So, the GOP is holding its convention in Tampa, Florida — the Lap Dance Capital of the Universe — during the height of hurricane season, when the heat and humidity are enough to prompt Satan himself to prance under the scalding sprinklers for momentary relief.
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and the other city bigwigs are coming up with all sorts of rules to try to contain the mayhem, including my personal favorite, which is to limit parades to 60 minutes so the riot cops can take a break from their humidity-retaining Imperial Stormtrooper suits.
They’ve banned all sorts of items, including super-soaker squirt guns and string, from the “protest zone.” But guess what they can’t ban outside the Secret Service perimeter? Actual guns:
Conspicuously absent from the list of potential weapons: Firearms.
That’s because state law bans local governments from placing any restrictions on the carrying of guns in public spaces.
And that’s because the brilliant Rick Scott administration allowed the NRA to run its wish list through the GOP super-majority state legislature. Is it possible for an entire state to perish from terminal stupidity? We may be about to find out.
[X-posted at Rumproast]
superking
Can we possibly organize liberals to carry weapons through the area? That would be kind of awesome. Occupy protesters fully armed. I think they would start thinking about changing the laws then.
beltane
@superking: “Stand Your Ground for the 99%” would not go over well with the wingnuts. Jeebus intended the 2nd Amendment to apply only to white male Christian conservatives.
General Stuck (on self glorifiication)
Judge Flatt: Ollie, you know my feelings about arming morons: you arm one, you’ve got to arm them all, otherwise it wouldn’t be good sport.
redshirt
@superking: Just get the New Black Panthers to do it. All 2 of them. Gun control laws passed the next day.
Martin
@superking: Exactly my thinking. An occupy, ‘We are the 99%’ all carrying rifles in a 60 minute long parade along with banners attesting to their willingness to stand their ground against the 1%.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
The first librul carrying a gun in a protest zone will be shot and The State will line up behind the POHlice to justify the shooting.
Now, if this were an NRA rally and they all carried guns, different story.
Roger Moore
I doubt it, or it would have happened a long time ago. Waiting for the idiots to die from stupidity makes about as much sense as waiting for Peak Wingnut.
Warren Terra
I don’t understand how you can ban a gun but not a squirt gun or a pellet gun. I don’t expect to understand the mental pathology involved, but even as a legal matter I don’t get it.
It would be pretty awesome though if someone were to walk up to the security gate openly carrying a loaded firearm and an empty Super Squirter … and the gate security took away their squirt gun.
Bubblegum Tate
I suppose it would be terrible of me to hope for some sort of shootout to erupt inside the convention.
c u n d gulag
I always thought it was “The Gunfight at the OK Corral,” not “The Gunfight at Okefenokee Swamp?”
Hey, if it’s cracker on cracker crime, I’m all for it!
Schlemizel
Dang, if it were Florida would be in the top 5 of mostly to succeed. The place is a toilet with palm trees. My apologies to those who live there, I am sure there are many nice, decent people in Florida (I know I met many while I lived there) but, as a state, the US would be better off without it.
Punchy
Fizz’ixd for lets-be-honest reality. No way a 24 year old black guy with a loaded glock is getting within SEVENTY BAJILLION miles of that place.
Schlemizel
@Bubblegum Tate:
Oh, there will be no guns INSIDE the convention center, the secret service will see to that – this will be out on the street where the DFHs will be.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Punchy: A 24 year old black guy found carrying a loaded glock in the Confederacy is, to quote Bluto from Animal House, “a dead man”.
pragmatism
floriduh is america’s wang.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
Jeebus, I live 30 miles south of TPA in occupied Manatee County (mostly Dems here, but we are lashed, LASHED, I tell you, to Saratota County’s vast GOP majority, home of the great Katherine Harris, Michelle Bachman’s older sister, of election 2000 fame). Hi, Vern. Fkr.
LABiker
Imperial Stormtrooper suits are only used for librul parades.
catclub
@Bubblegum Tate: Inside the convention probably IS in the Secret Service perimeter, so they will not allow the same private carry there.
MY WAG, anyway.
Amir Khalid
@Warren Terra:
This person should be accompanied by a friend with a videocam, so that the YouTube deities may have their tribute.
the fugitive uterus
let’s just hope these firearms “experts” only end up shooting themselves or each other
gene108
Can you fire the guns you bring to the GOP protest? Didn’t Betty post sometime back about townships not being able to stop sport-shooting in private/public spaces?
