So, what are the militant trans activists telling us now, after the school killings in Nashville “Approve of our mental dysfunction or we will slaughter your children?” I am to the point of being horrified but not the least surprised, not after reading a stream of news stories about the insane fury unleased on old-line pro-feminists like J. K. Rowling and Kellie-Jay Keen/Posie Parker, who dare to speak out in support of the interests and the safety of biological females, and not cater to the wants of those males who insist on live-action-role-playing as women. The frustrated anger of the Tranzies, and their fellow-travelers in the pro-abortion, antifa and BLM communities has risen to a pitch that guarantees a spill-over into calculated violence against those who have been designated as the enemy.
The academic, entertainment, media and political fellow-travelers have all but given permission to target enemies of the Woke with legal and physical harassment, threats, vandalism of property, doxing and outright murder. It would seem now that school children are not exempt, especially if they are attending a Christian school. Since believing Christians and other similarly devout have been painted as the primary enemies (after conservatives and Red Staters generally) of all that is good and desirable in the Wokist realm, violence against them is only to be expected.
The Tranzi activists are now planning a so-called “day of rage” for this weekend; who knows how that will come off now, in the wake of the Covenant school killings, or in the wake of lawsuits brought by now-twentysomethings who were encouraged to undergo hormone therapy and surgery and who now regret the heck out of what they feel were rushed into doing.
Of course, the usual ‘ban the eeeeeevil guns!’ activists are hot to trot on this latest school massacre, let by the parental unit of the perpetrator (who perhaps might have worked a little harder at keeping guns out of the hands of her own child rather than everyone else’s), but I rather doubt that the establishment news media will get very far with it, being that the perp was a transsexual, and thus one of the protected classes when it comes to committing crimes. Discuss as you wish is this the moment where toleration for Tranzies comes to a screeching halt, or will it be more of a slow braking?
Sarge,
What we are seeing is the breaking up [as a deliberate process] of our country into factions at war with each other. We are not going to vote our way out of this, if only because there is no organized opposition to the Leftists who are doing this. The Republican Party stands for nothing, and only seeks to share the graft available at the upper levels.
I more than suspect that you are enough of a historian to understand what happens when a Social Contract fails.
Subotai Bahadur
I fear we will soon be living in interesting times. The Left will continue to destroy everything they can, and the Republicans will stand by and let them.
I foresee possible controversy concerning rest rooms at gun ranges. Then there’s the questions concerning mental health on the application to buy a gun. I wonder how many are assaulted/killed by fellow members of their “community” for every straight attacker? 10:1, 100:1?
The next civil war by Stephane Marche.
When it first came out I didn’t think it was worth a read. I think I’ll have another look:
“Under (current) conditions, party politics have become mostly a distraction. The parties and the people in the parties no longer matter much, one way or the other. Blaming one side or the other offers a perverse species of hope. “If only more moderate Republicans were in office, if only bipartisanship could be restored to what it was.” Such hopes are not only reckless but irresponsible. The problem is not who is in power, but the structures of power.”
I don’t watch Fox or any other cable news, but I do catch glimpses of CNN and Fox while at the gym. This morning I saw Tucker Carlson’s show from last night regarding the Nashville massacre and when I got home I read the transcript which led me to an earlier of his show from last week. Both shows made sime interesting points which are relevant to Sgt. Mom’s post regarding rage.
As a a general observation, I don’t see the transgender phenomena going away anytime soon. It may crest, I would imagine the lawsuits that will be heading through the court systems regarding “geneder affirming care” will create a chill, but there is too much momentum and institutional power to do more than contain it (for now). California (and soon Minnesota) has declared itself as a sanctuary state for youths seeking mutilation and of course we have the feds not only in the form of Rachel Levine but also with Biden’s executive order committing the power of the national government in promotiing such care as a human right.
Carlson made two points which followed along with my observations.
Carlson stated that transgenderism is antithetical to Christianity, in fact any revealed religion, because it is a truth constructed by Man as opposed to a truth revealed in nature. Though Carlson doesn’t say it, transgenderism is just further evidence that we live in Nietzsche’s world where we are all supermen that have created our own Truth. In fact this is merely a further evolution of demons of Rationalism that were released in the 20th Century. To combat transgenederism, to roll it back as opposed to merely slowing it, means identifying it as a symptom of a larger civilizational struggle.
