Police officers don’t draw their weapons unless they have a reasonable belief they could be in imminent danger. They absolutely don’t point their weapons at anyone unless they’re facing an imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death. They also don’t point their weapons at people who represent no such threat because those people, realizing the police have no cause to threaten them, just might be compelled to shoot back. That sort of thing gets really messy, legally and politically, really fast.

And so it is for the candidacy of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. It turns out his performance as governor has been, well, tyrannical. Under his “leadership” Minnesota is in the top ten states for fleeing citizens, people taking their businesses, taxes and productivity with them. Walz was among the worst, most tyrannical governors during Covid, keeping citizens locked up in their homes, kids out of school and everyone masked longer than virtually every other state. He was among those governors who sent people infected with Covid into nursing homes unnecessarily killing elderly Minnesotans. And in the finest communist tradition of having informers on every block, he established a hot line for Minnesotans to snitch on their neighbors for violating his rules.  

Among his other idiotic Covid rules was people eating at restaurants had to wear masks when standing, walking to and from their tables, or to restrooms, but not when they were sitting at their tables. Apparently viruses are only infectious above waist level in Minnesota.

But that’s not all Walz did. He authorized the police—maybe the National Guard?—to shoot people for the crime of being on their porches. They shot people—with paintball guns:  

Graphic: X Screenshot

A video posted to Twitter Saturday night is going viral after apparently showing law enforcement in Minneapolis shooting paint rounds at residents on their porch after curfew went into effect.

Tanya Kerssen posted the video to Twitter shortly after 9:30 p.m., showing what she says is the Minnesota National Guard and Minneapolis police sweeping her residential street in the Whittier Neighborhood.

In the video, the officers are seen approaching the residents and repeatedly yelling at them to get inside their house. After a few demands, one can be heard yelling "light 'em up!" That's when one officer appears to fire a paint round at the residents, who run inside.

People were indeed hit with paintballs, and that’s a real problem. The average paintball gun fires projectiles at around 300 feet per second over reasonably accurate ranges of up to 150 feet.  thrillogaming.com/paintball-speed/  If one is engaging in a paintball game, and is wearing head, eye and face protection, as well as light body armor appropriate to the threat, it’s not a problem, but shooting at someone unarmored could easily cause injury, including loss of eyesight. 

There is some controversy over this video and incident. The stormtroopers marching down the street in helmets and tactical armor are being led by a Humvee, a standard military vehicle, however, the stormtroopers appear to be police officers. They’re not in military uniforms. It appears then they were enforcing either a curfew during the Floyd riots, or they could have been enforcing stay-at-home orders during Covid. 

But that doesn’t really matter. Here are police officers enforcing either totalitarian edict, marching down the middle of a suburban street, where there is no rioting and no chance of disease transmission. Remember: six feet of separation and you’re safe; 5.999999 feet and you’re dead. They’re screaming at people doing nothing more than enjoying the evening air on their porches to get inside their homes. When those citizens don’t move fast enough to satisfy their authoritarian urges, they yell “light ‘em up,” and start shooting. And oh yes, they did hit people.

What these officers are not doing is in any way inconveniencing rioters, people committing arson, looting, assault and murder.

This is what’s known in sane, non-totalitarian, societies as “bad optics.”

There are five primary problems:

*In either case, Walz issued totalitarian orders incompatible with a constitutional republic.

*Police supervisors upheld those unlawful orders and issued unlawful orders to their subordinates.

*Their subordinates actually shot people, people not properly protected, with less-lethal weapons, people who presented no threat to them or anyone else.

*Every professional police officer knows bad will is cumulative. Exceeding their authority for any reason will harm other officers in the future.

*This is a really, really, stupid thing to do.

During my police career, had I have been ordered to do what those officers did, I would have refused. But then again, I worked in red states under more or less sane governors and for more or less sane administrators. Not like Minnesota under Tim Walz.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.