Excerpt: On this day in 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest at the side entrance of the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue by John Hinckley Jr. Reagan was walking to his limousine after a speech to AFL-CIO leaders when Hinckley, 25, who was standing among a group of reporters, fired six shots, hitting Reagan and three others.
Six shots and only got him once and no kill shot. Imagine the world if he been successful.
We could actually never gotten Trump. And definitely no Reganomics.
And no Dubya. I think in a long term view, Dubya was far more destructive than Trump has been so far. That of course could change if he gets reelected.
Dubya was fucking horrendous, but nothing compared to trump, the most damaging traitor in American history and potentially the proximal cause of the loss of the Republic.
But he made Trump possible. See my other comment in this thread.
Trump made the racists and fascists feel confident and united. Trump undermined our allies, all of our institutions, the courts, the judges, the police, the press, anyone who doesn’t do exactly what he wants. Dude invited Russia to flood our country with disinformation and conspiracy nonsense in a way that resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths during the pandemic. For a while it was like another September 11th was happening every single day. Even the most conservative numbers for death estimates from COVID are like 15 times the number of Americans who died in Vietnam. Dude tried to deploy troops in America against people who protested things he did. His administration was a formalized system of bribery, nepotism, and influence peddling. He tried to unilaterally pull the US out of NATO. Everyday was a nightmare of chaos and lies.
I’ve forgotten more horrible shit than I ever remember from the Bush years. Bush was George Washington compared to Trump. You can pin GWB with starting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and manufacturing the consent to get us there, but that’s about it. The whole war in Afghanistan is kind of overshadowed by the absolute disaster of the withdrawal, negotiated and agreed to by Trump’s administration with the sole purpose of tripping up Biden during his first 100 days, and he sold out our allies and loyalists to do it, not to mention majority of people in Afghanistan that never wanted the Taliban in charge. I agree GWB was the worst president since Andrew Jackson, but Trump is so, so much worse.
Dubya’s Iraq delusions cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. But Dubya didn’t threaten the fabric of our democracy, nor did he encourage internal divisions and hatred.
Without Dubya, we wouldn’t have Trump, Putin and possibly Xi. After Clinton the US had a very high prestige in the world and even their antagonists were more likely than not to try and not piss them off too much. After the Iraq invasion the US lost all claim to being not just another imperialistic power and this definitely emboldened the others. Any idea that rules and international law mattered went out of the window. Add to that the normalization of torture, unrestricted mass surveillance and open disregard for democracy and we have a lot of the ingredients for the mess we’re in right now. And let’s not forget the 2008 financial meltdown which contributed to the feeling of disenfranchisement that drives a lot of the present day political divisions. So in my view Dubya really fucked shit up and we’re all still paying the price.
Oh, Dubya DEFINITELY fucked shit up and set things in motion. He is one of the worst presidents, just above Ronald Reagan. But Trump, tied with Andrew Johnson, has him beat, I hold.
Raegan goes down as a martyr, igniting the hearts of die-hard conservatives around the world?
How would he be a martyr? Hinckley didn’t shoot him because of his politics, he shot him because he was insane and thought killing a president would make Jodie Foster notice him. He was originally planning to go after Jimmy Carter.
thought killing a president would make Jodie Foster notice him.
I have to wonder if that’s some narrative they came up with to prevent copy cats.
I know it’s a conspiracy thought, but at some point I realized the government has zero actual reason to be transparent with the public. They could really just say whatever they want and none of us would ever know the difference.
I’ve always thought that. It’s the same with a mass shooter decades back whose name I don’t know. They blamed a brain tumor, and maybe he really did have a brain tumor, but that the tumor caused the aggression and lack of emotional control that caused him to murder a bunch of strangers is an absolute wild fantasy, the plot of a bad movie, and represents at best an impossible to possibility, let alone probability. Took up in a tower and started blasting. He had a typical childhood, that was absolute abuse by modern standards, had all sorts of problems, was totally decompensating, and the feds and the media latched onto this brain tumor narrative. The scientists were absolutely clear that such a narrative was total speculation and that science had no ability to make such a determination, anyway.
Oh, I just assumed. I don’t know tons about American history.
Thankfully he was literally surrounded by good guys with guns preventing….oh.
