Maybe it’s simply because he’s not the sitting president and his detail is much smaller?

USSS details are heavily supplemented by locals for events like this. Even if the USSS team was relatively small, somebody -- whether it was USSS, local, or state police -- should have had a location that blindingly obvious secured. That building was literally the only real elevated position with clear line of sight in the vicinity of the stage. The fact that somebody could get up there without immediate security response is really almost unfathomable if it weren't for the fact that it happened.

As for having an interest in guns, he owned an AR-15, so must have had some interest there.

He was wearing a Demolition Ranch Tshirt. It's a popular YouTube gun channel.

Personally, I want Jon Stewart. He’s not perfect, but there’s not a single person on the planet better equipped to take down Trump.

Stewart would be terrible for it.

Smart guy, great at calling BS, but he's continued to preach understanding and cooperation in the post Trump world in a way that, plainly, isn't possible when the American right operates in pure bad faith at basically every turn.

Take all the issues Obama had getting walked all over because he tried to work with the GOP and amplify it.

Zitron's newsletter Where's Your Ed At is generally worth the read.

He also has the Better Offline podcasts. Most weeks it covers largely the same material as the newsletter if that's more your thing.

The same people who stood by then the Supreme Court gave Bush Jr. the win in 2000 are finally getting the idea that SCOTUS needs massive reform.

Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett were all lawyers for GWB in Bush v. Gore.

It's literally the same people deciding it now who were arguing for it then.

Tracking, arrival timer and an easy app.

The fact that they would actually show up.

Where I live, before Uber you needed to call the cab company at least an hour before you wanted to get anywhere (in a city that you can get pretty much anywhere in 15 minutes). The dispatcher would tell you someone will be there in 20 minutes and, if you were lucky, somebody might show up in 45. Before Uber, there was more than one occasion where I ended up stranded downtown until 4 or 5am after the bars had closed at 3:00.

Being able to request a ride, having someone reliably show up, and show up reasonably close to when they said they would was an absolute game changer at the time.

Also worth noting: 2K is incredibly toxic and regular paint filter masks are useless for preventing it from getting into your lungs. It's supposed to be used while wearing positive pressure ventilated PPE.

Probably not the best choice for redecoration on the move.

According to the affidavit, Prieto said: “The reason I say Atlanta. Why, why is Georgia such a f------up state now? When I was a kid that was one of the most conservative states in the country. Why is it not now? Because as the crime got worse in L.A., St. Louis, and all these other cities, all the [N-words] moved out of those [places] and moved to Atlanta. That’s why it isn’t so great anymore. And they’ve been there for a couple, several years.”

Yes, black people have only been around in significant numbers in Atlanta for a couple years.

Certified stable genius.

Standard procedure literally nationwide is that normal officers are expected to go in with what they have. That's exactly what happened in Nashville less than a year later:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting

The body cam video is public. Officers responded with what they had. Yes, there's an officer with an AR. There are also officers clearing rooms with handguns and in plainclothes. And one of the officers that engaged the AR-wielding shooter did so with their duty handgun.

Body Armor, AR15s.

They absolutely wear the former every day and many these days have either an AR or a shotgun in the trunk of their patrol vehicle.

There hasn't been a truck sold under the Dodge brand in over a decade at this point.

It's a pun, not an ad. Dodged a bullet.

It also doesn't help that the craft beer scene turned into a competition to push the most over the top bitter IPAs possible. A lot of the appeal of craft beer went away for me when 3/4 of the taps became unremarkable IPAs. A good IPA is wonderful, but the vast majority of what you run into isn't that.

It's only marginally more interesting than when the landscape was dominated by lagers.

I think it was Behind the Bastards that hit the nail on the head about this in an episode in the last couple of weeks: Rick Rolling is goatse for normies. Even the links you trick people into clicking have become relatively sanitized as the web democratized.

And honestly, goatse was far from the most extreme thing that was completely commonplace on the old web. Turn of the century Internet culture was wild.