Nevada Supreme Court Overturns Lower Court's Abysmal Ruling On Las Vegas Shooting Coroner's Reports
from the your-decision-is-bad-and-you-should-feel-bad dept
Prior restraint gets another thumping in court following a truly lousy injunction issued against a Las Vegas newspaper. The Las Vegas Review-Journal requested autopsy reports on victims of the Las Vegas shooting that left 58 dead. The coroner's office refused and was sued by the newspaper. The judge ruled the paper had a right to access copies of the reports after they were stripped of identifying info.
All went according to the First Amendment until a family of one of the victims went to court seeking to prevent the publication of Las Vegas police officer Charleston Hartfield's report. The family argued the report was "confidential" and not subject to disclosure under Nevada's public record laws.
This led to a bizarre ruling by the Las Vegas court. First, the court decided there was "no public interest" in the publication of the reports, which was obviously not true. Then it decided just to block the publication of Hartfield's autopsy. Given the fact the reports were stripped of identifying info before the paper received them, the Las Vegas Review-Journal had no way of knowing which report belonged to the Las Vegas cop. No problem, said the court, we'll just send the government and the suing family into your offices to retrieve it.
The district court dismissed the Review-Journal's concern that, because the autopsy reports were anonymized and redacted, it could not identify which report was Mr. Hartfield's. As a solution, it directed the Review-Journal to allow the Coroner and the Hartfield Parties to inspect the reports at the Review-Journal's offices, so that Mr. Hartfield's autopsy report could be identified and all copies of it returned or destroyed.
In short, the court said the paper's offices could be raided to take a single document from a batch of coroner's reports out of public circulation. The paper filed an emergency petition with the Nevada Supreme Court, asking WTF is this.
The Supreme Court has delivered its ruling [PDF], undoing all the stupid, rights-infringing orders issued by the lower court. The following summary comes from Marc Randazza, who represented the paper (and the Associated Press) in this case.
The Nevada Supreme Court agreed with the RJ [Review-Journal] and AP, finding that the district court’s order was an unconstitutional prior restraint. It found that the order prevented a news agency from reporting on a matter of significant public concern, and thus there had to be a compelling reason to censor the RJ and AP, and the injunction had to be the least restrictive means of accomplishing it.
The Court found that, even if the victim’s family had a privacy interest in preventing dissemination of the autopsy report, the RJ and AP obtained the redacted report pursuant to a valid court order, and several other media outlets had already reported on it. While the RJ and AP may have been prevented from disseminating the autopsy report, they and others had already done so. Since the cat was out of the bag by the time the victim’s family sued, there was not a strong privacy interest in play. And since the district court’s injunction only restrained the RJ and AP’s reporting, it clearly did not do a good job of protecting any privacy interests. The Supreme Court thus vacated the district court’s order, meaning the RJ and AP are free to continue reporting on this issue of significant public concern.
The Nevada Supreme Court makes it clear the lower court screwed this one up.
The district court's order enjoining the Review-Journal from reporting on the anonymized, redacted autopsy report it obtained from the Coroner pursuant to the order in the NPRA case constitutes an invalid prior restraint that violates the First Amendment.
This is something the Supreme Court of the United States has "roundly rejected," as anyone who's done nothing more than watch "The Big Lebowski" can attest. Furthermore, the target of any litigation following an alleged privacy violation of this type should be the government office that released the files, not the newspaper that obtained the records via a valid court order.
The Hartfield Parties see it as unfair to hold the Review-Journal's possession of the redacted autopsy reports against them because they were not parties to and did not know about the NPRA case until the judge in that case ordered the reports produced. Mandatory Supreme Court precedent teaches, however, that where the press obtains private information from the state—even where the state should have protected the information—damages or criminal punishment may not be imposed for its subsequent publication, absent extraordinary circumstances.
It goes on to point out that violating RJ and AP's Constitutional rights doesn't undo the privacy violation alleged by the Hartfields. Two wrongs don't make a right, especially when other news agencies had also published the same documents but weren't targeted by the Hartfields in their lawsuit.