But surely trained and armed amateurs are the solution to stop shootings because reasons.
The other thing that never seems to get taken into account is that most of the NRA membership wouldn’t be able to hit the broad side of a barn if it weren’t for the fact that the barn was stationary and not firing back.
They think that proficiency at the shooting range is the same thing as proficiency in combat.
They even look so damn 80s.
Is that a fuckin uzi?
Yes, here are some other angles that show it better.
It’s got a stock so its a little less spray-and-pray, but not by much. It wouldn’t be my first choice in a crowded area, is what I am saying.
I kind of feel like it was chosen for the cool factor. Because there’s no way in the hell that a professional would look at all of the weapons they had on offer and choose that one.
Keeping in mind that the Uzi was concealed in a briefcase, making overall length a limiting factor, the choice is not strange for the early 1980s.
The Uzi has a ten inch barrel despite its very compact size, and a controllable 600RPM. And there’s no rule in real life that says it has to be fired on full auto.
The natural competition that comes to mind would be an MP5K. However it has no stock, a 4.5 inch barrel, and a higher full auto rate of fire. That variant had also only been introduced a few years before.
The USSS did eventually adopt MP5A3s/MP5A5s and P90s but those are carried more openly with less emphasis on concealment, at least within the restraint of a briefcase carry like in the Reagan era.
Other than the Uzi, many weapons would seemingly be too large for the desired concealment (carbines), too foreign (Skorpion machine pistols for example), or straight up inferior (MAC-10s). Of what’s left, the Uzi is not going to be outlandish in comparison.
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Yarp, secret service used to get Uzis
What do they have now?
While it would be difficult to know exactly everything they have, they seem to have kept up with the times. The Uzis have been reportedly phased out.
In recent use, the secret service definitely has Knight’s Armament Company 5.56x45mm SR-16E3 CQB rifles.
MP5A3s (possibly MP5A5s, but MP5A3s seem more overall popular with law enforcement, and full auto seems more like what USSS would choose.). I’ve never seen MP5Ks in USSS hands, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn about them.
P90s.
Remington 870 PGO shotguns. Probably intended for breaching, but possibly for less-than-lethal rounds. The USSS agent in the photo is carrying 5.56mm magazines, making the shotgun clearly not the primary long weapon.
While I’ve never seen an MP7 in USSS hands, a solicitation request from 2016 seems like it would be a good fit for them.
Same uzis.
Looks more like a Mac-11.
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That’d be a Mac-11, I believe. Not an Uzi.
It is a full sized, folding stock Uzi. I have another comment in the thread showing other angles.
Don’t fuck with magnum pi.
Definitely got the drip!
That Uzi came out of nowhere
This photo stands out as long ago helping me to realize nobody is in charge. All the adults, even at the highest levels of our government, are just regular people getting through it as best they can.
Their look of panic and defensive posture, all the intelligence and protection the free world can muster reduced to two agents with an Uzi and a revolver, pointing them at nothing, amidst total chaos.
I’ve always passively wondered what career choices lead to working these ultra-high level security jobs. What’s this guys story? What was he doing before he became Ronald’s well dressed uzi man?
Because this is such a well known and documented photo, we actually know the agent’s name was Robert Wanko.
Looking up his obituary provides at least a basic overview. He was a US Army Investigator for the Military Police. I don’t know what that looked like in the 1960s-70s, but in the modern day to be bumped up to an Investigator there are some higher standards than a normal MP, and a requirement of a Secret level clearance. Then he got out of the military, got a college degree, and then got hired by the USSS. He worked on both Carter and Reagan details.
Interesting. Thanks!
I bet that guy would have gotten Jodi Foster’s number if he’d been successful
Dude with a boom mic looking bored as hell.
Quaaludes
Unfortunately it was a bad shot
Ando now he does music on YouTube. John Hinckley I mean, not Reagan
If it was a TV show set in the 1980s and it depicted a scene that look like that you’d say it was unrealistic. That is the most 80s photo I’ve ever seen everything about it is so stereotypical of action movies of the time.
I just love the fact that the US secret service used Uzi’s, a weapon that has always been about form over function I know it works, but there are much better options.
Given that overall length was a major factor, there was a short list of comparable arms that are 18.5 inches or less to choose from.
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