[Cleveland, OH] As the Republican National Convention gets underway in the Rock and Roll Capital, local police have expressed concern about people open carrying their firearms in the immediate vicinity of the Quicken Loans Center. But State law says they can and many intend to do so.

Police have issued a ban on many other objects, including, ironically, toy guns, as well as pointy-tipped umbrellas. This had led to the formation of a new organization, the National Umbrella Association or NUA, which pledges to look out for the interest of brolly owners of all stripes.

“We have a right to protect ourselves too – from the rain, for example.”

Unfortunately, the initially well-meaning organization appears to have been hijacked by extremist elements, who are pushing an aggressive agenda that many say goes too far. The NUA are now insisting on the right of its members to open their umbrellas in indoor locations whenever they want, with hostile activists opening large golf umbrellas – and in some cases patio umbrellas – in confined spaces to demonstrate that no limits on their umbrella-wielding freedoms will be tolerated.

“You’ll have to take this umbrella out of my cold dry hand.”

Additional concerns about the new organization are that it is heavily funded by foreign entities in umbrella-manufacturing counties such as China, and that its membership is overwhelming white for some reason and unrepresentative of the country as a whole. But its the NUA’s intransigence that many find most frustrating of all.

“It’s not that we want to ban umbrellas outright, so why can’t they just be reasonable.”