Why the RNC Is Banning Tennis Balls but Not Guns After Trump Shooting

Thanks to Wisconsin state law, guns will be allowed in the outer perimeter of the Republican National Convention even after Saturday’s assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

People can open-carry guns and conceal-carry with a permit in a less strict perimeter surrounding a “hard” perimeter controlled by the Secret Service around the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee as the RNC begins tonight. A Milwaukee city ordinance, however, bans tennis balls and paintball guns in the outer perimeter. Effectively, an AR-15 can be carried within walking distance of the RNC hall, but a paintball gun can’t, and it’s all thanks to Wisconsin’s open-carry laws.

“[It’s] utterly ridiculous,” Milwaukee City Alderman Robert Bauman 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?’”

Wisconsin’s laws also prevent local governments from passing gun laws stricter than what the state allows, preventing efforts to have guns added to the city’s ordinance. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, asked the Secret Service to extend a gun prohibition to the softer outer perimeter but was rebuffed, with the Secret Service stating that it was an issue of state law.

“Unless there’s something that is against state law, we have to respect Second Amendment rights, especially in regards to open-carry and conceal-carry if you’re licensed,” said Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman.

With Republicans having a strong pro-gun reputation, there was always going to be an issue of how firearms would be allowed at the RNC. But the fact that guns can’t be restricted thanks to open-carry laws, supported by Republicans, in the wake of an assassination attempt against Trump seems like an oversight at best, and dangerous at worst. The gunman who targeted Trump on Saturday was just outside of the Secret Service’s perimeter too.

Granted, the convention will be in a closed arena this time, unlike in Pennsylvania where the Trump shooting took place. But with Republicans still engaging in escalated political rhetoric, the Secret Service will have to be running a tight ship.

The Republican Party appears to have gone all in on Donald Trump’s messianic status in the wake of the assassination attempt, advancing a theory that the felonious, adulterous, insurrection-inciting, election-denying, convicted rapist was spared by God—even if that same God chose not to save a retired firefighter who died from the bullets shot at Trump.

By Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson was already a full believer that the former president’s life was spared by an act of divine intervention. Pointing to a history of what he believed to be God-like acts that guided the historic leaders of this country, Johnson claimed that Trump had experienced his own God-given miracle.

“Not to over-spiritualize everything, as you and I are accused of, Ben—but this is a big thing,” Johnson told Ben Shapiro. “I think God’s gonna give our nation another chance, and I think President Trump is gonna be the leader that does that.”

Online, Johnson had gone even further, claiming Sunday on X (formerly Twitter) that “GOD protected President Trump.” But he wasn’t the only right-wing leader to make the overzealous claim. Evangelical minister Franklin Graham told Fox News that Trump was spared by “God’s hand of protection.” From inside prison, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon stated that Trump “wears the armor of God”; Texas Governor Greg Abbott added that Trump was “truly blessed.”

Johnson has already announced that a “full investigation” will be conducted of the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting.

“The American people deserve to know the truth. We will have Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and other appropriate officials from DHS and the FBI appear for a hearing before our committees ASAP,” Johnson posted on social media Sunday.

So far, little is understood about the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, or his motives, save that he was a 20-year-old white male from Bethel, Pennsylvania. Former classmates described him as a bullied “loner” and “outcast” with a penchant for wearing military and hunting clothes, and who was by all measures “definitely conservative.”

In the days following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Republican lawmakers and right-wing media pundits have ramped up the religious rhetoric when speaking about the former president’s narrow brush with death. While prayers and well wishes were to be expected, conservatives’ insistence that Trump survived the attempt on his life by divine intervention, just so that he could be reelected, crosses the line into cult territory.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a known Christian nationalist, took to X (formerly Twitter) Sunday to share his theory that “GOD protected President Trump” during the chaotic shooting, which killed one rallygoer and injured two others. Florida Senator Marco Rubio, whose hopes of being named vice president on Monday were reportedly dashed, expressed a similar sentiment. But these comments only skimmed the surface of Republican reactions.

“God spared our great leader Donald J. Trump,” said Representative Mary Miller Monday during a breakfast with the Illinois delegation to the Republican National Convention, according to the Chicago Sun Times.

During a prayer at that same event, Demetra DeMonte, the Republican National Committeewoman for Illinois, reportedly said, “Thank you for sparing Donald Trump … surely you sent an angel.”

