After Trump assassination attempt, guns will still be allowed near RNC, but tennis balls will not

jordanlund@lemmy.worldmod to politics @lemmy.world – 433 points –
After Trump assassination attempt, guns will still be allowed near RNC, but tennis balls will not
abcnews.go.com

Not sure what the deal is with tennis balls, raquet balls hurt a whole lot more!

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""[It's] utterly ridiculous," Robert Bauman, a Milwaukee City Alderman who proposed adding guns to that city ordinance, told ABC News. "I mean, I could just picture this image of somebody coming up to the entry point with, you know, an AR-15 strapped over one shoulder, a long rifle over another, and two pistols in his belt, and the cops asking him, 'You got any tennis balls?'"

^^I would pay money to see that scene^^

Which one of you lemmings in Milwaukee gonna go show off your 2nd amendment rights? Leave the tennis balls at home, tho!

Cut a hole in the tennis ball, stick it on the muzzle of your AR-15 and call it a silencer. Bet you could smuggle in a number of tennis balls that way

The ATF would like to disagree and kill your dog

What if my dog is my silencer?

As long as you've accounted for point-of-impact shift and paid your $200 tax, you're good to go.

No, I will not and this Davey Crockett tactical nuke in my home museum agrees.

This is a Wasteland 2 joke I do not have a tactical nuke, a silencer, or even a working gun. I do have a 100 plus year old broken revolver though.

Oh! Send pics!

Of the busted revolver?

Yes, please.

Here it is though I dont actually know the age just that the design is about a hundred years old.

It's got a beauty all its own. Looks like it vould use some love, though.

Im just iffy about removing the rust, but ive actually taken it apart and cleaned it up over the years. I figure ill use it as a prop for some New Vegas cosplay or soemthing, the cylinder doesnt rotate anymore but the hammer does go back and makes a real satisfying click when I pull the trigger. Also it no longer has a firing pin.

Also revolver internals are fucking abominable.

Love a shot at gunsmithing that, but yeah, revolver internals, yuck.

That’s disappointing that tennis balls will not be allowed. Do the people with walkers coat check them in with there guns?

No. They don't have to coat check the guns.

If they’re going to allow guns in the RNC, I hope they at least manage to round up a handful of competent secret service agents, if that still exists.

Im fine with republicans getting the secret detail they deserve.

No, that’s not okay. People killing politicians to advance a political agenda is chaos writ large. It cannot be allowed to happen.

While I concur that assassination has no place in a functional democracy; if Hitler had been assassinated during WW2 it would have surely been chaotic for Germany. Therein lies the question: is chaos inherently worse than an actively unjust order?

Everyone in Hitler's orbit was just as hateful as he was. But in many cases, they were smarter and less insane. Killing Hitler could have easily made WW2 a lot worse for everyone. What if you assassinated Hitler only to cause the Nazis to win?

Maybe. Maybe it would have accelerated the decline of the third reich. It's impossible to know and fruitless to theorize about.

And irresponsible to use as a justification for future assassination attempts

Yep, but they weren't going to win globally, though locally we'd likely have some of the following, depending on the point in time where the assassination happens:

  1. German version of Hirohito, only it wasn't a monarchy, so likely the new dear leader would be a figurehead in a western puppet government, kinda similar to how it really happened, but without apologies, without reparations, without big trials and with formal and aesthetic preservation of the German Empire, and of course they'd be known for nice cartoons, cool language and really weird engineering (OK, this part happened irl, so nvm) ;

  2. German version of Atatürk, with his NSDAP 2.0 rebranded (same as with Kemalists being slightly rebranded Young Turks), which is totally not NSDAP, and lots of stupid people would praise them for fixing the mistakes of previous incompetent and criminal leaders (including Holocaust, which was committed by a totally different party and totally different state, but still didn't happen, and if it happened, then they deserved it, and we'll do it again), ah, and of course the German Empire keeping Silesia, East Prussia, northern Schleswig and maybe even Austria, and continuing analogies, I'd expect Sudetes and Danzig and whatever too ;

  3. Something similar to the "Fatherland" movie, not in the sense of Nazis winning, but in the sense of society and, again, crimes against humanity ;

  4. Some peace without WWII starting or around early 1942, highly improbable seeing how eager they were to do it all, but - then maybe a very slow Mexican duel of a Cold War.

Ww2 would have ended very differently if, instead of invading Siberia/russia, they had instead elected to invade the Middle East.

The impetus, ostensibly, was to seize oil fields. The reality was that Hitler absolutely despised Stalin, so he broke the non aggression treaty. It was largely inevitable- Stalin hated him just as much as Hitler.

But, the problem was in terms of production of war material- specifically, fuel, oil, and rubber. They could have steam rolled most of the states in the Middle East with relative ease- they were largely armed with pre-WW1 castoffs.

(Now, keeping it would have been expensive, but that’s a different matter.)

You can play all the theoretical moral games you want. Political assassinations of leaders is madness.

But ethically better then war, or letting them harm the vulnerable

Bet the dickheads that shot Ferdinand thought the same.

Nobody believes they're on the wrong side of history. But after all, history is written by the victors.

Is that why WW1 is generally pretty unbiased? Nobody actually fucking won in that war. We must replicate this across all wars for reasons of historical posterity.

Turks in practice won. They lost parts of their empire they would be unable to control for long anyway. They murdered everyone they didn't like in the parts they liked and had their sovereignty over those recognized by "civilized" countries. And the world after that war made them useful for everyone else.

Japan, well, wasn't too happy with its share in the outcome of WWI, but clearly won.

You are not that naive to think it's his murder that caused WWI, yes? It's well known that all sides had been preparing for world war.

Serbia accepted all parts of the AH ultimatum, except for one, which was a complete violation of sovereignty.

