Protesters turn violent. What do you do?

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Using any firearm against a person is potentially lethal force. IIRC, the recent Burlington, WA shooter was using a 10/22 (correct me if wrong).

Shooting people to stop a demonstration is not acceptable unless the crowd is posing a direct and lethal threat to others. Wait till government snipers shoot down some open carry idiot demonstrators? That ok? The Israeli scenario is not comparable.

A woman was killed by a OC paintball gun a few years ago.

This thread is about what YOU can do - not about governmental responses, so let's turn back to it.
 
How smart would it be for riot police to show up at a blm riot and kill people?
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Yes, police are really limited in how they can respond.

Up until now many of these marches have occurred in downtown areas that are often deserted at night and this mean limited interaction with innocent people. However, these groups seem to be moving into other areas and actively seeking out conformations in an effort to “shut it down” in the belief that hitting people financially by shutting down business will help their cause. Last weekend in Atlanta they blocked several restaurants and would not allow patrons to enter. Sunday afternoon they went to a large shopping mall and blocked the streets and the actual entrances to the mall. This resulted in some heated verbal confrontations with innocent bystanders, but I fear if this continues these interactions will escalate and become more violent.

Yes, avoiding these groups is the best idea, but if they continue to seek out confrontation in unexpected places it may become more and more difficult to avoid.
 
Good point. They will someday realize that.

A few days ago a "man" posted on Facebook that he was racially harassed here by police. Investigation proved him a liar. Nobody cared. The thousands of people who read that page were surely thinking about protesting. Most of them believe that the police fibbed.

There won't be a riot, but there may eventually be some trouble.

I worry more about the white trash thugs. The "417 honkies".
 
Wow... Some of you guys have better crystal balls than I do. Pete, let's assume the fact that we have already "screwed up" and the "protesters" have already swarmed the highway. If the cars in front of you have stopped, you're stuck. I guess I've already decided what I would do: Abandon the car and move away from the "protesters". If anyone gets in my way will get a face full of Fox Labs. If anyone attempts to harm me or my family, I will escalate from there. Things are replaceable, people not so much.
 
I get that one cannot avoid 100% of possible protests. Were the recent protests really that unpredictable? In times of "civil unrest" (and that is stretching the term I know) avoid population centers.

"But I live in..." I don't know how to respond to that any better than the people who live in certain states and don't like the gun laws.

Some of us have made conscious decisions to avoid major population areas (both in where we live and where we work and travel) partly to avoid the type of issues being described.

I don't buy this "could not avoid it" argument. You choose in a lot of what you do what risks to assume. It is possible to misjudge those risks but we come back to the first question I asked:

"Were the recent protests really that unpredictable?" Frankly I am just surprised there were not more.
 
Lohman, there are many responsibilities and obligations that determine our choices. While it is easy to say that avoidance of major metropolitan areas is the answer, it is not that simple for most of us. Sometimes a man has to make choices based on the needs and requirements of others. Paying close attention to what's going on around us, and being as prepared as possible is the best we can do.

We need to be careful not to judge others based on our circumstances. Life is much more complicated than that.
 
KMac I don't disagree with that. However predicating this conversation on things that "can't" be avoided that in fact can be the majority of the time seems to me to be suspect

Edit: I hesitate to discuss "what to do" because what to do in this is to take a series of bad choices and pick one. To me you are more likely to survive by simply fleeing as quickly as possible. Engagement against a mob (when you have 6-7 or 40 rounds on you) is simply a bad deal. The problem with "driving through it" is you are getting deeper and deeper into it for a good share of that drive.
 
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Good read Glenn, thanks. Avoidance#1, Car movement is next on my list #2, and last would be using my firearm #3 just for the reason you will run out of ammo being outnumbered by protesters/rioters. As far as the 18 wheeler's are concerned if I were still driving and I felt my life were in danger and personal grave bodily harm were immanent, It would be grab a gear and throttle up. Rioters would have to be stacked up like cord wood to stop a semi
 
Are you really ready to cause the death of dozens, maybe even a hundred people by pushing through a tightly packed crowd? Thin this stuff through before you tell yourself what you're going to do when the situation comes up.

"If someone ever offers new raw octopus for dinner, I'm going to puke on the table!"
 
The problems with driving through are 1) you are driving deeper into the mess before you drive out. 2) other vehicles stopped in front of you. IMHO, #2 is the bigger problem if your vehicle is big and heavy enough.

If you can see clear road in front and the crowd is just gathering (with baseball bats and Molotov cocktails), carry on. Don't speed up and don't stop. Blow the horn; either they will get out of the way or they won't*. The chances of you being the first one to stumble into a riot are vanishingly small, but it's possible I guess.