Would be cool to have a sports range to shoot guns near the convention center.
I’m not saying put pictures of GOP folks up as targets. That would be tasteless and turn us into hypocrites, because we criticize the GOP for doing it.
I just think the sound of gunshots going off, as the Republicans enter and exit the convention center would be an interesting back drop. I think the walls of the convention center would be thick enough to drown out the gun shots for those inside.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
As always, I worry about False Flag ops: Some Breitbart/O’Keefe wannabe dresses up like an Occupy Protester, shows up armed, and causes some mischief (or worse).
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That said, in the abstract, none of the NRA types seems willing to say out loud how they’d feel if Trayvon Martin had been armed as well, and shot Zimmerman first in (a much more solid) case of self-defense.
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Somehow I doubt the NRA would get behind an “Arm Black Teens!” initiative.
wrb
Yes, and Florida’s going to.
The whole state disappears at the climate change end state that appears inevitable if there is no mitigation.
If just Greenland and the Great Western Ice Sheet in Antarctica melt, it turns into the Orlando/Gainesville peninsula.
http://flood.firetree.net/
Set the thingy at the upper left at 20m for the latter, 60m for the former.
Dork
Disgustingly, this is a real question: If a young black male walked around with a holstered gun in easy view, could a 79 year old blue-haired lady simply plug him and claim she was scared? For SYG, does there have to be an actual interaction before one can claim “threatened”, or can simply sensing fear be reason enough to cap someone?
Forum Transmitted Disease
@redshirt: Worked here in California. Black Panthers showed up at our Capital building toting loaded shotguns, Reagan was signing that shit the next week.
jl
I am a native Californian, and have spent most of my life either in California or Alaska.
All I have to say is, I do appreciate that Florida has stepped up and taken over the crazy state title. And I thank them.
As for Florida making itself the test bed for the NRA legislative wish list, they did not really need to go that far, and I hope they get the lethal nonsense repealed before too many more people get hurt or killed.
Because even crazy states contain actual people who deserve better.
Roger Moore
@Punchy:
Of course not. If carrying Skittles while blah is enough to constitute a mortal threat under “Stand Your Ground”, you can damn well bet that packing heat while blah qualifies.
And I have to say I’d like to see how many idiots would die in the crossfire if somebody set off a bunch of firecrackers in the middle of one of those crowds.
Schlemizel
@gene108:
My experience from St. Paul ’08 is that the protest areas will be so far away that 105’s would just be a distant rumble.
But it would make for hilarious video.
Legalize
All I can picture is an outtake from a Mel Brooks musical number.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@gene108: “Didn’t Betty post sometime back about townships not being able to stop sport-shooting in private/public spaces?” Yup. I think I mentioned at the time that we lucky folx down here can now set up our own firing ranges in our backyards, and there ain’t a goddam thing the coppers or the townfolx can do about it.
amk
That would wipe out 70% of amurika. Good riddance, I say.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Even for blahs and brahs? If so, it definitely is time to organize a celebration of second amendment rights to coincide with the convention.
gbear
@Roger Moore:
That was my first thought too.
I wouldn’t take part in a protest that was anywhere within a quarter mile of the GOP crowd there for the convention. Too much crazy. Why court that kind of danger.
Culture of Truth
you need to have a reasonable fear of bodily injury. or
haveclaim to have grass stains.Monkey Business
@Schlemizel: Bring the rain.
Warren Terra
The NRA likes to claim that guns don’t kill people – people kill people. And a lot of us libs like to point out that quite often people with guns kill people.
But with the Florida legislature trying to turn the state into a shooting range, it looks like we can also say that stupid NRA-influenced legislators kill people, if indirectly.
Culture of Truth
This convention has the potential to re-enact the wedding in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
JGabriel
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Betty Cracker @ Top:
Pleasegodpleasegodprettyplease…
.
Betty Cracker
@jl:
Yep. Me, for one.
Egypt Steve
Wait, what, Super Soakers are not protected by the 2nd Amendment? WTF not? Tyranny!
