Some differences to point out

Before hitting the meat of this one, a couple of things to state up front.

I am a biker. Got the loudest motorcycle in my county.

I am a journalist and have been one for 30 years.

Been physically attacked, once with lethal force, for my work as a journalist.

So, to the Topic du Jour. A lot of people are quite upset about the way the Waco biker shooting has been handled by the police and how the media has covered it.

Here's a good snapshot from NPR about the complaints. For a slightly different take, HuffPo has several articles up.

Some facts a lot of people are overlooking:

1) These are One Percenter bikers, well known as the kind of people who pick violence as a first resort.

2) Their meeting was announced ahead of time. The meeting was to discuss carving up turf.

3) Police had a SWAT presence outside the restaurant.

4) The restaurant owners REFUSED to allow a police presence INSIDE the restaurant during the meeting.

5) This was a confined event. One place. One locale.

6) It was, essentially, a gang war not a riot that devastated entire city blocks.

7) Media, responsible media, interviews and quotes people relevant to the story. Ergo, calling someone a "thug" is something a person being interviewed does. It's not the media's place in s straight news story to categorize someone by their criminal behavior.

8) If you call a One Percenter a "thug," you apparently don't understand exactly whom you are dealing with. Better hope the biker doesn't find out where you live.

9) Jesse Jerkson, Al Sharpie et al have yet to show up to start complaining about police violence and screaming "MC MEMBER LIVES MATTER!"

Not that people are going to care about these facts. Folks are going to center on the idea this eruption of violence has not generated the same kind of media attention as the riots in other places. These very people will point to the massive media coverage of the shootout in Waco as evidence it's not being covered properly.

Cognitive dissonance much?

"As many as 3,172 white people were killed in 2011 -- and 2,630 of them lost their lives at the hands of another white person. This is compared to 2,695 black people, 2,447 of whom were killed by another black person," states the HuffPo article I link to above.

The percent of "black" people killing "black" people is many times higher than the percent of "white" people killing "white" people. Therefore, it does merit more attention.

Some people simply say "Lives matter." Yes, they do. However, there are people in this world (see yesterday's post) who think you must believe as they do, or you need to die. These bikers are not quite like that, but they obviously are willing to convert fellow human beings into compost.

Rebel decried the violence in a post, as did a lot of other people. He said, "Folks whether you want to admit it or not, a bunch of armed and very dangerous people deciding they wanted to have a shootout in a public space is a very bad thing. Hells, its a bad thing if they did it in a rock quarrry where no one else is around." Typos his. (Feel the burn. I'll pay for this one you can bet.)

On the first part, this deceased equine has been reduced to subatomic particles in the media. Further, I agree with his first statement. But as noted above, when people refuse to let Law Enforcement do their job...

I do not agree with Rebel's second observation. If these folks feel the need to resort to high speed injections of lead to solve their differences, I am fully in favor of this. I will supply ammo and some firearms to expedite this process. Do not send in emergency crews either until all the wounded are dead. Then, go in, get the survivors and let them go. If they feel the need to engage in this behavior again, find a quarry and dump 'em in there and wait for the shooting and screams to stop.

Anyway, lest I be accused of taking stuff outta context and distortion, here's his whole post:

I think the thing I find most amusing about the two gangs of thugs who decided it would be fun to shoot each other in Waco (Whacko?) is the amount of White Justification I am seeing in comments sections. The way people are trying to play this out as not so bad is funny. The basic theme seems to be a "Well since it was just a bunch of guys shooting at each other and not the innocent bystanders all around them, it was okay." Folks whether you want to admit it or not, a bunch of armed and very dangerous people deciding they wanted to have a shootout in a public space is a very bad thing. Hells, its a bad thing if they did it in a rock quarrry where no one else is around. Here is a simple fact, if the Crips and Bloods had opened fire on each other outside a Denny's (Yeah I know, I doubt they go there either but work with me here) in Waco or anywhere else in Texas, people would be raging for blood and justice no matter if no innocent bystanders were injured. Lets shave off the hypocrisy and call a spade a spade. (I am so sorry I couldn't resist) If any group of any race of any culture decides to shoot it out and kill each other, it is bad. Quit making yourselves look racist by saying otherwise.

Keep up with Rebel's rambling here.