The light-hearted and wonderful Burning Man turned dark this year when one reveller in tactical gear and wielding a “machine gun” circled the camp asking people “wanna get shot?”
The man was actually “shooting at people passing by” and the sound “sounded real”, according to one Redditer who is said to have witnessed the strange and scary incident.
“Who else saw/heard the guy who was wearing a tactical outfit and gear and was shooting at people passing by?,” the Burner posted to r/BurningMan. “Yelling things like, ‘you wanna get shot??’. The sound sounded real, it looked real, and it was F**KED up.
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“Anybody else see this? What was his deal? It was not cool. It was not art. It was terrible and how do you even react or act to that? Saw some people pretend to die, saw an older man just laugh as he passed by from afar…different reactions. My friend and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It really turned the whole feeling of the playa sour for a while.”
(Image: nvgeologist/Reddit)
While there were a number of people arrested at this year’s Burning Man, including for “possession of deadly weapons”, it is not clear it this incident relates to those or if indeed the “gunman” was arrested at all.
However, another camper posting in the Reddit comments reiterated the same thing – a man with a gun shooting at people. They wrote: “I was camped on esplanade right where this occurred in front of. I heard the clack of his gun, faint at first and then getting closer.
“I asked my friend (a fellow gun owner) ‘what’s that sound like to you’ and he confirmed that it sounded like gunshots. We kept hearing it and heard them getting closer… I saw a man in the distance fade in and saw him making motions like he was aiming a rifle and I could see something in his hands.
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
“I saw an esd fire truck approach him with another group of people and the clacking stopped. I didn’t hear anything on bmir and when I went back out there were cops everywhere.”
The Redditer said he eventually flagged down a fire truck and the officials said the man was shooting a “map gas gun”, which “they compared to a potato cannon”.
“He told me law enforcement was dealing with it and made a comment that suggested that they might have disabled him by hitting him with their truck. I thanked them for running towards the fire,” he said. “This seriously f**ked me up for a good portion of the night.”
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
The Daily Star previously reported that a “psychotic guy” who “grabbed” a woman at Burning Man immediately wished he hadn’t as he was tackled to the ground and rolled up in a blanket.
Cops and paramedics rushed to the scene, according to one Burner who “shoved” the attacker off of his female friend and “threw” him to the ground, holding him down until help arrived.
Seasoned festival-goer Arram Sabeti, who’s been attending Burning Man for 10 plus years, said the attack was like nothing he’d ever seen before as the assailant screamed “I’m literally the man” over and over.
Arram said while he was “a bit shook” afterwards, he knew he had to defend someone he cared about. “Got into a fight for the first time at Burning Man,” he revealed on X. Read the full story here.
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