The second point that Carlson raised was from last week’s show regrading a segment produced by NPR on transgender people acquiring guns to protect themselves from existential threats lurking around every corner. While Carlson primarily focused on NPR’s hypocrisy regarding gun possession for only favored groups, he did touch on the larger and more troubling point that the people (and NPR as well) interviewed saw themselves in a life-or-death struggle, targets of genocide. You see the same sentiment from radical groups such as the “Trans Radical Activist Network” who are calling for a “Trans Day of Vengeance” this coming weekend. So when you see this sort of rhetoric bubbling to the surface and then a transgender person shoots up a Christian school….?
Going back to Nietzsche and really Hegel, transgenders and their supporters see themselves at the forefront of History with those opposing them as retrograded barbarians standing in the way of Truth and a better tomorrow. The 20th Century was full of people, and nations, that thought that way and look what happened. So the Left which has dined out on calling words violence and canceling people on “stochastic terrorism” now has to deal with a member of a favored group killing children of a disfavored group within an environment of violent rhetoric. And the Left’s response? Gun control using the same logic as the killer SUV of Waukesha
There is a logic, described by the events of the 20th Century, where if you feel you are at the forefront of Truth and Light opposed by those who wish to destroy you then you will be compelled to act, to strive for first-mover advantage, We’ll see what was in the shooter’s manifesto but I don’t expect too much soul-searching (if they can conceive of such thing in their Rationalist mind) by the Left over their rhetoric.
Agreed. At Ace of Spades HQ today, there was some discussion of the overlap between the Tranzies and Antifa, and how – since they feel they are threatened – that they are perfectly justified in preemptive violence.
And all while the ruling class snickers in nasty delight, and Biden makes jokes about ice cream…
You know, I think we could endure a degree of corruption, if the administration were only competent. We could also endure being bossed around by a so-called elite, but the elite class is not just incompetent, but filled with malice towards the rest of us. They despise us, and I believe they are enjoying the process of making life more miserable and uncertain for the rest of us.
Sarge, if I may beg your indulgence. There are a couple of aspects to this not covered here that I covered at the LEGAL INSURRECTION site today. I am going to copy and paste it here. If that is verboten feel free to delete it at will.
Subotai Bahadur | March 29, 2023 at 3:34 pm
I scan at least one British newspaper a day, if only because they have their own journalistic prejudices different from our media’s, and they will publish things that the American Leftist media will not allow. American media desperately wants the Nashville shooting to go away. Brit papers don’t care.
Two points that while not critical, are interesting and fix the victims in mind.
1) There were 3 adults killed, One was a teacher, one was the principal, and one was the custodian. It turns out that the teacher was the long time best friend of the wife of the governor of Tennessee and was supposed to have dinner with them at the governor’s mansion that night. Further the principal was also a friend, and they had all worked together as teachers years ago.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11913789/Tennessee-Governor-reveals-Nashville-school-shooting-victim-Cindy-Peak-wifes-best-friend.html
Second, just in passing, Melissa Joan Hart who used to star in the TV sitcom Sabrina the Teenaged Witch lives right next to the school, and she and her husband helped rescue kindergartners from the shooting.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/galleries/article-11915207/Melissa-Joan-Hart-reveals-helped-kids-flee-Nashville-shooting.html
Don’t let our media either make what happened go away, or make the Left the victims.
Subotai Bahadur
And I also note additionally in passing, in a dispute among factions of the population of a country; if one side feels both justified and/or safe in resorting to violence or if the sovereign forces of the State choose to aid only one side outside the bounds of the law . . . the Social Contract is gone and the side subject to violence has only two choices, submission or countering like with like.
jonathan cahn called it the return of the old gods, from babylon and phoenicia, ashtarte, the goddesss of immorality, moloch the god of human sacrifice, baal, who seems to have been replicated on the roof of the New York Supreme Court building, Naomi Wolf noted this in her substack as well, Ghostbusters did this for fun with he Hittites, or Sumerian, but something has arisen from the sea, along our major cities, I’m not saying it’s Cthluthu, but I’m not saying it’s not,
I wish they could have taken the killer alive, so we could find out who took a young woman with mental and emotional problems, and reduced her to a state where she felt that her only option was to, ” go out in a blaze of glory “.
We need to make them start paying for what they have done. They are demonic.
pagan old gods, but yes various forms of the Deceiver,
Meanwhile, the mainstream news is reporting transexuals are feeling very scared in Tennessee!
“Meanwhile, the mainstream news is reporting transexuals are feeling very scared in Tennessee!’
