a point, you must address the merits of the point; evaluate the premises that support the argument.

If you cannot render an argument invalid by deconstruction or refute it with weightier evidence, then guess what? Yep. It's most likely true.

This is the way philosophical, ethical and moral arguments have been resolved for over 2000 years. This is the basis for common law. This is how rational analysis replaced combat as the favored method for resolving conflict.

Back to Finicum: It is not enough to say: "a passenger said her truck was fired on right away when the driver rammed a roadblock, therefore Finicum was murdered." Of course the truck was fired on. It rammed a roadblock. You can't ram a roadblock and not get fired on. "Woman say truck fired on" does not equal "Finicum murdered". Sorry, but you have to do better than that.

There are many reports of Payne or Finicum getting shot at during the 1st stop. Okay. They stopped somewhere near the jeep, and one or both of them stuck their heads out to verbally communicate with LE, and while they did, LE tried to assassinate them by shooting them in the head. Yeah, right. That happens all the time.
It explains why Ammon is dead. Oh but wait, Ammon isn't dead. So it must have been selective murder?
Further deconstruction:
If you take a pot-shot at Finicum's head, his predictable next course of action will be to roll up his window and turn on his radio and sit in the road for 3 more minutes?
Payne's predictable action after someone shoots at his head will be to get out and walk back to the LE position?
A SWAT team's predictable action will be to shoot at someone's head from a close-range sniper position and miss?
LE wanted to murder the truck occupants by shooting at them at the 1st stop, but they had to wait until the occupants stuck their heads out of the truck because Finicum's truck had bullet-proof glass?
See? If you say something stupid, someone will come along and make you look stupid. If you don't like that, then don't present stupid arguments.

If you wanna say that LE fired at the perps during the 1st traffic stop, you need evidence that outweighs the fact that American law enforcement does not randomly shoot at and miss people during traffic stops, nor wait until the people roll down their window and stick their head out before shooting at and missing them because bullets don't go through auto glass. Your evidence needs to have a quality level higher than "I read it on a foil-hat site." It really does.
If you can't present weightier evidence, then you have sh*t. If you choose to spout the sh*t anyway, you look like a moron.

No, it was not a routine traffic stop. See my comments on page 98. Here is one final example of an argument that does not hold water: 'It was not a routine traffic stop, therefore Finicum was murdered." You can't make that work with logic or valid argument. It just doesn't work. Therefore, it is just a stupid assertion. If you hold fast to a stupid assertion, no one should be disturbed if an observer calls you stupid. That's just how it goes man.

APATHY SUCKS. As I said already, there are over 200 million voting age citizens in our country. Less than half vote. That is why we are falling apart. We abandoned our collective responsibility for effective governance. So if you're a member here, and you choose silence on this poll, you may think you're on a high road, but in fact you are just apathetically yielding to the goats. This is bad because the MSM and a large chunk of the American population think that people who use firearms to hunt or compete or recreate or defend, are goats. We're not goats! It's just that a small vocal minority here act like goats while the rest remain silent, so everyone thinks we're goats. Well NWFA? Shouldn't you attempt to reverse that trend? It will only cost you 10 seconds. Click a button already.

No I'm not losing sleep. That was just a figure of speech. Don't glom on to that as a way to try refute everything I said, because then you just look limp and dim and mentally challenged. I mean, is that really all you got?

I put this poll up to find out for myself whether a northwest firearms board was predominantly occupied by rational people or something else. It's worth finding out because this community is probably a representative slice of America. I suspect that my effort will fail. It requires statistical power, and it already seems like the poll won't receive nearly enough attention. In a purported population of 36,000, you'd need at least a 10% response rate to draw even a weak conclusion, and you'd need > 50% to make any impact.

If a worthwhile question arises, maybe I'll post again. Not likely. I've said more than enough. This is just a simple poll. Vote and see what happens. If you don't like my writings, you gotta know I don't care. If my logical arguments are unsound or invalid, show me. I will immediately retract everything and apologize to everyone.

 

[clearconscience]

And with all this they will probably ban firearms in all federal and state land.
That's the real tragedy.
We all suffer for these numbskulls.