While the district court directed the Coroner to write letters advising other news organizations of its order, its order only restrained the Review-Journal and the Associated Press, requiring them to destroy or return Mr. Hartfield's redacted autopsy report and enjoining them from reporting on it. Leaving other news organizations free to report on Mr. Hartfield's redacted autopsy report while restraining the ReviewJournal and the Associated Press from doing so does not accomplish the stated goal of protecting the Hartfield Parties' privacy interests.
[...]
Because the anonymized and redacted autopsy reports were already in the public domain, "[t] he harm that could have been prevented by the prior restraint has already occurred, and, because this harm has occurred, the heavy presumption against the constitutionality of a prior restraint has not been overcome." Bryant, 94 P.3d at 642 (Bender, J., dissenting). In other words, any damage to the Hartfields' privacy interests had already been done and the district court's subsequent order could not remedy that damage.
It's not that the government can't engage in prior restraint. It can, but only under very extreme circumstances. The plaintiffs have to reach a very high bar to obtain this and the Hartfields' case -- given the fact that the documents were obtained lawfully and were already widely-disseminated -- doesn't even come close.
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Filed Under: coroner's report, foia, free speech, nevada, prior restraint, transparency
Companies: las vegas review-journal
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58 - 57 = ?
Ms. Streisand would have done the rest.
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Re: 58 - 57 = ?
Nevada District Judge Richard Scotti did not just mildly 'screw up' here -- he made a major fubar that (in a just world) should cost him his cushy job and heavy personal penalties.
County Coroner Fudenberg also seems an arrogant County employee with a history of defying the law. the 57/58 stuff concerned his opinion of what a "Finalized" autopsy report was.
That private lawsuit blocking release of the autopsy reports was filed by the widow of a Las Vegas cop. Must have been something very embarrassing in her husband's autopsy report... other than bullet holes?
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It's nice to see him doing something good for once...
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Re:
Their family member recently got murdered. It's going to hurt to see the details splashed all over the media.
That doesn't make them right. It makes them hurting enough that I'm not going to expect real clear thinking about constitutional rights, though.
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Greedy lawyers
I don't think the NPRA lawsuit was unpublicized, so the family would have had to join that to succeed.
How on earth do they expect anyone to identify this one guy out of 58, when it's all bullet wounds?
I think a lawyer took advantage....
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Well, there's his problem. He's spent his career dealing not with how things really are, but how a certain subset of people aspire to them being. No wonder he's so petulant and angry when told how real life operates.
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What sort of privacy rights do dead people have compared to living people, such as concerning the publication of nude photographs taken without their consent?
Of course, the release of government files is generally a very good thing, even when it comes to macabre subjects like autopsy photographs. But as a general rule transparency and public disclosure are things that most every government on Earth opposes with vigor -- and often for pertinent reasons.
For instance, the government of Ukraine refuses to release autopsy and ballistic reports of people killed during the 2014 Maidan Revolution, despite widely reported claims that protesters were shot by the exact same guns that killed policemen.
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Re:
Ah, I see you're unaware of online conspiracy theorists, especially those who frequent places like Infowars who believe that all of these victims are actually actors shipped from venue to venue to pretend to be shot. I envy you your naiveté.
Sadly those people are known to physically harass and even attack the surviving family members of victims. so it's not a trivial issue.
"What sort of privacy rights do dead people have compared to living people, such as concerning the publication of nude photographs taken without their consent?"
Generally speaking, there's a greater public need to know how people have died than there is to know what they look like without their clothes on.
"For instance, the government of Ukraine refuses to release autopsy and ballistic reports of people killed during the 2014 Maidan Revolution, despite widely reported claims that protesters were shot by the exact same guns that killed policemen.'
Well, I think in that case you've answered your own questions. The autopsy reports could presumably either confirm or deny those claims. If they remain hidden, that leads many people to believe that they are being suppressed. If they are unduly delayed, the delay itself will be seen as proof of a coverup by those whose position is proven wrong by the reports.
