Goon Range

"It's not terrorism because we're white."

-some MAGA shitheel

Look, I know that these are divisive times and we're all tribed up and everything is fraught, but surely people know that if they're on the side that has masked, armed vigilantes sitting in lawn chairs and waving their guns around to keep people away from ballot drop boxes as part of some insane, fascistic plan to take secure white supremacist rule all under the guise of preventing the zero cases of voter fraud that happen every never, they're the bad guys, right? Like, good people don't do that. You know how I know? Because if what they were doing was ok, they wouldn't need masks and guns. Those are for crime. 

Well, blue collar crime. Rich people do crime in the open. It's called the unfettered capitalism. Wow, get me: I'm salty today!

"Here's to being above the law!"

-rich people

How have these folks never considered the
possibility that Donald Trump was terrible
at his job and most of us can't stand him? 

Anyway, the epicenter of all this so far seems to be Arizona, where you might recall the local GOP staging a long and bullshit recount that still showed Joe Biden winning. Poll intimidating is just this year's strategy and something The Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans and Vote Latino are asking federal prosecutors to step in and do something about. And I just can not for the life of me wrap my head around how it's come to this. Like, where are the police here? Shouldn't they be, I don't know, investigating armed randos with masks lurking around polling places? Well, good news and bad news. 

According to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department, they're looking into it. Cool. Here, watch this story from CNN about a woman who got up in the collective, be-mustached face of some of these poll watchers. My favorite part is where the cops seem to take the side of the poll watchers and--hang on, can we all agree that they're not poll watchers? They're there to intimidate and harass voters, so let's call them what they are: fascist goons.

Pictured: Police confronting a woman who
confronted the goons. You know, for bothering them.

The law and order party everybody...

Evidently looking into it means measuring to make sure that the masked white supremacists and their pick-up trucks with the license plates covered up are more than seventy-five feet from the ballot boxes. Otherwise they'd be in violation of the law, because depressingly in Arizona, and I suspect most places in the US (which is even more depressing), it's perfectly legal to brandish guns in an attempt to intimidate people trying to exercise their right to vote, as long as you're not violating electioneering laws. 

Which, I mean, holy shit. Like, I'm not a firearms expert, but I'd like to propose that the minimum distance armed poll intimidation squads are required to keep from ballot boxes should be at least outside the lethal range of whatever guns they're carrying. I can't believe it's gotten to the point where we're arguing over how close armed goons are allowed to be to ballot boxes...

Speaking of effective range, while we're at it, why don't we limit gun ownership to
the kind of guns James Madison was talking about when he wrote the 2nd Amendment.