 

[etrain16]

From the page 98 video analysis:
"Finicum brandished firearms and made threats for weeks.
Finicum ignored lawful orders to exit a vehicle.
Finicum evaded a vehicular stop.
Finicum RAMMED A ROADBLOCK.
Finicum ran around and refused orders to get down.
Finicum looked like he was going for a gun. Three different times. Hands up, hands down, hands up, hands down, hands up, hands down, bang."

I'm gonna add one to that list: Finicum wrote a bad western novel about a government-hating rancher. The novel ended with the quick-draw rancher gunning down 3 evil government employees with his pistol. Okay.

If you don't get why the LE parties involved might have been concerned about Finicum's writings, TV interviews, firearm brandishing, and veiled threats, then you are not a perceptive person. Finicum is not a man whom LE was going idly watch dance around forever while it looked like he was going for a gun. If you don't like that, it doesn't matter. You don't ram a LE roadbloack, ever. Ever. After you do, you don't f*ck around outside the vehicle playing "maybe I'm a quick-draw cowboy" forever. If you want to live, you either freeze in the vehicle or open the door and face-plant. Everyone knows this already, and yet we still have this giant noise about poor Lavoy. Are you serious?

If your driving skills are so poor that you cannot bring a modern automobile to a halt from hwy speed in a 200+ foot stretch of clean pavement, then stay in Arizona! The dude rammed the roadblock on purpose, with women in the car. Finicum is not a martyr to American patriotism. He's a dumb redneck.

Anyway, if you need a 3rd poll option (undecided), this means that you entertain two notions:
1 - Finicum's known cumulative actions were NOT adequate cause for the response he rec'd from LE.
2 - OSP and FBI may be inherently bad. They may fire on citizens without justification and then release videos of same, they may intentionally obscure or withhold evidence to protect their future ability to murder citizens, they may conspire against the citizenry for the purpose of violating the civil rights of the citizenry, and they may be doing a big coverup right now to cover their bubblegum after murdering poor Finicum, and we need more info so we can find out whether they are bad.

If you really entertain these notions, you belong in group two. Click the button already.

BUT, you don't have to worry. This poll is flexible. It allows the participant to change his mind at some future date. And, it doesn't have an expiration date. So you can wait as long as you want to make up your mind. If you're undecided, I personally refer you to my 5th & 6th paragraph above.

Why does my content seem mildly insulting or condescending to some? Well, why not? We've got people on here claiming that FBI snipers in the woods shot Finicum with a pellet gun or a .17 to get him to grab his belt so that they could murder him. When a person makes up conjecture that stupid, another person may come along and call a spade a spade. It's actually okay to say, "Hey, that's stupid!". If you think FBI and OSP conspired to murder Finicum and then engineer a video of the event to release to the public, you may probably be stupid. If they really wanted to murder him, wouldn't it be easier to just kill everyone there and not release a video?

Other things:

Finicum had a lot of foster kids. AZ pays $828 per month per kid to foster parents (probably less for each additional kid). Catholic Charities paid Finicum $115,000 for foster parenting in 2009. Finicum sez foster parenting was his main source of income. Link. You know what, if you wanna be a real anti-govt guy, maybe you should pull your own weight instead of sucking the govt teet. Maybe if he had a real full-time job, he wouldn't have had time to drive to Oregon to participate in the siege of an un-staffed winterized duck refuge for the purpose of making veiled threats on TV and generally being a nuisance in a county where none of the residents wanted him there anyway.

The goal here isn't character assassination, but at the same time, come on. What's up with sucking the teet while kicking the cow? Foster parenting is an honorable endeavor, but do we want the Lavoy Finicum's of the world for that job? Didn't he drive across two states and provoke LE into shooting him dead while accomplishing nothing? Is that a good qualification for foster parenting?

Sorry, but Finicum is not immune to scrutiny. He publicly and unlawfully conquered an unoccupied federal duck marsh in Oregon, so he lost that immunity. I'm scrutinizing. IMO, he wasn't very bright, and no, we don't need people like him serving as a foster dad to troubled youth.

