Thread by @davidhogg111

Guns turned what could have been a fistfight into a shootout. At every turn guns made this situation go from violent to deadly.

Don’t forget the police knew that there were armed civilians down the road who the police made the decision to push the protesters towards. They made that decision- to push the protesters several blocks down the street bringing both groups into close contact.

One militia member has even been cited as saying that allegedly a police officer told them that they (the cops) were going to move the protesters down the street and that the militia could “handle them”

Source TW graphic:

The cops did nothing about the armed protestors being out after curfew and even supported them and said basically thanks your a great help throwing the armed civilians waters from their armored vehicle.

It could be said this never would have happened had the police enforced the curfew on the armed civilians. But they didn’t and it cost lives.

The gun made the situation deadly, the police not enforcing curfew on the armed civilians and pushing the protestors several blocks into contact with the armed civilians made the situation orders of magnitude more likely to happen by accident- if not intentionally.

Don’t just take my word for it- if you have the stomach to watch the video investigation *that is very graphic* watch it and you get a clearer picture of what happened.

I think it’s essential to have the proper context of all the things that had to go wrong for this to happen. It’s deeply unfortunate but not surprising considering how this seems almost willful and arguably was considering how many thing had to go wrong.