Well, my heart just f**king bleeds … perhaps they shouldn’t have made such a big scene, shouting down people who don’t think children should go to drag queen shows, or be exposed to gay porn in elementary school.
Sometimes I find it worthwhile to follow how a news item is being reported, the story about the story. There’s the old saw about reading how to follow the press when it comes to crime, in a manner that would make a reader of the old Soviet Pravda proud, that when it comes to those arrested or victimized only certain races can be mentioned, specifically when it is white on black crime
So how to read the slaughter of children an Nashville? Yesterday on the Washington Post.com, not 48 hours after the massacre, five stories on the front page about AR-15s (including one above the fold in the paper edition), but only 1 about the actual shooting and 1 additional concerning the police response. NY Times, one about the shooting, two about mass shootings in general with 1 primarily focused on Republicans. CNN? Two stories, one of which dealt with how the shooter’s motives were not clear. Now CNN has improved today with several stories, even one dedicated to the victims. CBS? Stories about assault weapons, with one emphasizing what I will call the “special sauce” argument because according to Norah O’Donnell assault weapons make a mass shooting 5x deadlier. Of course we have the President of the United State, only a few hours after the killings, taking time to joke about how much ice cream he has in his freezer before denouncing guns… but not so much on the person using them to kill.
Killer SUVs, killer guns. So it’s just about what we thought it would go. It wasn’t the “right” people doing the shooting this time, so just blame the guns. Never let a crime go to waste and never pass up a chance to use the dead to make your favorite political point
The other part of the story concerns the shooter’s motive. Out of professional habit and a skeptical mindset, I tend to keep my mind open to all possibilities until definitive proof is offered. It’s, I admit, quite possible that there are other reasons besides anti-Christian bigotry for the shooter’s actions, but that’s not the way to bet. There are plenty of media pixels and electrons expended about how we don’t know the shooter’s motives, but in fact we have all the information we need to establish motive because she left a manifesto as a last will and testament to that effect. Will I should say someone has it because they are not making it available to the public
Is it worthwhile, besides for some ghoulish desire, to know as quickly as possible the contents of the manifesto? I say yes for the simple reason for that the most obvious motive for the shooting is that of a hate crime, specifically targeting someone based on their religion. I despise the term “hate crimes” as a specific crime to be prosecuted but that ship has sailed a long time ago. Even more immediately meaningful is whether the act was intended to be one of domestic terrorism. We can talk about “ongoing investigations” all we want as an excuse to delay releasing evidence, but if there is any indication that what this monster did was part of a directed attack or campaign of attacks against a certain subgroup (Christians) then people need to know in order to protect themselves
Then we have our Attorney General when question during a Senate committee hearing whether he would open an investigation to determine whether the attack was a hate crime stated that they hadn’t determined a motive yet. Keep in mind that the Department of Justice is already in possession of the shooter’s manifesto. Also keep mind that this is the same Attorney General who detached resources badly needed to round up Jan. 6 insurrectionists in order to investigate parents protesting school board meetings. It’s all about motivation you see and resources…. so much MAGA.
There has been growing evidence of a violent streak within the transgender movement. Eliza Mondegreen has a good survey https://unherd.com/thepost/the-violent-rhetoric-of-trans-activists-has-to-stop/ and Andy Ngo and others have noted the overpopulation of transgenders in AntiFa.
So what has the last 48 hours taught me?
That while in a better world, we would accept that releasing the manifestos of any mass shooter is counter-productive and simply accept the proclamation of the relevant law enforcement types if we need to be worried, but because we have been misled too many times by those who in whom we placed our trust, who misled us because they thought it was the better thing to do we need to see the manifesto. That there seems to be, not confusion but perhaps embarrassment by our betters that a member of their favored groups just went against script and slaughtered members of the least favorite. That no matter how bad the story seems to be at the outset for their interests, that the Left will find a way (and quickly) to twist it to their interests in making the killer a victim and the true focus of evil the guns the MAGA-types hold dear.
The shooter didn’t kill those children, you, you anti-gun control, anti-trans Jesus-freaks killed them. Ironic isn’t it?
The “trans” thing shares with ANTIFA a desire to shock and outrage normals. I see an obvious trans person in the supermarket every once in a while. Who else is 6 feet tall with size 12 high heels? I’ve seen some numbers that suggest that the vast majority of adult trans people do not have surgery. They are merely cross dressers. Dierdre McCloskey has written that before adopting the female role he often wore his wife’s clothes. Small wonder that she and his children have excluded him/her from their lives. My parents were good friends with the drummer Gene Krupa. He had a brother who wore women’s clothes when at home. I don’t know if he went out in public that way. It was the late 1930s. The current frenzy seems to be seeking to outrage as many normal people as possible. The next step may well be violence. I don’t care about adult trannies. A friend of mine, when he was a first officer at American Airlines, often flew with a tranny captain.
