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Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation on 11/22/22 in all areas

  1. Just finished reading that article and came here to post it in full. Not only is he a hero but also a great fucking father. Army Veteran Went Into ‘Combat Mode’ to Disarm the Club Q Gunman Richard M. Fierro, who served for 15 years in the military, was at the nightclub in Colorado Springs with his family when the gunman opened fire. “I just knew I had to take him down,” he said. COLORADO SPRINGS — Richard M. Fierro was at a table in Club Q with his wife, daughter and friends on Saturday, watching a drag show, when the sudden flash of gunfire ripped across the nightclub and instincts forged during four combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan instantly kicked in. Fight back, he told himself, protect your people. In an interview at his house on Monday, where his wife and daughter were still recovering from injuries, Mr. Fierro, 45, who spent 15 years as an Army officer and left as a major in 2013, according to military records, described charging through the chaos at the club, tackling the gunman and beating him bloody with the gunman’s own gun. “I don’t know exactly what I did, I just went into combat mode,” Mr. Fierro said, shaking his head as he stood in his driveway, an American flag hanging limp in the freezing air. “I just know I have to kill this guy before he kills us.” The authorities are holding Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, on charges of killing five people, and say that 18 more people were injured in a rampage at the club that lasted only a few minutes. The death toll could have been much higher, officials said on Sunday, if patrons of the bar had not stopped the gunman. “He saved a lot of lives,” Mayor John Suthers said of Mr. Fierro. The mayor said he had spoken to Mr. Fierro and was struck by his humility. “I have never encountered a person who engaged in such heroic actions and was so humble about it.” It was supposed to be a chill family night out — the combat veteran and his wife, Jess, joined their daughter, Kassandra, her longtime boyfriend Raymond Green Vance, and two family friends to watch one of his daughter’s friends perform a drag act. It was Mr. Fierro’s first time at a drag show, and he was digging it. He had spent 15 years in the Army, and now relished his role as a civilian and a father, watching one of his daughter’s old high-school friends perform. “These kids want to live that way, want to have a good time, have at it,” he said as he described the night. “I’m happy about it because that is what I fought for, so they can do whatever they hell they want.” Mr. Fierro was trying to get better at going out. In Iraq and Afghanistan he’d been shot at, seen roadside bombs shred trucks in his platoon, and lost friends. He was twice awarded the Bronze Star. The wars were both past and still present. There were things he would never forget. For a long time after coming home, crowds put him on edge. He couldn’t help to be vigilant. In restaurants he sat against the wall, facing the door. No matter how much he tried to relax, part of him was always ready for an attack, like an itch that could not be scratched. He was too often distrustful, quick to anger. It had been hell on his wife and daughter. He was working on it. There was medication and sessions with a psychologist. He got rid of all the guns in the house. He grew his hair out long and grew a long, white goatee to distance himself from his days in uniform. He and his wife ran a successful local brewery called Atrevida Beer Co. and he had a warm relationship with his daughter and her longtime boyfriend. But he also accepted that war would always be with him. But that night at Club Q, he was not thinking of war at all. The women were dancing. He was joking with his friends. Then the shooting started. It was a staccato of flashes by the front door, the familiar sound of small-arms fire. Mr. Fierro knew it too well. Without thinking, he hit the floor, pulling his friend down with him. Bullets sprayed across the bar, smashing bottles and glasses. People screamed. Mr. Fierro looked up and saw a figure as big as a bear, easily more than 300 pounds, wearing body armor and carrying a rifle a lot like the one he had carried in Iraq. The shooter was moving through the bar toward a door leading to a patio where dozens of people had fled. The long-suppressed instincts of a platoon leader surged back to life. He raced across the room, grabbed the gunman by a handle on the back of his body armor, pulled him to the floor and jumped on top of him. “Was he shooting at the time? Was he about to shoot? I don’t know,” Mr. Fierro said. “I just knew I had to take him down. The two crashed to the floor. The gunman’s military-style rifle clattered just out of reach. Mr. Fierro started to go for it, but then saw the gunman come up with a pistol in his other hand. “I grabbed the gun out of his hand and just started hitting him in the head, over and over,” Mr. Fierro said. As he held the man down and slammed the pistol down on his skull, Mr. Fierro started barking orders. He yelled for another club patron, using a string of expletives, to grab the