Already being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40957344 (albeit flagged)
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I'm here browsing the thread out of curiosity but I'm also onboard with it being flagged. There's not going to be any shortage of other places to discuss this (historic) event.
I think younger people are mostly all aware of the assassination of JFK in 1963 but probably lots are not aware that there was an attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981 (which also came close to succeeding; closer even than this recent event). That's because the attempted assassination of Reagan had far less contemporary and historical impact than the successful assassination of JFK.
If the attempt on Trump's life had been successful a thread probably would stay up (my guess only). That's because there would have been HN on-topic things for us all to consider after such an event, including possible further crackdowns on internet privacy, further restrictions on free movement, free speech, etc.
He would have unflagged it manually, because in his view it is significant enough a political story to be discussed here. The reason he didn't was he was away and so didn't know about the story or its flagging. He has manually unflagged it now
Trump won election: yes. Trump survives attempted assassination: no.
Obviously it would be historic if the outcome of assassination is different.
@dang does not work, there's no notification, "hey dang" equally doesn't work and there's no guarentee that every comment or even just the replies to dang comments will get read.
(defrost is correct about how to contact me but I did see your message semi-=randomly)