The issue is with children and adolescents and adolescents may struggle a bit with puberty. I suspect that this is unusual with kids active in sports. Sports seem to be an antidote to mental illness. I have three grandkids who are active in sports and who are completely normal. I have two others who I rarely see and who are children of my leftist older son and his wife/exwife. I do not really know what the current arrangement is. One of those girls is worrisome to me on the rare occasions that I see her. Church and sports seem good antidotes to this craziness. My younger son and his three kids used to attend church regularly until their pastor went Woke.
I had my reservations with the unabomber manifesto, it seems he had few emulators, (also rush noted his prose resembled al gore’s to a disturbing degree,) of course his campaign of terror had gone on for 15 or so years,
I think michael anton has this phrase which suggests ‘it’s not happening and it’s wonderful’ is the definition as with so called blm, antifa, gender mutilation et al, this was earlier present in jihadist atrocities like pulse and san bernardino, audrey just got ahead of the curve, maybe the day of rage, will be forestalled, but I tend to doubt it,
Sports seem to be an antidote to mental illness.
Yes, but where’s the money or power angle for third-party vultures in that?
Mike,
I’m pretty sure you know the differences, but others reading this may not. I am doing this in case someone comes along or it gets forwarded to someone who does not.
As you note, the media is shouting the magic phrases “AR-15” and “assault rifle” or “assault rifle type”. OK, reality time. The quickest definitions of “assault rifles” which is not a formal term include being a) selective fire [capable of full automatic (like a machine gun) or semi-automatic fire], b) rifle or carbine caliber, and c) usually a fixed stock and a rifle length barrel for accuracy at range.
Despite the media and the public believing that “AR” means “Army Rifle” in fact it is the brand name title for weapons made by the Armalite corporation, just as weapons made by Smith and Wesson are called “S&W”. The AR-15 was made to look like an M-16 rifle [the “M” standing for the Army designation for Model] but the AR-15 unlike the M-16 is not selective fire and therefore is not an “assault rifle”. For the record, I have been professionally involved with both.
Media ignorance, laziness, and agenda identifies damn near anything as an “AR-15”, including slingshots. What She/It was actually carrying and using during the attack was not only not an “assault rifle”; it was not an AR-15. Look at the pictures that have been released of her attack and compare to the manufacturers site. What she was carrying was a Keltec SUB2000. It looks nothing like an AR-15 or M-16. The magazine comes out of the pistol grip and not the receiver like on a rifle. It is semi-automatic only and cannot fire full automatic. It is a pistol caliber [9 mm in this case, although it also can be bought in .40 caliber, which is a pistol round too], and it has a folding stock and shorter barrel. The media left the pooch walking bow-legged on all counts, out of loyalty to the agenda and propaganda therefore.
But as you say, “how” a story is reported gives an indication of the veracity or lack thereof of the report.
Mention was made of the manifesto. Last night I saw where Nashville Police say they will release it when they are done. We will see. And I am betting on hate crime, except the allies of the State cannot commit hate crimes.
Finally, something to watch. The Trans Activists have been making noise about Day(s) of Vengeance. I have a nasty feeling that it might involve re-creations of what happened in Nashville. If that happens, I suspect they will have reason to be scared.
Subotai Bahadur
It’s difficult to blame the majority for the excesses of the disturbed minority, when it’s the toleration by the majority that allows and facilitates all of the positive attention that’s given to the disturbed minority. Not that the majority shouldn’t be tolerant, but if it really were intolerant as it is accused of being (and as used to be the case) no one would hear anything about trans anything.
What’s most noticeable in this case, as in most of the school shootings and other mass-murders by mentally disturbed people, Islamists and others (are there any others?), is that the bodies aren’t even cold before the anti-gun activists jump in with their pre-arranged media kabuki, and the activists’ tacit media partners cover the kabuki as if it were something other than parasitic opportunism by professional activists who work for lefty philanthropists and NGOs.
There won’t be any trans days of vengeance (the current “long hot summer”), but there might be some additional suicides or homicides by copycats. I blame the perpetrators, the people who encourage them, and the media. Not sure there’s a cure for any of this.
