Eric Barga with his bassoon which was mistaken for a “long rifle.”
This is where we are at in human history: people cannot tell the difference between the musical instrument called the bassoon, and a gun. Someone in Springfield, Ohio actually called 911 to report a “long rifle,” which turned out to be a bassoon.
On the afternoon of April 5, after giving three music lessons at Kenton Ridge High School, 22-year-old Eric Barga drove to Covenant Presbyterian Church for bell choir practice but arrived a half an hour early, at about 6 p.m. Instead of going inside, Barga decided to enjoy the mid-50’s weather and play his beloved bassoon outside. Barga pulled his custom-made Fox 610 red maple bassoon out of its case, sat on the trunk of his car in the refreshing air and began playing scales, reported the Springfield News-Sun. “There was a nice orange sky in the background,” he recalled. “It was one of the first nice days.”
Although, as Barga told the Springfield News-Sun, many confuse his bassoon for an oboe, he’s never had someone mistake it for a rifle. Until that day.
About seven minutes after Barga began to play the instrument, Springfield police received a 911 call reporting that a white male in a jacket and jeans was sitting on the back of his car in the church lot with a long rifle. Listed under “additional information” on the dispatch form is what, in retrospect, must be considered a grace note: “Unknown of it was for sure.”
In an unofficial review of the incident at the request of the Springfield News-Sun, Springfield Police Chief Lee Graf said the difference in how police calls turn out in this new era of heightened awareness of the danger of firearms (translation: media propaganda and fear mongering campaigns) begins with the dispatchers. “They’re filtering everything through their experience,” he said.
Among one of those filters is the emotional state of the caller. “In this case, you have a citizen saying, ‘Hey, it doesn’t look right to me,’” along with a stated uncertainty about whether the object was a rifle, he said. Armed with this information, at least “the officers know it’s possible” that there is a threat, “but it could be something innocent” as well. Another piece of information on the dispatch records communicates a lower level of threat, he said. Instead of being classified as a call involving a weapon, the call was dispatched as a “possible suspicious activity.”
Two units arrived on the scene just before 6:12 p.m. One of the units was Officers Tim Melvin and Sgt. Bill Sanders, a second with shift supervisor, Sgt. Bill Evans. “They didn’t immediately approach me,” Barga said. “I saw a police car, it’s a big police van, roll up really slowly” in a parking lot between the west side of the church and the east side of a former fitness center and previous Habitat for Humanity ReStore. “I wasn’t concerned that I was doing anything wrong.”
However, the officers were using a “tactical approach” but Barga didn’t react much at all, considering he was armed with a bassoon, but he remembers the feeling of the moment. “At this point, I realize they’re confronting me,” he said. “I put on a little dopey smile and said, ‘Did somebody call the cops on me?’”
Although he felt slightly tense, “I didn’t really feel threatened,” he said, adding, “I don’t get nervous. Years of music school (performance) beats that out of you.” The notion that someone might have mistaken his bassoon for a rifle “never crossed my mind,” Barga said. “In the right kind of light, it looks like a bazooka,” he said, “but I don’t think it was the right kind of light.”
The officers “were all giggling” by the time they came to a stop, Barga said. One even asked him the million dollar question: “Is that a bassoon or an oboe?”
H/T [Springfield News-Sun]
Although I’m not familiar with a bassoon at least I know the differences between firearms and musical instruments. I don’t even want to know what the 911 caller was smoking.
Damnation!!! Looks like a blunderbuss to me. … oops, I meant an ‘assault blunderbassoon’. Sneaky dude has one of those human-powered compressed air versions. Bet it breaks down and he takes it into hotels too. Be pretty hard to conceal carry that thing.
And from what I know about bassoons, it most likely cosy more than any firearm I own. I’m glad the cops were cool headed for once.
Was it a high capacity automatic bassoon?
OK now go arrest the person (probably female) who made the call and lock her in a mental institution for 3-5 years for being mentally unstable…….DAMN what is the world coming to??????
And the musician should get 10 free punches at her face!!!
Can’t fix the stupidity of libturds.
Neither can you fix the stupidity of American policemen:
https://www.independent.ie/world-news/north-america/new-york-police-shoot-dead-black-man-holding-metal-pipe-36776714.html
Give any idiot a gun and they’ll use it…because they can.
For some reason it never seems to dawn on most government types that stupid people, when given authority and access to deadly force, are still stupid people – they’re just more dangerous. There is nothing magic about a badge. Indeed, it can be argued from long experience that some people’s IQ and common sense go into the toilet when a badge is pinned on them.
I bet he was one of the typical lil queer, scared of their own shadow, type of fruit-loop…look at them funny and they piss their panties. Those on the Left are just so truly unbelievable beyond words.
A basoon rocket launcher!
What a buncha maroons, sorta like me having security called on me because i was walking through a shopping plaza with a nailgun and my tool bags while working with a contractor buddy doing a tennant finish,,,, just cant fix stupid,
Even the security guard got a good laugh out of that one, my assault hitachi nailer,,,,, ooooo so scarry, and i had a GHASP BIG hammer
… police gunned down the porn star actor as the patrolman though the actor was in the process of exectuting the cocksucker
Bassoon. Bufoon.
What’s the difference ?
One is native to Africa, me thinks
Ban all musical instruments, it’s confusing for the libtards.