rifle then told the patron to start kicking the gunman in the face. A drag dancer was passing by, and Mr. Fierro said he ordered her to stomp the attacker with her high heels. The whole time, Mr. Fierro said, he kept pummeling the shooter with the pistol while screaming obscenities. What allowed him to throw aside all fear and act? He said he has no idea. Probably those old instincts of war, that had burdened him for so long at home, suddenly had a place now that something like war had come to his hometown. “In combat, most of the time nothing happens, but it’s that mad minute, that mad minute, and you are tested in that minute. It becomes habit,” he said. “I don’t know how I got the weapon away from that guy, no idea. I’m just a dude, I’m a fat old vet, but I knew I had to do something.” When police arrived a few minutes later, the gunman was no longer struggling, Mr. Fierro said. Mr. Fierro said he feared that he had killed him. Mr. Fierro was covered in blood. He got up and frantically lurched around in the dark, looking for his family. He spotted his friends on the floor. One had been shot several times in the chest and arm. Another had been shot in the leg. As more police filed in, Mr. Fiero said he started yelling like he was back in combat. Casualties. Casualties. I need a medic here now. He yelled to the police that the scene was clear, the shooter was down, but people needed help. He said he took tourniquets from a young police officer and put them on his bleeding friends. He said he tried to speak calmly to them as he worked, telling them they would be OK. He spied his wife and daughter on the edge of the room, and was about to go to them when he was tackled. Officers rushing into the chaotic scene had spotted a blood-spattered man with a handgun, not knowing if he was a threat. They put him in handcuffs and locked him in the back of a police car for what seemed like more than an hour. He said he screamed and pleaded to be let go so that he could see his family. Eventually, he was freed. He went to the hospital with his wife and daughter, who had only minor injuries. His friends were there, and are still there, in much more serious condition. They were all alive. But his daughter’s boyfriend was nowhere to be found. In the chaos they had lost him. They drove back to the club, searching for him, they circled familiar streets, hoping they would find him walking home. But there was nothing. The family got a call late Sunday from his mother. He had died in the shooting. When Mr. Fierro heard, he said, he held his daughter and cried. In part he cried because he knew what lay ahead. The families of the dead, the people who were shot, had now been in war, like he had. They would struggle like he and so many of his combat buddies had. They would ache with misplaced vigilance, they would lash out in anger, never be able to scratch the itch of fear, be torn by the longing to forget and the urge to always remember. “My little girl, she screamed and I was crying with her,” he said. “Driving home from the hospital I told them, ‘Look, I’ve gone through this before, and down range, when this happens, you just get out on the next patrol. You need to get it out of your mind.’ That is how you cured it. You cured it by doing more. Eventually you get home safe. But here I worry there is no next patrol. It is harder to cure. You are already home.”
    22 points
  2. In a normal world, this certified American badass would be a household name, recognized as a superhero. But in our world, schleps like Kyle Rittenhouse get that treatment.
    21 points
  3. 20 points
  4. Go back to the football board with this insufferable vaginal discharge.
    20 points
  5. No, he didn’t. There’s this thing called a college football playoff. It pits the top 4 teams across the entire landscape of college football against one another and then awards a champion. Texas A&M did not make the playoff. The AP’s final dumbass rankings no longer hold the sport hostage and no one gives a fuck where they ranked people to close it out. The rankings posted next to any team from early November forward are CFP rankings and that’s for a reason. You fucks who want to continue to lend credence to something else are like the Japanese soldiers still holed up in caves in The Philippines decades after WW2 ended.
    18 points
  6. Went out to the sheet metal shop this morning and saw two of my guys (brothers) piling into one of our trucks to go to a job. The usual "what's up?" salutations were offered. I asked the older brother what they were doing for Thanksgiving: staying here, going somewhere.....? He replied "going to Dallas to spend Thanksgiving with my mom and her lesbian lover." Of course, I was intrigued and pressed "tell me more." He came back "oh, they met here in Houston. The other woman lived across the street and they started getting it on then took to selling drugs and partying. They got divorced from their husbands, then got busted, went to prison and were at the same prison and stayed together there. When they got out they moved to Dallas and are still going at it. I guess Norman Rockwell is dead and gone." I had no idea that he could fathom who Norman Rockwell is and could make such a wry connecting comment.