Those people will still exist, but the timely release of autopsy report does head off some of the nuts.
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Re: Re:
I'm sure that a big reason why so many people believe these "conspiracy theorists" is that they are, time and again, proven right in their extremist claims, though perhaps not unlike the way that a broken clock is right twice a day. It's just that the mainstream media is so untruthful, both negligently and purposely, that it shouldn't surprise us that so many people are skeptical of just about everything claiming to be "news."
I long ago reached the conclusion that just about everything reported about a war by official and "mainstream" news is probably bogus in some way, though fortunately mainstream news sources eventually start getting more honest long after the excitement dies down and they are no longer under pressure to push a particular angle.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the-war-photo-no-one-would-publish/3 75762/
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/14/world/europe/sifting-ukrainian-fact-from-ukrainian-fiction. html
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Re: Re: Re:
Name one instance where their "crisis actor" claims have been proven correct. Unless there's a good hit rate, the actual harassment of the families of recently murdered victims is indefensible. Similarly, idiots shooting up pizza restaurants = 1, actual child rape gangs in pizza basements = 0, and so on.
There are conspiracy theories that have a grain of truth or reflect what's really happening to some degree. These are not those theories.
"I long ago reached the conclusion that just about everything reported about a war by official and "mainstream" news is probably bogus in some way"
Yes, which is why you consider sources and their biases when looking at news and take in information from a variation of different sources. Not believe some nutbag who's playing an act to sell you nutrition supplements and survival gear.
The sources that aren't "mainstream media" are also distorting facts and lying to you, or at least have themselves been taken in by those who are.
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The Maidan massacre
Thanks for that link... it's an excellent teaching tool.
Most interesting comment:
"I can say who is guilty of Maidan massacre. Those who chopped trees. They hid the evidence." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJhJ6hks0Jg&lc=Ugz6Zq9bEkNFps60Ll14AaABAg
Mos t interesting article:
https://journal-neo.org/2017/12/15/the-maidan-massacre-us-army-orders-sow-chaos/
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FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS AND DISINFORMATION AGENTS
> Ah, I see you're unaware of online conspiracy theorists, especially those who frequent places like Infowars who believe that all of these victims are actually actors shipped from venue to venue to pretend to be shot.
Ah, I see you're unaware that Infowars never claimed this is what happened — you just parrot what you are told by their competition (which is losing thousands of viewers to Infowars every hour.) You are also unaware of the fact that it's now legal for the U.S. military-intelligence community to direct false propaganda at the domestic population. And you are unaware that posting FALSE conspiracy theories to discredit CORRECT ones is a textbook procedure taught to all students of psychological warfare. So you're pretty much dumb as a stump, and are not really qualified to comment on this subject due to your willful ignorance.
> I envy you your naiveté.
Ah, I see that you're manifestly insincere as well.
> Sadly those people are known to physically harass and even attack the surviving family members of victims. so it's not a trivial issue.
In fact, it's wildly exaggerated, and any incident of this nature is more likely to be an example of MKULTRA or psychological warfare designed to discredit legitimate investigative journalism.
> the timely release of autopsy report does head off some of the nuts
In this case, "nut" being defined as anyone who wants to know:
a) who stole the surveillance video, and b) why all the witness testimony about multiple shooters is being censored by the six corporations that control 90% of the mainstream media
https://www.intellihub.com/?s=multiple+shooters https://duckduckgo.com/?q=admitted+false+flags
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Re: FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS AND DISINFORMATION AGENTS
I never said they did, only that they're one of the main names when it comes to smearing the victims of horrific crimes in order to peddle supplements to idiots. If they bucked their normal trend here then that's great, but the cries of such things after every atrocity is usually quite predictable and tiresome.
"(which is losing thousands of viewers to Infowars every hour.) "
Do you have a citation outside of the source known to lie to its audience? If so, please provide it.
