The Twin Peaks Shootout
21st May 2015
Of course, when I want to know about a Texas shootout, the first place I look is the New Yorker, by a female ‘staff writer’ who has probably never been within yards of a ‘biker’ in her life. That makes perfect sense.
May 21st, 2015 at 08:57
I’m amazed at the difference in news coverage in Texas vs. the rest of the US.
Here it’s all pretty simple: Two rival biker gangs (think “organized crime”) got into a fight that got out of hand. Cops showed up and made sure a sufficient number of bikers were dead to make them stop fighting, then arrested everybody else. The cops expect the gangs to realize that things like this are bad for business and negotiate a truce pretty quickly. Please note that the bikers did NOT burn down Twin Peaks or anything else. Nobody protested, nobody threw rocks at the cops.
Outside of Texas this has become another Ferguson or Baltimore. (I have no idea how they make that connection.) It also speaks to the terribleness of Texas gun laws. (Again, how??) There is some huge amount of angst that the bikers are being portrayed more positively than the rioters in MO and MD. (Let’s be honest, these guys actually enjoy being called “thugs”.) And there is great concern that there is Internet traffic saying that the gangs have “greenlighted” killing Waco cops. (OK, how many of you folks believe that these drug-dealing, prostitute-selling, drug cartel-enforcing biker gang guys hang out on Facebook? Seriously?!?) Waco cops have responded to the effect that attacking anything in Texas – esp. cops – will likely result in the perps becoming what we refer to as “open season targets”. Such targets – like the two wannabe ISIS asshats that attacked Garland – tend to have very short life spans.