Edited video

A news story showed protest marchers marching and armed civilians standing by the side of the road. The video cuts back and forth showed peaceful marchers in a business district, but the men with the AR pattern rifles were standing in front of houses.

The reporter deprecated the implicit threat from the civilians, of course.

But..

A march is always an implicit threat itself: even at its most peaceful it is a reminder that "Hey, there are a lot of us and this issue matters to us!" Most protests don't turn violent--though one can discern some patterns in those that do. When it goes to the centers of government, everybody figures this is trying to get the powers-that-be to do something. When it marches down a business street, it threatens (and, in the recent marches, not infrequently actually damages) businesses. The wise generally get out of the way. (Which is not easy if you live upstairs from the business and somebody is experimenting with Molotov cocktails.)

But when you march by people's homes, you're not threatening their livelihood, but their families. That changes the dynamics.

I'm afraid I cannot trust the video to tell me what the marchers or the civilians were actually doing. Or the reporter to tell me what people were saying. I want raw footage to see for myself.

And given the track record of the protests, if one went by my home, I'd want some firepower at hand too. And some friends beside me. Maybe all would be perfectly peaceful--the march in Sun Prairie was quite calm. But do I want to take that risk, in light of recent experiences?

FWIW, several Chicago street gangs got their start as neighborhood protection groups. They didn't stay benign. Although word is that some of the looter/"protests" this week were beaten back from various Chicago neighborhoods by the local gangs.