Let's touch on ad hominem attack. It is a popular and ancient form of fallacy, first documented over 2000 years ago.
Valid logical argument is the basis for the advancement of human civilization. It dates back over 2000 years in written human history. Fallacy is a recognized invalid form of argument. It also dates back to the same era. Here's why: human scholars and leaders long ago recognized that logical argument was the path to peace and advancement, and they also recognized that the process was susceptible to disruption by unsound or invalid or illogical arguments or responses. So they made a written list of these various invalid tactics (now known as fallacies), and they banned their use. Here's why: they got tired of repeatedly demonstrating why an invalid form of argument was invalid. So they made a list, and any time someone presented a fallacy as argument, they simply vetoed it. It was a time-saving step. You don't have to win an argument against fallacy, you just point at the fallacy and laugh, and you automatically win. It's great! This is all true. Look it up. It is your history (if you're human).

Here's an example: a guy named Dave gets online and presents reasonably sound arguments for why the Finicum outcome was a good shoot.

1 - A guy named Bill replies, "No, Dave is a dumb*ss, it was a bad shoot."
Bill's counter-argument was an ad hominem attack. It ignored the actual argument and instead attempted to refute the argument by undermining the person who presented the argument. (You will recognize this as a favored tool of the political left. They hate logical argument. Their favored approach is an ad hominem attack on anyone who disagrees with their leftist views. They don't argue logic, they just call us names.)

2 - A guy named Taco sez, "I will ignore his argument."
Taco's fallacy is head-in-the-sand. He didn't shut up, he just ignored a logical counter argument and kept right on spewing nonsense.

Fallacy is the tool of the fool. If you want to argue a point, you must address the merits of the point; evaluate the premises that support the argument.

If you cannot render an argument invalid by deconstruction or refute it with weightier evidence, then guess what? Yep. It's most likely true.

This is the way philosophical, ethical and moral arguments have been resolved for over 2000 years. This is the basis for common law. This is how rational analysis replaced combat as the favored method for resolving conflict.

Back to Finicum: It is not enough to say: "a passenger said her truck was fired on right away when the driver rammed a roadblock, therefore Finicum was murdered." Of course the truck was fired on. It rammed a roadblock. You can't ram a roadblock and not get fired on. "Woman say truck fired on" does not equal "Finicum murdered". Sorry, but you have to do better than that.

There are many reports of Payne or Finicum getting shot at during the 1st stop. Okay. They stopped somewhere near the jeep, and one or both of them stuck their heads out to verbally communicate with LE, and while they did, LE tried to assassinate them by shooting them in the head. Yeah, right. That happens all the time.
It explains why Ammon is dead. Oh but wait, Ammon isn't dead. So it must have been selective murder?
Further deconstruction:
If you take a pot-shot at Finicum's head, his predictable next course of action will be to roll up his window and turn on his radio and sit in the road for 3 more minutes?
Payne's predictable action after someone shoots at his head will be to get out and walk back to the LE position?
A SWAT team's predictable action will be to shoot at someone's head from a close-range sniper position and miss?
LE wanted to murder the truck occupants by shooting at them at the 1st stop, but they had to wait until the occupants stuck their heads out of the truck because Finicum's truck had bullet-proof glass?
See? If you say something stupid, someone will come along and make you look stupid. If you don't like that, then don't present stupid arguments.

If you wanna say that LE fired at the perps during the 1st traffic stop, you need evidence that outweighs the fact that American law enforcement does not randomly shoot at and miss people during traffic stops, nor wait until the people roll down their window and stick their head out before shooting at and missing them because bullets don't go through auto glass. Your evidence needs to have a quality level higher than "I read it on a foil-hat site." It really does.
If you can't present weightier evidence, then you have sh*t. If you choose to spout the sh*t anyway, you look like a moron.

No, it was not a routine traffic stop. See my comments on page 98. Here is one final example of an argument that does not hold water: 'It was not a routine traffic stop, therefore Finicum was murdered." You can't make that work with logic or valid argument. It just doesn't work. Therefore, it is just a stupid assertion. If you hold fast to a stupid assertion, no one should be disturbed if an observer calls you stupid. That's just how it goes man.

