I don’t think those are good comparisons because they don’t seem to be following any current established rule or practice.

Ralph didn’t really almost get whacked. Yeah, Johnny made things really uncomfortable but his own boss made it very clear no one was getting whacked. Had Johnny been the boss, it may have happened, but that wouldn’t have been a standard rule; it would have been something he propelled for personal reasons.

Fat Dom isn’t a good example either, because it was partially motivated by the fact that New York killed one of New Jersey’s captains, and they had to retaliate in some way. Again, Carlo and Sil weren’t following a rule when they did it either, they just got angry at the insult, started fighting and “accidentally” killed Dom. If they had killed him out of the principle of not being allowed to insult someone, they wouldn’t have had to cover it up.

Also, in both of those cases, those were in the context of tensions between families, whereas Chris’s situation is ‘breaking balls’ within the family.

A better comparison would have been Little Paulie being assaulted by Gene for calling him gay. Gene was made (don’t think he was a captain though) and Little Paulie wasn’t, so it was just allowed. Similarly, when Chris threw a sandwich at Vito, Tony said he had to apologise or something because “the guy’s a captain”. In both those cases, the rank was pulled; Made Guy over non-Made Guy, and then Captain over Made Guy.

In Christopher’s situation, Paulie was a captain while Chris wasn’t, so even if Chris did try to kick up a fuss, rank would’ve been pulled.