"You are also unaware of the fact that it's now legal for the U.S. military-intelligence community to direct false propaganda at the domestic population."
Not being American, I don't give a shit. I just like laughing at people who've bought into a more obvious line of false propaganda. Until they decide to react to that propaganda . by attacking people in real life, at least, then it stops being funny.
"In fact, it's wildly exaggerated"
Says you. So, then, is there anything happening around these shootings that has actually happened? From the claims of people like yourself, there doesn't seem to have been anyone living in these places at all until busloads of actors were shipped in to play the victims and bystanders.
"any incident of this nature is more likely to be an example of MKULTRA or psychological warfare designed to discredit legitimate investigative journalism"
Or... it is actually happening as reported and you're the one being manipulated. Frankly, I can find it easier to imagine random shooting by mentally ill people with easy access to military weaponry then I can believe in a competent widespread conspiracy to undermine honest journalists. If it's conspiracy you're after, I'd say stop claiming things about "crisis actors" and start looking at who actually profits from these things (hint: journalism doesn't come into it).
"In this case, "nut" being defined as anyone who wants to know:
a) who stole the surveillance video"
How the fuck would releasing autopsy reports tell you that?
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Re: FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS AND DISINFORMATION AGENTS
> I see you're unaware of online conspiracy theorists, especially those who frequent places like Infowars who believe that all of these victims are actually actors shipped from venue to venue to pretend to be shot
Ah, I see you're unaware that Infowars never claimed this is what happened
> I never said they did
Funny how you don't like to be accused of making false accusations but you continue to make the same false accusation against others over & over: repeatedly insinuating that everyone who challenges the official narrative believes its crisis actors, as if there is no other option. It's like you are trying to shut down all forms of dissent with ridicule. It's not gonna work.
> in order to peddle supplements to idiots
But the national TV networks selling dissociative psychiatric drugs that trigger shooting rampages is okay. Fuckin' hypocrite.
> If they bucked their normal trend here then that's great, but the cries of such things after every atrocity is usually quite predictable and tiresome
So it's not "predictable and tiresome" when the mainstream media suppresses evidence and witness testimony which contradicts the official narrative? Seems like your real opponent here is the freedom of speech. You call people idiots, but there is nothing more stupid than NOT wanting to know what would cause a sudden epidemic of random violence. Come back and continue this debate after you have spent 5 years studying MKULTRA and reviewed the entire works of George Estabrooks and Derren Brown.
Do you have a citation outside of the source known to lie to its audience? If so, please provide it.
I will give you one of the more dramatic examples of this trend. There are plenty more, but I wont provide logins for paid analytics sources (or be tricked into wasting my day on someone who will throw my work in the trash.) As they say "Google is your friend."
"Infowars... made an extraordinary leap of 31 spots" (in one month) https://www.similarweb.com/blog/us-media-publications-ranking-october-2016
"You are also unaware of the fact that it's now legal for the U.S. military-intelligence community to direct false propaganda at the domestic population."
Not being American, I don't give a shit.
And that is my point: you don't want to know if your assumptions are wrong and you don't care about anyone but your self -- you just want to ridicule people who are looking at suppressed evidence and searching for truth. You're also a liar: if you did not have a political agenda, you would not be trying so hard to discredit Infowars. Since Alex Jones is aggressively anti-communist, it's not hard to guess what your agenda might be. Furthermore, the secret police in your country belong to the same global crime syndicate which sponsors false flag terrorism (SIGINT Seniors Europe, a.k.a. Fourteen Eyes) so you are not immune just because you are not American. I suggest you spend another year studying Operation Gladio before you take another shit in this forum. The BBC documentary of the same name would be a good start.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio#Spain
I just like laughing at people who've bought into a more obvious line of false propaganda.
Notice how the news media declared Paddock to be the culprit and the only shooter on the SAME DAY of the incident, without any evidence, without interviewing any of the witnesses who contradicted the official narrative, despite the fact that the security video is missing. If you think all of that is funny, you are pretty sick.