APATHY SUCKS. As I said already, there are over 200 million voting age citizens in our country. Less than half vote. That is why we are falling apart. We abandoned our collective responsibility for effective governance. So if you're a member here, and you choose silence on this poll, you may think you're on a high road, but in fact you are just apathetically yielding to the goats. This is bad because the MSM and a large chunk of the American population think that people who use firearms to hunt or compete or recreate or defend, are goats. We're not goats! It's just that a small vocal minority here act like goats while the rest remain silent, so everyone thinks we're goats. Well NWFA? Shouldn't you attempt to reverse that trend? It will only cost you 10 seconds. Click a button already.

No I'm not losing sleep. That was just a figure of speech. Don't glom on to that as a way to try refute everything I said, because then you just look limp and dim and mentally challenged. I mean, is that really all you got?

I put this poll up to find out for myself whether a northwest firearms board was predominantly occupied by rational people or something else. It's worth finding out because this community is probably a representative slice of America. I suspect that my effort will fail. It requires statistical power, and it already seems like the poll won't receive nearly enough attention. In a purported population of 36,000, you'd need at least a 10% response rate to draw even a weak conclusion, and you'd need > 50% to make any impact.

If a worthwhile question arises, maybe I'll post again. Not likely. I've said more than enough. This is just a simple poll. Vote and see what happens. If you don't like my writings, you gotta know I don't care. If my logical arguments are unsound or invalid, show me. I will immediately retract everything and apologize to everyone.

You don't have to agree with my view of this, but I draw the line at personal insults/attacks on myself or others on this forum, and for that, I'm reporting your post as I believe it's in violation of the rules here - we'll see what the moderators think.

You see my view as apathetic. I can't convince you it's otherwise. The problem here is that you have a vehement hatred of this guy and the occupiers, that much is clear, and your judgment is very heavily clouded by that hatred. You cite a lot of circumstantial evidence. You cite interpretations of the incident without, in my opinion, considering all the possible angles. There are things we don't know yet, how the hell is that apathy??? I recall in this country we are still presumed innocent until proven guilty, which, I fear seems lost in your assessment of things here.

That's all I have to say to you on the matter.

 

[PaulB47]

Those thinking this was a good shoot, ought to give this youtube a listen:

Then they might want to go back and change their votes.

And with all this they will probably ban firearms in all federal and state land.

 

[Aaron Todd]

From the page 98 video analysis:
"Finicum brandished firearms and made threats for weeks.
Finicum ignored lawful orders to exit a vehicle.
Finicum evaded a vehicular stop.
Finicum RAMMED A ROADBLOCK.
Finicum ran around and refused orders to get down.
Finicum looked like he was going for a gun. Three different times. Hands up, hands down, hands up, hands down, hands up, hands down, bang."

I'm gonna add one to that list: Finicum wrote a bad western novel about a government-hating rancher. The novel ended with the quick-draw rancher gunning down 3 evil government employees with his pistol. Okay.

If you don't get why the LE parties involved might have been concerned about Finicum's writings, TV interviews, firearm brandishing, and veiled threats, then you are not a perceptive person. Finicum is not a man whom LE was going idly watch dance around forever while it looked like he was going for a gun. If you don't like that, it doesn't matter. You don't ram a LE roadbloack, ever. Ever. After you do, you don't f*ck around outside the vehicle playing "maybe I'm a quick-draw cowboy" forever. If you want to live, you either freeze in the vehicle or open the door and face-plant. Everyone knows this already, and yet we still have this giant noise about poor Lavoy. Are you serious?

If your driving skills are so poor that you cannot bring a modern automobile to a halt from hwy speed in a 200+ foot stretch of clean pavement, then stay in Arizona! The dude rammed the roadblock on purpose, with women in the car. Finicum is not a martyr to American patriotism. He's a dumb redneck.

Anyway, if you need a 3rd poll option (undecided), this means that you entertain two notions:
1 - Finicum's known cumulative actions were NOT adequate cause for the response he rec'd from LE.
2 - OSP and FBI may be inherently bad. They may fire on citizens without justification and then release videos of same, they may intentionally obscure or withhold evidence to protect their future ability to murder citizens, they may conspire against the citizenry for the purpose of violating the civil rights of the citizenry, and they may be doing a big coverup right now to cover their bubblegum after murdering poor Finicum, and we need more info so we can find out whether they are bad.