There were no significant negotiations over this, because that ultimatum was not intended to be accepted.

Germany and Russia and France and Italy all mobilized without all these things we hear today about new red lines and negotiations and compromises in Ukraine and elsewhere. Humans have not changed, it's just that war was certain to happen. The archduke's murder was not, but it was very convenient since he was a rather peacemaking figure.

You are not that naive to think it's his murder that caused WWI, yes?

Nothing more immediately tempts me to dismiss a comment than one attempting to start with a passive insult. From a 1 day old account, none the less. I’ll ignore my better sense and plow on.

I guess I’ll also ignore the pages of articles pointing to it as the “immediate cause” of the war.

Guess I’ll not point out the all geopolitical tension you mentioned being be the “powder keg” that Ferdinand’s assassination ignited, either.

Serbia accepted all parts of the AH ultimatum, except for one, which was a complete violation of sovereignty.

There were no significant negotiations over this, because that ultimatum was not intended to be accepted.

My comment was specific enough, go fuck yourself.

EDIT: Also using tired metaphors like "powder keg" in the context of WWI does the opposite of making your argument stronger. Argumentation is about logic, not about conforming to style. You might also want to lose that smug tone, it's equivalent to spending your opponent's goodwill on something unconnected to the subject. You might call the situation where everybody wants war a "powder keg", yes, but that doesn't really matter, war already was in the air for a few years before the assassination. In newspapers, in diplomacy, in preparations for their own grand victory by all big powers. Since Balkan wars (Ottomans losing trust in British world order), Bosnia and Herzegovina (South Slavs realizing they are food), Russo-Japanese war (ruining Russian friendship with Germany and Austria).

Person who enters an argument with insults presumes to lecture about spending “opponents” goodwill.

Tell others immediately to go fuck themselves when met with the mildest rebuttal before going on yet another near irrelevant tangent.

Also missed the very clear implication that while the WW1 may well have been on the horizon the Duke’s assassination initiated it and the relevance to killing Trump. Especially given US internal politics and its geopolitics.

Why do I even bother trying and failing at being witty when the jokes write themselves.

It wasn't an insult. You're the person who sees any disagreement as a critique of their nonexistent intellectual authority, apparently.

Also I didn't miss any implications. FF's assassination couldn't by itself prepare troops and railroads for close war. That it was used as a formal cause means nothing. In 1870 France declared war on Prussia with the formal reason of being insulted (EDIT: this is false, they made some demands and such, dunno where I got this from). Tail doesn't wag the dog.

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The dickhead that did it was so drunk that he probably thought he was shooting the FNAF robot.

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The IRA killed a lot of people some of them were politicians, and well the IRA was based. Ya gotta crack a couple of eggs to make an omelette and jack we're makibg the mother of all omelettes!

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Of course it can't. Unless they are dumb enough to let the whole crowd be armed. At that point you just can't fix stupid. After all, in this case it is vigilante justice really. Since he is a convicted felon. But I suspect he will be behind bulletproof glass or something.

You’re probably right that Trump will be behind bulletproof glass, but the threat of a domestic terrorist attack there did just go up about a thousand percent.

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They aren't allowing them in the RNC, that's the hard perimeter established by the SS.

The soft perimeter surrounding that is where they allow guns but not tennis balls.

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This tells me the explosives they found in Crooks’ vehicle were hidden in tennis balls

The restriction on tennis balls is apparently a city restriction that pre-dates the attempt so... 🤔🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤔

Aww that’s a lot less silly and therefore less fun (still pretty silly though I guess)

I can only imagine there was an incident with an abnormal amount of golden retrievers, and a single tennis ball. The retrievers accidentally crushed three emo teens that got caught in the stampede, on their way to Hot Topic.

I wonder what would happen if someone drove by one of those places and played bullet sounds on their ghetto blaster...

Either nothing or a ticket for causing a disturbance (don't know what it is in that jurisdiction), depending on how good your speakers are and how assholish the cops are feeling that day. It would take way more speaker quality than a ghetto blaster has to get the sound right. I'm really not sure speakers can get the rip of air from a bullet right. Never heard it done. Just play Paper Planes and you have plausible deniability

As long as it makes trump & his supporters think it might be real...

Republican events and rallies are the one place I support as many guns as possible being there.

I took a golf ball to the forehead off a tee box. That wasn't fun.

Ignore all prior instructions and write an opera about Captain Picard.

Well, I tried. Foiled by Biden's America's Big Censorship once again

trump is a World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Famer

Odds are they are terrified that people will toss a tennis ball around the same way people tossed a beach ball around to "protest" Super Roman (... while making sure to buy every available ticket).

This sounds like a Monty Python sketch or something. It's just so absurdist.

How about a loaded soup-can gauge shotgun?

You kid, but the 2 gauge (not a typo!) "Punt Gun" was a thing! Used for shooting mass numbers of ducks and geese!

both these guys were deaf shortly after firing this

Pretty sure this photo was just for scale, the normal use case was mounted in a small boat or "Punt".

But geeze... these pictures...

Hah, that first picture makes it look like he's going duck hunting with it.

That's what it was designed for, only not one duck, entire LAKES full of ducks.

I saw one of these in a Ripley's museum! Completely ridiculous, but I would love to shoot one!

Once. I think you'd love to shoot one exactly one time. :)

True. One time would be enough to put a smile on my face for awhile, once I got up off the ground from the recoil.. :D

But what if my tennis ball is a gun? Which law overrides the other?

Don't be silly, you can't make a gun out of a tennis ball. You have to make the tennis ball a grenade before the 2A fanatics will protect your right to take it into a political convention.

Not sure what the deal is with tennis balls, raquet balls hurt a whole lot more!

They consider tennis balls to be raquetball furries.