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philip964 wrote: ↑Sat May 30, 2020 9:46 pm

chasfm11 wrote: ↑Sat May 30, 2020 8:30 pm I drove through a protest today. I didn't realize what it was until I was through it because I happened to catch a turn lane on a green light. But it was a suddenly sobering thing for me.

This protest was happening at a major intersection (6 lanes crossing 6 lanes) in an outlying Dallas suburb. I had just seen part of what was going on as the protestors, all clad in the same color t-shirt, were out into traffic. When the light changed, their movement back to the side of the road momentarily blocked traffic as no one wanted to run over them.

The protestors were all large framed males and I would guess that they will all under 40, perhaps even under 30. There were not many - maybe 9. I learned later that there had been a larger crowd on the side of one of the roads but that those people hadn't ventured out among the cars. I pulled into a shopping center parking lot just as a local police officer arrived. He exited his vehicle and walked out to talk to them. I waited and watched. They all came back to a large passenger van, loaded and left. Clearly, they were not from the area.

On the surface, this wouldn't seem like a big deal . But just this morning, I watched a video of protestors blocking a six lane road. While the people were stopped and with no place to turn away. some of the protesters broke from the crowd, moved up through the stopped cars and started using pipes or other metal objects to smash the cars, many targeting the driver's side windows. That video was fresh in my mind.

I'll digress to offer a little context. I'm an activist. I've attended many protests of dozens, hundreds and even thousands of people . I've protested with signs at the Austin capital. I'm all for people exercising their right to protest. Yelling and chanting, holding up obnoxious signs, at least for me, is part of protesting. Violence is not. It stops being a protest and starts being something else, depending on what actually takes place.

Like most people on this forum, I suspect, I do not expect to directly confront violence in my lifetime. I carry every day but believe that that because I do and am very aware of not putting myself into places where I might need my firearm, I'm actually "safer" than I was before I got my LTC. With our current situation, I believe that all bets are now off.

This leads me to what is probably a rhetorical question: what do I do if I'm suddenly in a protest that goes to the next level. A part of me says that getting my driver's side window smashed is a small price to pay for staying safe. On the other hand, the protesters in the video were trying to haul people out of their cars. I cannot imagine how things get better after that happens. Yes, I keep my doors locked at all times but once a window is smashed, particularly if I've had to shield my head from the imploding debris, keeping the door locked is not guaranteed.

So should I take my tin foil hat over and sit in the corner or is the question a valid concern?

https://www.alligator.org/news/crime/ma ... a38b0.html

https://www.kget.com/news/local-news/ba ... king-girl/

There is now a lot of people being arrested for driving through protests.