If you really entertain these notions, you belong in group two. Click the button already.

BUT, you don't have to worry. This poll is flexible. It allows the participant to change his mind at some future date. And, it doesn't have an expiration date. So you can wait as long as you want to make up your mind. If you're undecided, I personally refer you to my 5th & 6th paragraph above.

Why does my content seem mildly insulting or condescending to some? Well, why not? We've got people on here claiming that FBI snipers in the woods shot Finicum with a pellet gun or a .17 to get him to grab his belt so that they could murder him. When a person makes up conjecture that stupid, another person may come along and call a spade a spade. It's actually okay to say, "Hey, that's stupid!". If you think FBI and OSP conspired to murder Finicum and then engineer a video of the event to release to the public, you may probably be stupid. If they really wanted to murder him, wouldn't it be easier to just kill everyone there and not release a video?

Other things:

Finicum had a lot of foster kids. AZ pays $828 per month per kid to foster parents (probably less for each additional kid). Catholic Charities paid Finicum $115,000 for foster parenting in 2009. Finicum sez foster parenting was his main source of income. Link. You know what, if you wanna be a real anti-govt guy, maybe you should pull your own weight instead of sucking the govt teet. Maybe if he had a real full-time job, he wouldn't have had time to drive to Oregon to participate in the siege of an un-staffed winterized duck refuge for the purpose of making veiled threats on TV and generally being a nuisance in a county where none of the residents wanted him there anyway.

The goal here isn't character assassination, but at the same time, come on. What's up with sucking the teet while kicking the cow? Foster parenting is an honorable endeavor, but do we want the Lavoy Finicum's of the world for that job? Didn't he drive across two states and provoke LE into shooting him dead while accomplishing nothing? Is that a good qualification for foster parenting?

Sorry, but Finicum is not immune to scrutiny. He publicly and unlawfully conquered an unoccupied federal duck marsh in Oregon, so he lost that immunity. I'm scrutinizing. IMO, he wasn't very bright, and no, we don't need people like him serving as a foster dad to troubled youth.

Let's touch on ad hominem attack. It is a popular and ancient form of fallacy, first documented over 2000 years ago.
Valid logical argument is the basis for the advancement of human civilization. It dates back over 2000 years in written human history. Fallacy is a recognized invalid form of argument. It also dates back to the same era. Here's why: human scholars and leaders long ago recognized that logical argument was the path to peace and advancement, and they also recognized that the process was susceptible to disruption by unsound or invalid or illogical arguments or responses. So they made a written list of these various invalid tactics (now known as fallacies), and they banned their use. Here's why: they got tired of repeatedly demonstrating why an invalid form of argument was invalid. So they made a list, and any time someone presented a fallacy as argument, they simply vetoed it. It was a time-saving step. You don't have to win an argument against fallacy, you just point at the fallacy and laugh, and you automatically win. It's great! This is all true. Look it up. It is your history (if you're human).

Here's an example: a guy named Dave gets online and presents reasonably sound arguments for why the Finicum outcome was a good shoot.

1 - A guy named Bill replies, "No, Dave is a dumb*ss, it was a bad shoot."
Bill's counter-argument was an ad hominem attack. It ignored the actual argument and instead attempted to refute the argument by undermining the person who presented the argument. (You will recognize this as a favored tool of the political left. They hate logical argument. Their favored approach is an ad hominem attack on anyone who disagrees with their leftist views. They don't argue logic, they just call us names.)

2 - A guy named Taco sez, "I will ignore his argument."
Taco's fallacy is head-in-the-sand. He didn't shut up, he just ignored a logical counter argument and kept right on spewing nonsense.

Fallacy is the tool of the fool. If you want to argue a point, you must address the merits of the point; evaluate the premises that support the argument.

If you cannot render an argument invalid by deconstruction or refute it with weightier evidence, then guess what? Yep. It's most likely true.

This is the way philosophical, ethical and moral arguments have been resolved for over 2000 years. This is the basis for common law. This is how rational analysis replaced combat as the favored method for resolving conflict.