    18 points
  7. I swear no CR but the stupidity has to be appreciated. The real reason for all the injuries and bad season: Edwards69 11:46a AG Here's a theory most would call a conspiracy......covid vaccine!! Yes, all the teams got them, but they probably didn't get the same throughout the SEC as multiple formulas were used. ALL were untested. Many negative overall medical degradations have been validated. What if our ADepartment was purposely supplied with an especially nasty "witches brew". Go ahead and laugh and keep listening to the DS trash. Head in the dirt solves so many issues! https://texags.com/forums/5/topics/3343382/2
    16 points
  8. 12 points
  9. I don’t think Earle is a bad guess at all and I’ve already mentioned on here, I believe, that folks around the sport feel like Burden into the portal is a certainty. I assume fatfuck is guessing Burden and knows dick. Stewart into the portal is now a certainty for anyone holding out any doubt. I’m interested to see if he does what he’s been saying he’s going to do for months, or if he winds up at USC or OSU or something.
    12 points
  10. Because you're joking about and backslapping with your chudley buddies over a terrorist attack on group that's been targeted by militant religious extremists and cast as child molesters by hateful and useful idiots. It's just a neg. Put on your big boy pants and deal with it, it's not like you're getting shot at you great big gaping pussy.
    12 points
  11. A&M's 2020 wins Vanderbilt-fired Derek Mason Florida-fired Dan Mullen after 2021 South Carolina-fired Will Muschamp LSU-fired Ed Orgeron after 2021 Auburn-fired Gus Malzahn Tennessee-fired Jeremy Pruitt This was such a joke of a schedule.
    11 points
  12. Alabama is 2 plays from having 2 more losses, too. One would be to A&M at home. Sign of a poorly coached team?
    11 points
  13. The ruling in that lawsuit was crushing. Alex is down to the bear necessities at this point.
    10 points
  14. That's the entire right-wing ecosystem. Whether we are talking crypto or Q or election "fraud" or Kanye ranting about Jews controlling everything ... it all boils down a some deep desire to be "in" on a secret. I used to wonder how I managed to disagree with the same people on almost every topic, no matter how unrelated the issues may appear to be on the surface, and then I made this connection. Will be a fascinating psychology study in 50 years.
    10 points
  15. “Oh good. Anastasis showed up on the thread and offered relevant, insightful thoughts,” thought no Surly poster ever.
    10 points
  16. The USC side has made up the Worthy stuff this cycle based on them making a run at him last cycle. This cycle, a “you never know” response to an intermediary about him being interested has vaulted the view on their side to “we’re getting Worthy” and leaking that to their $9.95ers to gin up some concept of momentum. Worthy wouldn’t surprise me if he tested the portal and flirted with USC again, but there’s zero substance to anything with it right now. I believe Schrader was a guy caught paying recruits and making shit up on numerous occasions in the pass, so he should have the credibility of the lying criminal he is.
    10 points
  17. Well, this Thanksgiving will probably suck. Our youngest daughter just found out she has cancer and doesn't feel like making the ride from San Angelo, and my wife has so alienated the two older daughters so bad I'm not sure they'll ever come over again, but after reading some of these I posts, I'll never complain again.
    10 points
  18. If having one dad in the house can prevent mass shootings, imagine what could be accomplished with two dads in the house!
    10 points
  19. 9 points
  20. goddamn this was funny. i was just trying to explain this fucking guy last weekend. how he was viewed by the community at large and how we had to deal with him (and yes, people did report his posts with commentary along the lines of "this guy has to be a psycho, he knows way too much about towing") and i found it nearly impossible to explain. might as well try to explain both tacos.