Until they decide to react to that propaganda . by attacking people in real life, at least, then it stops being funny.
I'll hold you to your own standard here: "Do you have any evidence of this? If so, please provide it."
Says you.
Wow... that's the most intelligent thing I ever heard in a debate. You win!
So, then, is there anything happening around these shootings that has actually happened? From the claims of people like yourself, there doesn't seem to have been anyone living in these places at all until busloads of actors were shipped in to play the victims and bystanders.
I never made any such claim. You cling to this false accusation because you have nothing else to support your argument.
Or... it is actually happening as reported and you're the one being manipulated.
Well, that would mean all of the witness testimony which was recorded on video and telephone which contradicts the official narrative has to be fake. The hypocrisy of your assertion did not escape notice here.
I'd say stop claiming things about "crisis actors"
You keep repeating this false accusation because you have nothing else to argue here. And you're pretty damn stupid if you dont understand why false conspiracy theories are promoted to discredit real ones. I suppose you think no one was killed in the German prison camps because government conspiracies just cant exist.
How the fuck would releasing autopsy reports tell you that?
I never claimed that it would. Man... I don't know if you are just frightfully stupid, or if you are just so emotionally attached to communist ideology that you have to ridicule Infowars supporters even at the expense of the truth. But I do know that anyone who has time to make over 14,000 posts on this forum is an extreme narcissist who does NOT have time to educate himself. Wise men study; fools spend all their time talking.
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Re: Re: FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS AND DISINFORMATION AGENTS
Fun facts:
1. Despite using it, you apparently have no idea what the word "narcissist" means.
2. Yes, I've posted a lot, but I've been here for a long time too. Nearly 10 years in fact, but the look of my profile. A quick calculation gives a rough estimate of nearly 4 comments per day on average.
According to your profile, you've been here nearly 2 days and have made 9 comments so far - so 4.5 comments per day. Which is more than I've been posting. So, by your own standard you're at least as much of a narcissist as me, and that's without taking into account that all you've done so far is tell people they're wrong and call them names for daring to post in the same thread.
Anyway...
"Ah, I see you're unaware that Infowars never claimed this is what happened"
I never did, specifically. I just called them out as one of the most prominent peddlers of this kind of rubbish. I said people who frequent places like Infowars often say such things, I never said that the site itself had made such claims.
For someone so intent of others reading correctly, you're doing a damn poor job of it so far.
""Infowars... made an extraordinary leap of 31 spots" (in one month)"
That appears to be a post from October 2016, whereas your claim is that "they" (whoever they are, you're not particularly specific here) are *currently* losing thousands of readers an hour.
No shit an anti-Hillary source was gaining viewers in the lead up to the last election. Is that still the case, or are you just cherry picking data as your kind is wont to do?
"You're also a liar: if you did not have a political agenda, you would not be trying so hard to discredit Infowars. Since Alex Jones is aggressively anti-communist, it's not hard to guess what your agenda might be."
You see, this is why people like you are so comical. If they don't buy the same crap as you do, you must be one of THEM!!!! No discussion, no consideration that the man you love is lying to you. No possibility of a middle ground. Certainly no getting to know what my actual opinions are. I disagree with someone's agenda therefore I must be the ENEMY!
Again, you people are comical when you're not taking it out on people in real life.
"I never claimed that it would"
Well, apart from the fact that your first answer to the question of who would want to get the autopsy reports would be the people who wanted that information. You might be missing a step if you think they're logically connected in any way - and if you don't, why mention it as the first thing to consider?
Anyway, that's a rough skimming of your bullshit, all you've done is call me names and accusing me of lying while clearly lying and attacking strawmen yourself. That's the problem with your kind - you're not used to being presented with actual ideas outside of your echo chambers, so you fall back on conspiracies and untruths.
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FALSE FLAG OPERATION
If you knew the location of their wounds, and could place the victims on video at the time they were shot, a simple process of triangulation would prove that some of the shots did not originate from the hotel.