Fox News hosts Emily Compagno and Kayleigh McEnany also argued Monday that the failed assassination attempt against their Republican candidate was proof of God’s guiding hand in the universe.

“And there by the grace of God, President Trump is still standing there before us,” Compagno said, calling the former president’s subtle head movement “a miracle at a minimum.”

“It is a miracle,” McEnany agreed. “Providence comes to mind, you know. He clearly had Christ protecting him in that moment.”

On Newsmax, anchors Bianca de la Garza and Larry Elder discussed the belief that Trump had survived due to divine intervention.

“Speaking of divine intervention, the greatest football catch in NFL history is called the Immaculate Reception. I call this the immaculate protection,” Elder said. “Just a fraction of an inch. He could’ve been hit in the head.”

But Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick might take the cake for most over-the-top cultism.

Patrick took to X to share a text he sent to Trump shortly after the attempt on the former president’s life.

“By the slightest turn of your head in a mere microsecond or the shield of a teleprompter, your life was spared by the Grace of a Merciful and Holy God,” Patrick wrote. “I shared with you not long ago, on our flight to Houston, that God has had his hand on you since you first ran for President. That I believe. No man could survive all you have been through without the Grace of God upon you.

“The Bible verse ‘And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?’ appears in the book of Esther 4:14,” Patrick wrote. “Praise God your life was spared ‘For such a time as this.’”

The religious fervor for Trump was quick to spread online, as some people claimed to spot a spiritual sign hanging above Trump’s rally before the former president had even mounted the stage: a flag that got twisted looked kind of like an angel.

As MAGA world fuels rumors that Trump’s attempted assassin was linked with antifa or DEI, his former classmates in Pennsylvania say the shooter was a conservative.

According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, former classmates remember 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks as a mild-mannered right-winger. “He was definitely a conservative,” said Max R. Smith, one of his ex-classmates.

When remembering Crooks, a classmate described a debate in American history class. “The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side,” Smith said. “That’s still the picture I have of him. Just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other.”

Others echoed the description, painting him as a quiet loner, while another former student described him as “a quiet kid, not obviously political or violent in any way.”

Public records seem to back up the claim that Crooks was on the right, Crooks registered as a Republican in September 2021, the month he turned 18.

Some have also noted that Crooks appeared to be sporting a T-shirt from gun fanatic YouTube channel “Demolition Ranch.”

On Biden’s Inauguration Day, however, a 17-year-old Crooks also allegedly made a $15 donation to a “Progressive Turnout Project PAC,” which has been given much attention. As Ryan Grim at DropSite news reports, this contribution shouldn’t be given too much weight. The email-based PAC regularly spams inboxes with confusing links and flashy colors and can hardly be seen as demonstrating much about the shooter’s ideology.

The FBI has still not found a possible motive for the shooting.

Judge Aileen Cannon may have dismissed Donald Trump’s classified documents case on Monday, but not everyone was on the same legal page as the Trump-appointed judge.

Democratic lawmakers and legal scholars jointly torched Cannon’s 93-page decision, accusing the ruling of breaking precedent and effectively handing Trump everything he had been hoping for: a near-indefinite delay that erases the case from the immediacy of the 2024 presidential race.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer called for the decision’s immediate appeal, describing the ruling as “breathtakingly misguided” and ”wrong on the law.”

“This is further evidence that Judge Cannon cannot handle this case impartially and must be reassigned,” Schumer told HuffPost.

Representative Dan Goldman also joined the chorus, claiming that Cannon knew that the Supreme Court “has upheld Special Counsel appointments time and time again.”

In an interview with HuffPost, the New York representative argued that the “Trump-packed Supreme Court” had handed Trump an immunity ruling related to his time in office, but that Cannon had “manufactured immunity for him” after term had ended.

Cannon rejected the case on the basis that the Independent Counsel Act, which she claimed served as the foundation for special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment, had expired and therefore invalidated Smith’s work on the case. That notion had been elevated by just one Supreme Court member—Justice Clarence Thomas—who wrote in a concurring opinion in Trump’s immunity ruling on July 1 that “if there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution.”

Cannon began hearing arguments in June over whether Smith’s appointment to the case was constitutional, but she caught considerable flack from legal experts for taking up the arguments, including from former Trump attorney Ty Cobb, who argued that there were mountains of legal precedent behind Smith’s appointment.

Smith has the ability to appeal the dismissal, though his office has not yet announced what their next steps will be.