Swatting A Fly With A Sledgehammer🪰🔨

Retweeting for no particular reason pic.twitter.com/nwxzqpzDiG

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) September 16, 2024

Still trying to figure out what the "attack" was. Poking a gun through a fence for a target 500-600 yards away? (5 to 6 football fields, IOW, for those of you who were watching the NFL yesterday.) And not a straight shot, either.  From what I understand, Trump wasn't even in sight.

Carrying a gun in a restricted space?  Maybe there's something like that.  But I come back to my one criminal client ("NOT THAT AGAIN!!!!") who had a shotgun in the package tray of the car he was driving.  That counted as "possession" for the law against felons in possession of firearms, but it always seemed to me the AUSA was swatting a fly with a sledgehammer.  But if it was "possession of a gun" where a gun shouldn't be, that's not an "attack."  Not under any reading of any law.  In both cases, there was possession of a gun, but in both cases the gun wasn't used.  Use of the gun is a far more serious crime; and federal law would override any "right to possession" under Florida law, in the right circumstances.  But "attack"?

And if the crime is carrying a gun within 500 yards of the ex-President, then you'll have to arrest most of Florida.  But still, that's not an "attack."  It's just "open carry."  It it is an "attack," what's the perimeter around MAL?

I'm not saying the SS did wrong to fire on the guy, or that the sheriff was wrong to arrest him.  I just can't quite figure the crime, and "attack" is a very loose use of the term.  Understand that the civil tort of "assault" can be very indirect.  It is an unwanted contact, as when a man deliberately brushes his hand across a woman's breast, say.  But if you rudely knock a tray from a person's hand in a cafeteria line, is that "unwanted contact" constituting assault?  Yes, it is; per the case law.  Assault, in other words, doesn't necessarily require actual contact with the body of the other person.

So, yeah, this guy probably violated some criminal statute.  But "attack" is the wrong way to characterize it.  If we had evidence he'd actually drawn a bead on Trump, actually lined him up in the crosshairs of a scope like you see in the movies (how come real life is never like that?), it would be different.  But this guy poked a gun through a chain link fence while Trump was 500-600 yards away (completely out of sight, IOW), and dropped the gun and ran when he was fired upon (showing at least some good sense).

I think it's pretty clear Trump is attracting whackos.  I think it equally as clear Trump is providing targets of opportunity that neither Biden nor Harris routinely provide (I remember the photos of Biden in a Corvette, when he was VP.  He couldn't drive it off the grounds of the Naval Observatory.).  His inflammatory rhetoric is also a causative agent.

I'm glad the Secret Service did its job and stopped the guy.  I'm glad no one was hurt.  But this guy was attacked by law enforcement (in the course and scope of their duties).  He didn't really attack anyone.

We really need to stay clear on what happened here.