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Re: FALSE FLAG OPERATION
The problem is, you're clearly too far down the rabbit hole. You've obviously reached a conclusion already, you're just looking for data to support it. As we've seen in the past, if the actual evidence doesn't match your conclusion, you'll just start banging on about how the evidence has been faked anyway. Nothing seems to convince you that perhaps it's your conspiracy hucksters who are wrong, not the "official version". You seem to invent wild theories about what the "real story" might be, without considering that perhaps it's already in front of you.
Healthy scepticism is good, but you guys can tend to go way, way beyond healthy.
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Re: FALSE FLAG OPERATION
...or it would prove there was only one shooter, exactly as reported. Or, it wouldn't prove a damn thing. Or, one of you amateur chuckleheads would get your assumptions wrong and start spreading actual disinformation that leads to more people getting hurt or killed.
Well, we all know what your agenda is: intimidate everyone into silence who dares to question the official narrative, regardless of how much evidence and witness testimony contradicts it. You're all about trying to be popular, so you cannot afford for the answer to be anything other than what you think the majority wants to believe. It reminds me of that famous Swinton quote about most journalists being "intellectual prostitutes."
You've obviously reached a conclusion already
That is a monstrous hypocrisy. Paddock was "convicted" in the news media without any evidence, on the same day as the incident occurred -- and this is what you are promoting. You're just trying to silence anyone who does not accept the conclusion which you reached without reviewing all of the evidence.
you're just looking for data to support it
And you are ignoring all of the data which does not support your theory.
if the actual evidence doesn't match your conclusion, you'll just start banging on about how the evidence has been faked anyway
Another false accusation, nuff said.
Nothing seems to convince you that perhaps it's your conspiracy hucksters who are wrong
This is just hypocrisy: no amount of evidence and witness testimony which contradicts the official narrative will ever be accepted by you.
You seem to invent wild theories about what the "real story" might be
Just more hypocrisy: what is more "wild" than the official theory that a guy brought in a truckload of weapons without being observed by anyone, when only one weapon would be needed, then playing slots for 8 hours before randomly shooting people for no reason and then killing himself, and on top of that the security video disappears.
without considering that perhaps it's already in front of you.
The hypocrisy just never ends: if anyone is guilty of not reviewing all of the evidence here it is you
Healthy scepticism is good, but you guys can tend to go way, way beyond healthy.
And your definition of "healthy" means never questioning anything that public officials say, unless it's a politician that you don't like, and then you ridicule EVERYTHING, even when you know that your criticism is baseless. The problem here is your monstrous ego. You dont want to know if I am right about anything, because you have invested too much in ridiculing supporters of alternative news outlets like Infowars. You've never been able to admit you are wrong about anything. You lump everyone who disagrees with you together under the pejorative "you guys" and you think that justifies ignoring all evidence which contradicts what you want to believe. On the contrary, none of "us" conspiracy theorists want the government to be involved. But emotional desires dont make it so. You have committed yourself to the premise that false flag operations are impossible, and therefore must reject any evidence which could support that conclusion.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=admitted+false+flags
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Re: Re: FALSE FLAG OPERATION
*This* is what you call intimidation? Being questioned on bald claims by someone sat thousands of miles away from you? Wow.
My agenda is actually "hey, I've got one of these people away from their natural habitat, let's see if they actually think these things through independently. Your evidence is lacking thus far.
Oh, and I love you posting random search queries, as if that suddenly makes their results reliably.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sushi+turned+dinosaurs+gay&t=hb&ia=web
OMG! Quick, shut down all the sushi restaurants before they get to the rest of us!!!!!
That's why conspiracy theorists fall for this crap, really. You don't have any critical understand of information, and you apparently believe the first people to tell you something then ignore any alternative options.
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Here is a hint, bullets shot from rifles do more damage than bullets shot from handguns.
You are welcome.
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You know, little details that might be overlooked by the boys in blue.
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