My usual question to them is "what would be the reaction of British police if someone showed up at a protest with a holstered handgun?"
And unlike a lot of people out there: this blog has been pretty consistent about carrying weapons to a protest as being a no-no.
I'm sorry I can't say too much if Alex Pretti was going to show up with a firearm and get in the way of police. My experience is that is an incredibly bad idea from my long career of dealing with the police in various capacities.
But, as the quote from My Cousin Vinnie goes: "It's your ass not mine."
I know that some jurisdictions make it illegal to carry a weapon during a civil unrest (e.g., 18 Pa.C.S. 6107), which is why I said that I am surprised the real militia (national guard) didn't shoot Kyle Rittenhouse for walking about armed in Kenosha.
I had a manual on protesting from the 1960s which made it clear not to bring weapons to a protest, that I can't find. And there are states which prohibit this activity.
As does common sense.
To quote the Everytown page where I got the graphic:
White supremacists and anti-government extremists have sought to undermine our institutions with armed protests that too often escalate to violence. An 18-month study of 560 events where demonstrators, counter-demonstrators, or other individuals or groups were present and carried or brandished firearms found that at least 18% of these events occurred on the grounds of government facilities, with more than 100 reported at legislative buildings and vote-counting centers. The study also found that armed demonstrations are nearly six times as likely to turn violent or destructive compared to unarmed demonstrations.
That comes from Armed
Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) and Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Armed Assembly: Guns, Demonstrations, and Political Violence in America,” August 23, 2021.
The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law pretty much agrees with this:
The right to peacefully assemble is enshrined in the First Amendment and has driven political progress in the United States since its founding. While the overwhelming majority of recent protests in the U.S. have been peaceful and have not involved weapons, a growing number have included individuals with firearms—whether participating as protesters, counter-protesting, or claiming to provide security.
Armed individuals undermine protests’ core democratic nature: They intimidate and discourage people from exercising their rights to speech and assembly, and they have interfered with basic democratic processes like voting and lawmaking. Amidst unprecedented political polarization and heightened fears of political violence, the presence of firearms at protests today threatens to be a particularly combustible trend.
I could quote extensively from that report on how stupid Pretti was for being armed and how counterproductive it was, but he learned that lesson at the cost of his life. It's worth reading. https://www.icnl.org/wp-content/uploads/Guns-at-Protests-Briefer-vf-02.2022.pdf
So, you may not like what I say about Alex Pretti getting shot, but someone needs to toss some cold water on the practise of carrying weapons, particularly firearms, to protests. Pretti was "too soon oldt and too late smart" when it comes to this. And, like Rittenhouse, his heart was in the right place, but his head was up his ass.
Unfortunately, Pretti DID get killed for his ignorance.
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