as long as we're rolling our eyes I find it very hard to take the argument that marching in the street with weapons displayed as a public statement is anything like the same as setting up on a rooftop with weapons seriously
yes, a harmless explanation, also known as an alibi or cover story - all that's required is plausible deniability given that they hadn't yet broken any laws, and I don't consider that actual proof of anything. Also, you're assuming that the police are purely a neutral party here
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The thing about having a harmless explanation for why you’re somewhere without breaking laws is it’s a lot more common in people who are actually harmless. If you break the presumption of “if you’re being ok, we won’t arrest you” this produced a smooth slope to banning all clubs
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obligatory reminder that we're talking, specifically, about a group of paramilitaries setting up with long guns on a rooftop in advance of a protest being, hey, maybe a little suspicious and not about some extremely abstract general principle
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Also I don’t know anything about the specific guys in question but I bet calling them a group of paramilitaries is like calling random Antifa protestors a group of insurgents.
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paramilitary is easy. you don't even have to do anything except march around and pretend to be a soldier in some regard. 'insurgent' is an actual combat thing.
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Right but despite fitting the textbook definition it makes the side he's committed to defending look bad therefore it's unfair (sorry if this is overly cynical, but it fits)
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This is the definition I’m going off of. What’s the textbook definition?pic.twitter.com/bxFvw0r9fz
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you're the one who was arguing that they were just a gun club with political leanings which AFAIK qualifies, but ok
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I assume the police are an interested party. My model of the police's interests is "we would love to be able to prosecute a terrorist nazi sniper for the papers, but don't want to get dressed down for arresting [local holding rooftop barbecue/the FBI/etc.]"
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