Apologies to thousands of Jeffrey Epstein memes, but the tire didn’t kill itself. Police called out a SWAT team on the west side of Los Angeles after three men took shots at a pro-Trump rally that started in Woodland Hills and finished in Studio City. CBS reports that the men managed to elude capture, but the rally participants thanked the police for their efforts:

Police were investigating reports of shots fired during a rally on Sunday in support of President Donald Trump.

The group traveled from Woodland Hills to Studio City in cars with participants playing the National Anthem, American flags and pro-trump signs in hand, and chanting, “four more years.”

A school bus also made its way down Ventura Boulevard with a sign supporting pleas to reopen schools during the pandemic.

The rally was mostly peaceful but police ended up shutting down part of the demonstration after three men were allegedly caught on camera throwing bottles at the caravan and then reportedly firing shots, which someone believed hit the tire of a truck in the rally.

“Mostly peaceful”? The rally itself was entirely peaceful. The only violence that occurred came from those outside of the rally, and directed against the rally participants. Even the counterprotests were peaceful, although it seems interesting that they were outnumbered by Trump rally participants in western LA, as CBS reports. Hmmmm.

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This election is likely to come down to a basic question: is America a fundamentally good place, worthy of defense as well as improvement, or a fundamentally bad place that requires an overhaul of the public order, throwing out everything and starting from scratch? Trump has fully embraced the former and continues to message on American greatness as the focal point of the election. Joe Biden, on the other hand, has pandered to those who believe the latter and only this weekend finally addressed the violence taking place on the streets in cities all over America.

Stories like this one make this question even more acute, even more obvious as the issue in 2020. It will be interesting indeed to see how America answers it.