Back to Finicum: It is not enough to say: "a passenger said her truck was fired on right away when the driver rammed a roadblock, therefore Finicum was murdered." Of course the truck was fired on. It rammed a roadblock. You can't ram a roadblock and not get fired on. "Woman say truck fired on" does not equal "Finicum murdered". Sorry, but you have to do better than that.

There are many reports of Payne or Finicum getting shot at during the 1st stop. Okay. They stopped somewhere near the jeep, and one or both of them stuck their heads out to verbally communicate with LE, and while they did, LE tried to assassinate them by shooting them in the head. Yeah, right. That happens all the time.
It explains why Ammon is dead. Oh but wait, Ammon isn't dead. So it must have been selective murder?
Further deconstruction:
If you take a pot-shot at Finicum's head, his predictable next course of action will be to roll up his window and turn on his radio and sit in the road for 3 more minutes?
Payne's predictable action after someone shoots at his head will be to get out and walk back to the LE position?
A SWAT team's predictable action will be to shoot at someone's head from a close-range sniper position and miss?
LE wanted to murder the truck occupants by shooting at them at the 1st stop, but they had to wait until the occupants stuck their heads out of the truck because Finicum's truck had bullet-proof glass?
See? If you say something stupid, someone will come along and make you look stupid. If you don't like that, then don't present stupid arguments.

If you wanna say that LE fired at the perps during the 1st traffic stop, you need evidence that outweighs the fact that American law enforcement does not randomly shoot at and miss people during traffic stops, nor wait until the people roll down their window and stick their head out before shooting at and missing them because bullets don't go through auto glass. Your evidence needs to have a quality level higher than "I read it on a foil-hat site." It really does.
If you can't present weightier evidence, then you have sh*t. If you choose to spout the sh*t anyway, you look like a moron.

No, it was not a routine traffic stop. See my comments on page 98. Here is one final example of an argument that does not hold water: 'It was not a routine traffic stop, therefore Finicum was murdered." You can't make that work with logic or valid argument. It just doesn't work. Therefore, it is just a stupid assertion. If you hold fast to a stupid assertion, no one should be disturbed if an observer calls you stupid. That's just how it goes man.

APATHY SUCKS. As I said already, there are over 200 million voting age citizens in our country. Less than half vote. That is why we are falling apart. We abandoned our collective responsibility for effective governance. So if you're a member here, and you choose silence on this poll, you may think you're on a high road, but in fact you are just apathetically yielding to the goats. This is bad because the MSM and a large chunk of the American population think that people who use firearms to hunt or compete or recreate or defend, are goats. We're not goats! It's just that a small vocal minority here act like goats while the rest remain silent, so everyone thinks we're goats. Well NWFA? Shouldn't you attempt to reverse that trend? It will only cost you 10 seconds. Click a button already.

No I'm not losing sleep. That was just a figure of speech. Don't glom on to that as a way to try refute everything I said, because then you just look limp and dim and mentally challenged. I mean, is that really all you got?

I put this poll up to find out for myself whether a northwest firearms board was predominantly occupied by rational people or something else. It's worth finding out because this community is probably a representative slice of America. I suspect that my effort will fail. It requires statistical power, and it already seems like the poll won't receive nearly enough attention. In a purported population of 36,000, you'd need at least a 10% response rate to draw even a weak conclusion, and you'd need > 50% to make any impact.

If a worthwhile question arises, maybe I'll post again. Not likely. I've said more than enough. This is just a simple poll. Vote and see what happens. If you don't like my writings, you gotta know I don't care. If my logical arguments are unsound or invalid, show me. I will immediately retract everything and apologize to everyone.

Good post. Agreed. Now wait for the horse crap youtube links to appear... probably already have. Or the "testimony" of the other people in the vehicle... I seriously believe these hot headed supporters of the bundy crew are of the same sort that believe that we didn't land on the moon or that roswell is full of aliens and spaceships.

 

[clearconscience]

Those thinking this was a good shoot, ought to give this youtube a listen:

Then they might want to go back and change their votes.

What about these videos?

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/eye...-about-lavoy-finicum-dying-with-his-hands-up/

Facts are facts. Utube videos are utube videos.