No…ban libs since they are terminally confused all the time.
Jim: And much more importantly, they are just worthless, simple minded, very low I.Q. goofs.
What needs to start happening when these bogus calls come in is that the maker of the call needs to be put on a low level watch list for a tendency to Hysteria and being an unreliable witness.
It’s a variation on the theme of the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf, stimulated by the incessant hysteria of presstitutes continuously whipping up a state of frenzy among the gullible and credulous.
Such a list could at some future time save an innocent individual from injury or death at the hands of an over-eager officer acting upon bogus information.
Different topic. When is Spike Lee not trying to start a race war? Never. Despicable man.
That black, buffoon savage truly deserves to HANG!! They just never stop with the antics. . .
Bassoon or oboe?
How many cops would immediately recognize a bassoon when they see one? It is an extraordinary cop I’ll wager.
This story easily could have been a tradgedy kicked under the rug by media.
_
Damn good thing he wasn’t black and in Houston Tx. The cops would have pulled up and opened fire, no questions asked! Cell phones, pens, wallets, and about everything else have been used as an excuse to blast away.
Long gun? Seriously. Bazooka maybe.
Lucky it wasn’t a trombone, those things are dangerous. You could put someone’s eye out with one.
I love trombones.
Dad was a professional musician – trombone.
Played with Benny Goodman.
I miss my dad.
dad is at 1:12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4klg9u0-8jc
The man is lucky to be alive.
Was he playing the Rat-A-Tat song on that assault bassoon?
The article states that the callers didn’t know what it was for sure, but it looked like it could be a gun. No one could be so stupid, could they? I suspect the caller(s) were probably hoping he was holding a rifle before calling 911 so they can make merely make trouble for him. Many articles have been written in the past about these kind of people; they don’t personally feel any threat or danger, but in this case they don’t like guns, and just wanted to get someone hassled who might have one. These people are not altruistic or concerned about public safety (in reality they generally couldn’t care less about others), they just enjoy some kind of sense of empowerment. I bet these same callers would do the same if it was a a broom or a lamp, anything will do really. These calls are not due to stupidity so much as just a snitch mentality.
In Nazi Germany, communist Eastern Europe, USSR, and communist China for example, their societies were intensely inculcated to be snitches (even against their own families). The state rewarded them with an extra ration ticket and a pat on the head. We already have a large segment of our population like that; ready and willing to surrender their rights and eager to help the state take everyone else’s rights away. I have read articles about neighbors calling the police on someone for smoking inside their own house if a minor also lives there. The police actually arrived with “social services” personnel to investigate. If the day comes when when the US has a gov’t like that they will have a vast army ready to deploy aagainst those who of us love freeedom and independence.
Take my word for it, in the near future the man with the bassoon will be locked up for being a “public nuisance”, or even only projecting the appearance of a “threat” against the state, even if it is only a bassoon. For the state, snitching must always be encouraged and acted on, otherwise there won’t be people willing to snitch, and the “offenders” regardless of how baseless the accusation, must be punished. Don’t believe me? There are volumes of on-line testimonies and documentation about the millions of victims of oppressive police states of the 20th century, and the extreme levels the state went to to ensure compliance and submission and how the state justified the absurd.
Neither can you fix the stupidity of American policemen:
https://www.independent.ie/world-news/north-america/new-york-police-shoot-dead-black-man-holding-metal-pipe-36776714.html
Give any idiot a gun and they’ll use it…because they can.
Bill: You are right, proof yet again how not only stupid these buffoon are but as you mention, they can’t “drop the dime” on someone so quickly and not care for 1 second what may actually happen to said person. If a goofy cop shows up and takes a quick look and actually thinks that is a gun, he may open fire on the innocent man doing nothing wrong…crazy things happen. You know, the infamous “in this day and age” blah, blah and never forget the terrorism talk or bullshit is more like it truthfully. WHF has happened to people and to society??
Just for everyone’s information, the military bazooka was named because of its similarity in appearance to a musical instrument used by Bob Skyles and his Skyrockets back in the 1930s. His bazooka was made of plumbing parts and had a strange sound. Here’s a link to the “Blue Bazooka Blues” on youtube: ht tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwqHMnvd0I0
Libtards love playing with skin flutes.
Sgt.
Dale: You are right about that one: bunch of no good, low-life, morally bankrupt pond-scum fucks!!
Just to be safe, we should ban “Dueling Banjos”
First question to ask is “is he still alive?”
too many fing idiots in this country now
I saw two Chinese men arguing outside a Chinese restaurant in Chicago once. One of them was giving the other a Texas Titty Twister and that was the extent of the violence. And then I saw some cunt on here cell phone and I knew what she was doing. She just couldn’t resist calling the cops and getting involved in something that was none of her fucking business. I suppose that punching each other in the arm like happened in the 70s a lot, would today warrant a visit from the Gestapo because of some nosey bitch. People that were trouble makers, libtards, and snowflakes will be executed first in a SHTF.
The nitwit who called 911 will justify it with, “you can never be too careful”. If the officer shot him it would have been, “I thought he had a weapon”, “I’de rather be judged by 12 than carried by six”.
“Excuses are like assholes, everybody has one”.
It was a politically-motivated, false report, in case anyone cared.