Cabbages and Kings posted:

The Norco Bank Job:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norco_shootout

So, here we have an extremely well documented single event which unquestionably led to a rabid expansion of police firepower, and yet, in googling, I can't find a single person making the claim that this was all a setup to achieve those exact ends.

On the other hand, basically every mass casualty event Columbine to present has had exactly those claims made, even though in every case the actual impact of the events on policy was nonexistent.

The only common thread I can think of is that the Norco job happened somewhat before internet culture had started to poison everything in proper, and so culturally we had less brainworms at that time even the fringe parts of society were more able to accept the idea that bad guys with guns do bad things without state support or crisis actors. I hope I'm wrong about that, because if true, hosed up, doomer!

If a Norco like event happened tomorrow, we'd see the same escalation in law enforcement buying ever more firepower, but I also think the Q-Shaman would get involved somehow.