Media and a murderer’s “military skills”

This morning, the Dallas News runs an article about the murderer in that city who killed a half-dozen police officers the other day under the headline “Ousted from Army, Dallas shooter used military skills for murder“.

Forced out of the Army, Johnson used the skills he’d honed there to unleash bullets on the uniformed police officers with deadly precision.

They don’t mention which military skills he used to kill those officers, so I have to guess that he built a deer stand in the parking garage, because he was a carpenter in the Army and that was his main military skill.

He certainly didn’t learn anything in the Army that did him much good that night in Dallas, unless his targets were stationary and at known distances while he laid in the prone position behind sandbags – because that’s how the Army trained him to shoot – not charging around and shooting at moving targets.

I wonder if he made himself a sandwich – because the article also says that he worked at Jimmy John’s sandwich shop. Or maybe he was using the internet – apparently he ordered Victoria’s Secret underwear for a fellow soldier and that was the reason he was booted from his deployment to Afghanistan early, according to his lawyer.

Starting in early 2015, XXX was an employee at Touch of Kindness, a social service agency that serves children and adults with intellectual disabilities, said Jeppi Carnegie, who owns the business with his mother. Through the job, Johnson cared for his younger brother at home.

[…]

At some point, XXX appears to have worked at General Dynamics, a defense company with offices in Richardson. A woman who answered the phone there Friday said he’d been an employee.

The New York Times runs a similar headline over a similarly fact-starved article; “Gunman in Dallas, Honed Military Skills to a Deadly Conclusion”

But [Clay Jenkins, Dallas County’s chief executive and director of homeland security and emergency management] said a neighbor had seen Mr. Johnson doing militarylike exercises in his backyard in Mesquite in the last couple of weeks.

Mr. Johnson’s preparations seemingly extended to visits to a “self-defense and personal protection” gym in the Dallas area.

[…]

Some of it was given over to very specific combat and sniper tactics, including details, Mr. Jenkins said, of “what we call ‘shoot and move’ tactics — ways to fire on a target and then move quickly and get into position at another location to inflict more damage on targets without them being able to ascertain where the shots are coming from.” This tactic is used by the military’s special forces.

Notice that part about “special forces tactics” is merely an editorial comment by the New York Times writers with no foundation in fact. The Dallas murderer was a freaking carpenter – the Army didn’t train him to “shoot and move”. They taught him to “hammer and nail”.

From the Daily Beast;

XXX formerly attended the “self-defense and personal protection” gym Academy of Combat Warrior Arts in Richardson and Fort Worth, Texas, gym owner and CEO Justin Everman told The Daily Beast. The gym’s Twitter account says it provides “reality based training for today’s Urban environment.”

Along with more traditional martial arts classes, the gym also teaches seminars in “Urban Everyday Carry and Improvised Weapons” and “Weapons Defense.”

That probably seems to be a more likely place to blame for any training that the murderer used that night in Dallas, than the military. But, you know, I just used common sense, a rare commodity in journalism these days. Journalist prefer click bait to actual news.

Category: Media