I still recall years ago seeing some journalist pick up foam earplugs and ask on twitter if they were rubber bullets.
I’ve long thought that “journalist” was just a polite way to say “professional liar,” but I have to admit that I’m often amazed at their sheer unstoppable ignorance about almost everything.
That said, I’d bet that no one gets hired as a journalist these days at any mainstream outlet unless they are utterly shameless liars who will cheerfully lie on command for the regime.
If you are honest or have any sense of integrity, look elsewhere for employment.
I see that one of the victims was friends with the governor of Tennessee.
Hmmmm…
I’ve long had a suspicion that all or most of these massacres are facilitated by the regime, to one degree or another. And I note that a federal officer was actually caught fleeing the scene of one aborted mass shooting in Garland Texas a few years ago.
I hope I’m just crazy, or at least wrong. But knowing that the left very much wants to disarm its opponents and yet hasn’t had any luck convincing its potential victims to go along that, perhaps they arranged for this particular school to be targeted with the idea that the GOP governor might go along with gun-banning if he personally knew one of the victims.
I have read that the shooter might have attended the school long ago. Another story, that a pastor and father of one of the victims was counseling the shooter was apparently false.
A working definition of insanity would be to advocate making law based on the actions of a deranged person.
With several recent years of historic ugliness, I’m trying to remember a week that has been as ugly as this one
For the last several days, I have been wondering how the Left was going to escape the repercussions of the Covenant School massacre. How could they spin the story of a favored group slaughtering a non-favored group, a story of a woman identifying as a transgender targeting and killing Christian school children. How does this not become a game-changer? Well now, having seen just the images from TVs at the gym, I know.
There is a known motive for the killing because Aubrey Hale has told us in her manifesto; however, we don’t know what it is because it hasn’t been released yet or at the very least has had its contents reported on. Until that release, those quotations, that reporting happens Aubrey Hale hasn’t yet spoken in her own voice and not only her motive but the entire event is open to interpretation. Once the content of the manifesto or even its gist is released, then Hale would have spoken in her own voice and offered the definitive interpretation on the event she created. How could it be otherwise? Who would know better why someone shot up a school than the shooter herself? That’s why she cannot be allowed to speak, not yet, not until the event she created from whole cloth can be defined by others.
It is a reasonable assumption, actually pretty much a certainty, that the contents of the manifesto will be known but the timing of the release is what is critical. Part of it is simply the timing of the emotional impact, to know why a killer did what she did while the bodies are still warm is to create a visceral image that defines the event. If we learn the motive later, well, it just becomes part of a report issued long after the emotional dust has settled and the band has moved on. Well we’re less than 100 hours from the event, the children aren’t even buried yet and the band has moved on in the form of the Trump indictment. If it wasn’t Trump it would have been something else…
However timing is also critical because it allows other parties to manipulate how the story will be interpreted and remembered. The Covenant massacre must be made to fit into the arc of History, yes with a capital H, because we live in the age of Hegel where history has an arc and a meaning and events must not be allowed to conflict with the agreed-upon narrative. We know what the narratives would be. The first is gun control because to focus on the tool used by the criminal diverts attention from the person committing the crime. Those hundreds of protesters at the Tennessee Capitol? What an image , what a story? That video of the angry black Congressman berating a white colleague, demanding justice? Classic. Those are images and videos with emotional impact that push the narrative. Expect more “grass-roots” protests, more righteous anger. What I have missed are either the parents of the dead children or their representatives, expressing their views. Then again parents are no longer the moral authority for their children, living or dead
The other narrative will be more subtle and that will be the depiction of transgenders as victims. Some of that you see now but those efforts are too direct and therefore too clumsy as yet to be effective, that comment by Jean-Pierre about how transgenders are under attack. No this will take some time and subtlety. The NPR segment last month about how transgender people are scared for their safety (and therefore arming themselves) will be the way to go, https://www.npr.org/2023/02/26/1159528541/meet-the-queer-people-who-practice-shooting-to-defend-themselves-from-hate-group. Articles like the one in LGBTQ nation dismissing “gun-toting trans committing political violence” not so much https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/03/tucker-carlson-is-afraid-gun-toting-trans-people-will-start-political-violence/ We’ll see more and more stories over the next few months depicting how transgender people, especially kids with gender dysphoria, feel threatened and isolated, surrounded by a hostile world that tries to demonize them and deny them their place in the world.