    9 points
  21. Sorry for the derail. Here's my longcat to try to get this back on track. Here's a decade's worth of mediocrity summed up in nice bullets: 1) Player development. This has been our biggest issue. It's a struggle to identify find ex-players who actually improved YOY. The NFL draft appears to agree. A lot of that is on position coaching and SC. 2) Scheme changes. Some of this is hiring and some of it is on the coaches. Strong recruited himself out of his stack defense. Orlando inherited a roster unsuited for his defense, and his solution was to play a Will at DL and an edge at essentially a weak safety position. We had a walkon MLB playing edge for good chunks last year because the Orlando defense didn't really need edges. People can scream to change the scheme to match personnel, but that's not really conducive to point #1, nor is it really how college coaching functions. It's primarily a hiring issue, imo. Do you want to hire a guy that can have success with the roster or a guy to completely rebuild? We've done the latter while expecting the former. This kind of blends with next point: 3) Roster management. We recruit talent, but we don't stack it up well enough and we create some glaring roster problems when we miss in recruiting. These issues linger for years, and pre-portal there was no good fix (and I don't think the portal is a cure-all - it does help and we should use it). The previous staffs were terrible at this. Current examples include: Having 2 upperclassmen at OL (and 1 is injured). That's been a problem this year. Having 0 SO/RS-FR at LB. That'll be a problem next year and the next - either by youth or pickins from the portal, or by plugging in someone not ideal. It'll be solved somehow, but it won't be better than having 5 or 6 of your own recruits, who have lived the system for a couple years already, competing for playing time. --- Here's what I'm optimistic about Sark on these points: 1) We actually got better this year. Not just the team by adding and subtracting talent, but individual players did basically across the board with a few exceptions. Some are substantially better: Christian Jones, pick any DT, Sorrell, Ford, Jamison, Thompson. Card for the portions that we've seen him each year. The staff is undeniably better than previous iterations when it comes to actually coaching. 2) Portal changes the game here, and it's TBD how things work out, but Sark at least got a couple edges and a LB as much-needed stopgaps. Then, he's loaded recruiting classes with TEs/RBs to fit his preferred personnels on offense. He whittled down the WR room and brought in some portal guys (this maybe hasn't worked out great but imagine where we'd be with Marcus Washington as WR #1). 3) This is TBD, but he at least says the correct things. He understands the need to stack talent year-over-year. QB and RB are obvious examples of this. He loaded up the OL two years running because it was a looming issue. He talks about the roster not just in terms of the starters, but how many scholarships are being devoted to a position, how young or old the position is, who hasn't seen the field but is coming along. He doesn't seem afraid to make cuts (portal helps here as well). --- What I'm pessimistic about: We have difficulty putting complete games together. I don't know why. One unit plays well and the other doesn't. Offense on fire until half then disappears. Are we inconsistent at gameprep? Too limited to adjust? Can't pass when they stop the run? Poor conditioning? Is it mental? Is it missing depth or talent? Snakebit? The theme of this season is looking like a really good team yet losing games we shouldn't.
    9 points
  22. I once told txtow “rock on” and “you’re doing God’s work”. So yeah, that’s my cross to bear.
    9 points
  23. There are probably a bunch of "Don't Care. Got Jimbo" Tshirts floating around
    9 points
  24. Elon had to be hospitalized as a kid after being shoved down some stairs at school. The kid who shoved him did it because Elon had mocked his dad for committing suicide. It doesn't seem like Elon learned anything from the experience, but I want to find whoever did it and buy him a beer.
    9 points
  25. I assume when he enters the portal, he, Sarkisian and Marion will be speaking immediately with this messaging. Hard to ahead of that. He knows his shit. I would try to get over your feelings. I’ve seen Stewart drop key passes and make critical fumbles this year. He’s an upgrade on the roster, but he’s got work to do too. Plus he’s an immature imbecile and that makes him a constant roster risk.
    9 points
  26. That dude is going to be pretty popular in prison. He seems like he'll thoroughly enjoy it.
    9 points
  27. Wordle 521 3/6* ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    9 points
  28. Wordle 521 3/6 ⬛⬛⬛🟨🟩 🟨⬛⬛⬛🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
    9 points
  29. I've got an AR that I built custom years ago when I was shooting often, it's a tack driver, it's a great range gun, and others like it fucking kills so many innocent people. It's time to do something about an item that is obviously uniquely dangerous and desirable for use in terrorist attacks. Sorry if it makes others lose their toys too. It's just a thing in a safe. Us keeping our AR's isn't worth the damage to our nations soul that we see on an ever more frequent basis.
    9 points
  30. And we've also seen a huge change in firearms, and how they are treated. 25-30 years ago, ARs and similar weapons weren't ubiquitous. Firearms were not cultural talismen for incel losers to wield. I had a firearm in the trunk of my car in the high school parking lot for several months of the year (hunting season). Never even occurred to me to pull it out and shoot those who pissed me off. Firearms law and firearms culture has changed materially, and for the worse, over the past generation. Saying "there's nothing we can do, laws mean nothing" ignores the evidence of the past generation. We made stuff worse. That being true, we can also make it better.
    8 points
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