Hungry Joe
Well, if the stupidity is indeed terminal, then yeah, the state will perish. States/people/whatevers tend to perish from terminal stuff.
Sorry. It was just … bothering me.
elmo
@Culture of Truth:
LULZ. “Let’s not bicker and argue over ‘oo killed ‘oo…”
LanceThruster
I’ll bet body armor is considered a “weapon,” you betcha, even though it might be one of the truly “defensive” ones.
Cops consider it offensive because it makes an individual harder to take out should they deem it necessary (because sometimes they actually are acting in an offensive manner, or cops fear for their own safety for whatever reason).
Who was it said, “The law is an ass.”?
elmo
@wrb:
Well, I did play with it some, but it loses some credibility with me when the rising seas somehow deposit a giant lake in Death Valley. DV is below sea level NOW, and is quite dry. Where’s that water going to come from?
JGabriel
@Betty Cracker: Betty, on the off chance that there is a just god, perhaps you should plan on taking a vacation from FL during the GOP convention — because there’s no way a just god will be able to resist smiting with hurricane force all those GOPers gathered in one place.
I mean, they’re just begging for it.
.
JGabriel
@Egypt Steve:
I’m puzzled by that too. Why is gun not considered a gun just because it shoots water instead of metal?
If it used ice bullets, would it be considered protected by the 2nd Amendment then?
.
Bubblegum Tate
@catclub:
You’re probably right–I misread where the ban was applying. So, OK, we’ll have to change the location of the shootout. But still, just tell one wingnut that another wingnut called him an Obammunist, then duck and cover.
wrb
@elmo:
That’s a flaw with most of the web-accessible sea level rise maps.
It is very easy to tell a GIS program to color everything below a certain elevation blue,
and that is pretty much all they do.
However such maps aren’t the source of the estimates of rise, they are just a way of displaying, imperfectly, what it might look like.
I like The Great Sacramento Sea best. A beachfront place in the Sierra foothills appeals.
Too bad about Delaware.
AA+ Bonds
Well, that sounds like a game plan then doesn’t it
AA+ Bonds
So are liberals going to talk about how they’ll never be allowed to pack heat or are they going to be there and packing heat
Tom65
Just a pipe dream, but I’d like to see no Dems, liberals, progressives or other sane people within 100 miles of Tampa during the convention. Having no alternative, the crazies will turn on each other.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@wrb:
I’ve played with that widget before. Very depressing: My house goes underwater at the 6 meter mark.
__
And Historic Salem transforms into what I’m sure will be a charming little chain of islands around 13 meters or so.
Trakker
@redshirt:
Actually, that’s the NRA’s greatest wet dream. A picture of 2 self-confident New Black Panthers with Glocks on their hip would set off the biggest orgy of gun sales America has even seen (and 20 more states would pass SYG laws in a heartbeat).
Roc
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: In this climate you wouldn’t even *need* the false flag op to happen. You could stage a fake altercation, post the video and it’d be as good as true in 12 hours.
They’re immune to all other facts. Why would the lack of a body, police report or any evidence of an actual crime slow them down?
Niques
I’m sorry . . . but it NEEDS to be Winger on Winger. That is the only way for it to play out well.
Kilkee
@wrb: Ireland does pretty well in these scenarios, up to and beyond 30 meters. Glad my citizeenship papers should be coming along soon.
b-psycho
@superking:
This. Just this.
El Cid
Note that you don’t actually have to really organize a liberal gun-bearing march.
You just have to make one up.
The ACORN New Black Panther Party La Raza ActUp Standing Our Ground Everywhere! 2nd Amendment March for Liberal Rights!
Unsympathetic
Roger Moore:
If Trayvon was “just carrying skittles” – then where’s the convenience store videotape showing him purchasing the product?
If M was racist, why was he the only person in the state of Florida to work for justice regarding Sherman Ware, a black homeless man who was beaten to death by the son of a Sanford police officer?
If the Sanford police are racist, where’s the history of arresting and prosecuting the 8 felony grand theft burglaries committed by black teenagers in M’s complex within the last 14 months?
If M wasn’t actually injured, then why does the undoctored video feed of M at the police station show the back of his head being looked at? Also, if you’re asserting M wasn’t injured, do you realize you’re accusing the EMT and police at the scene of being accomplices after the fact to manslaughter or worse?