Aubrey Hale can never be made into a victim the same way George Floyd was because the final images of Hale were of her running around a school, with a gun, hunting down children. However with enough counterprogramming, she can be implicitly placed into context as someone who was traumatized into such an unconscionable act by a cruel world. Her place in History (capital H again) will be if not a victim, then of a tragic figure, but certainly not a monster.
Besides any political manipulation involved in releasing information about motive, there is also the unconscionable bias against the safety and security of Christian groups. The accepted narrative is that it is those MAGA snake-charming bible thumpers who are against the transgender civil-rights agenda so if a Christian school gets shot up by a transgender wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that maybe there are other churches or Christian school that could be at risk? Shouldn’t there by some word by someone who has access to the investigation, say from our Attorney General, whether people should take precautions? Why isn’t there the equivalent of that gun-control protest at the Capitol, with hundreds of concerned Christian parents swarming the Nashville chief of police demanding info?
So we should learn a few lessons here, First is no matter how obvious the evidence surrounding an atrocity, there are always ways of spinning it, deflecting the narrative in favor of a more preferred one. That’s the advantage of having the media, even one that few people trust anymore, on your side because it starves competing narratives of oxygen. Second, yes it is true, not all dead children are the same, some are less tragic than others since it just depends on who shoots them
Prove me wrong
As far as the Trans Day of Vengeance and all of that this weekend. I doubt it will be any bigger than your average Antifa riot and those tend to be depicted as mostly peaceful. However I do expect the weekend to begin the unofficial project of making transgender people into sympathetic victims.
@Subotai Bahadur
As you noted, AR is essentially a brand name, indicating Armalite Rifle. This was the 15th in the series. If I remember correctly, an AR-7 was a survival rifle, AR-10 competed and lost to what became the M14 (shooting 7.62x51mm, essentially a cut down .30-06, a heavier round) and an AR-18 looks similar to an AR-15, except that it doesn’t use a gas system. The AR-10 is similarly modular to the AR-15, but there are several variants, so you have to be careful when mating lower and upper receivers. This is not the case for AR-15s, where the lower receiver is the standardized part. AR-10s are useful for use with longer cartridges, because they have a larger magazine well.
AR-15s actually predate M16s a short bit. There were a small number of select fire AR-15s built for testing for the Air Force, and some of them ended up in Vietnam, probably mixed in with early M16s. There may be a few in private collections, and because of their rarity, they would be extremely valuable. As with M16s, they are classed as machine guns, under the NFA, thus requiring a background check and tax stamp. In any case, the M16 (as well as the shorter M4 carbine) can be said to have been descended from the select fire AR-15.
Colt, after acquiring the AR-15 business, developed a semiautomatic only (hard to convert to automatic fire) version of the AR-15, known as the AR-15 Sporter. It’s essentially the ancestor of the 25 million or so AR-15 pattern firearms in the country. Colt, almost 60 years later, still apparently owns the actual AR-15 trademark, and tries to enforce it. My legal view, is that the mark has been genericized, and the mark essentially lost. The company apparently doesn’t agree. Other companies call their AR-15 clones something like AR-15 Pattern rifles, but most consumers don’t make this distinction, and thus my claim to trademark genericide.
There are legal definitions of Assault Rifles, through treaty and military regulations. An Assault Rifle is a select fire rifle or carbine shooting an intermediate cartridge. The latter is between pistol and battle rifle in size (e.g. 7.62x51mm NATO for M14, 7.62x 63mm/.30-06 for M1 Garand, etc). Most common intermediate caliber in this country is 5.56×45mm NATO/.223 Remington. Soviet Block countries and China have comparable cartridges. Select fire firearms firing pistol caliber cartridges, are typically considered submachineguns (SMGs) and US SMGs during WW II were typically .45 ACP caliber, but more recently tend to be 9 mm Parabellum. Note – while the shooter appeared to have had an AR-15 type rifle, likely in 5.56/.223, her/his other long gun was a PCR (pistol caliber rifle), likely shooting 9 mm, and probably taking Glock magazines. It’s magazine very much looks like the 30 round Glock magazine I use in my 9mm Ruger PCR.
Final note. M16s were built with two different select fire configurations – fully automatic, and 3 round burst. As you noted, select fire means a three way switch – Safe, Semiautomatic, and Automatic/Burst. Semiautomatic AR-15s have a two way switch – Safe and Semiautomatic. Either fully automatic or 3 round burst makes these M16s Machineguns under the NFA. What matters under the NFA is that one activation of the trigger can cause more than one round to be fired.