*ETA: drive slow enough that they can get out of the way, but not too slowly.
 
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Do you mean Reginald Denny? Or suggesting tactics to avoid a beating from the police?

I think Greg covered it nicely. Driving through a crowd at speed with guns a blazing out the window. That would better be avoided.
 
I wonder, if one opted for the driving through at speed strategy, how long it would take to go from a discussion of self-defense to one of terrorism. I am fairly certain that the self defense claim would probably not even be considered in the initial reports.
 
Are you really ready to cause the death of dozens, maybe even a hundred people by pushing through a tightly packed crowd? Thin this stuff through before you tell yourself what you're going to do when the situation comes up.

"If someone ever offers new raw octopus for dinner, I'm going to puke on the table!"
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Lets all remember this is on the internet. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
 
For those who advocate ploughing through a crowd, here's another thought:

As people have pointed out you'd have to go through some body of individuals before you "come out" the other side to make good you escape.

The first people to get shoved out of the way by your 2 tons of metal may well have represented a threat, but those beyond them (and I mean 5, 10 or 20yds away, not half a mile) could not be considered a threat if they didn't even know you were there. Indeed, the first they'd know is that they'd have been hit by your car, making you the assailant.

For those who have been in a crowd, anywhere, you'll probably it is nigh on impossible to see what is happening beyond the first or second row of people and any people who were not in the immediate vicinity of any assault you have feared would be collateral damage pure and simple, if you run them over as part of your reaction to the initial threat and therefore it cannot be self defence. More like reckless endangerment all the way to murder.
That is my view.

Reading this thread, I've reached the conclusion that there is precious little that we can plan for if such an event as a riot occurred and we were caught up in it. And any plan that is drawn up would either go out of the window when things kicked off, or be obsolete from the outset because of the highly fluid and changeable nature of such social phenomena.

In other words, I'd rather be armed than not, but using that arm would have to depend on a myriad of factors and judgments that would, frankly, have to be made on the hoof... Not an enviable position to be in.
 
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Don, you drive a semi? You're not going to push anyone out of the way and you know it, you are going to mow them down like wheat and a reaper, your kill or maim everyone in your path, and not that you seem to care, when the bodies are found and the news gets out, people are going to be hunted down room to room and killed like dogs. You are going to be facing a thousand or more charges, and NOTHING will save you. What may be the bloodiest massacre in peacetime US history is going to rest squarely on your shoulders, and unless you are a fully developed sociopath, you're going to be living with the fact that you murdered all of those people, and set things in motion that will tear the country apart for decades.

What in the world makes you believe that your life is worth that? As it it is, unless you are already as crazy as an outhouse rat, you're going to hang yourself in prison.

Don't even say things like that, don't say it in public, don't think it.
 
Zinc warrior, I'm just going to assume that you aren't referring to my plans for puking on the table if I see wriggling tentacles on my plate. I'm not going to be refused service at dennys because of it. I hope...

But yes, if something like this happens, the police will have all electronics, they will get access to every bit of information, and find things said in advance, like "I'm going to murder anyone that's in my way if I think I'm about to be hurt."
 
Zinc warrior, I'm just going to assume that you aren't referring to my plans for puking on the table if I see wriggling tentacles on my plate. I'm not going to be refused service at dennys because of it. I hope...
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That sounds dangerously like... vegetables. Texans don't cotton to vegetables unless they have two foot horns and moo.

But yes, if something like this happens, the police will have all electronics, they will get access to every bit of information, and find things said in advance, like "I'm going to murder anyone that's in my way if I think I'm about to be hurt."
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I meant that anything typed here is searchable at a later date.
 
That's right. There will be printed copies of everything a mass killer posted anywhere, everywhere, and more man-hours than I can count will be expended by police personnel combing through it line by line, and highlighting every word that seems relevant.
 
With all due respect, the videos showing the "protesters" swarming the highway showed that it happened very quickly.
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I'm sure that's true which is all the more reason to avoid swarms of people. If you wait until the swarms go out on the interstate and start stopping cars it may be too late to get away.
Yes, police are really limited in how they can respond.
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Not just police--everyone. The limited options for response are part of the reason that avoidance is so critical.
If anyone gets in my way will get a face full of Fox Labs.
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Pepper spray is probably a reasonable option--but you'd better have a lot of it.
Pete, let's assume the fact that we have already "screwed up" and the "protesters" have already swarmed the highway. If the cars in front of you have stopped, you're stuck. I guess I've already decided what I would do: Abandon the car and move away from the "protesters".
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The car offers some level of protection and is a formidable weapon. Stick with it as long as you can. If the car is no longer mobile and you become the focus of an attack, then you really have no decent option other than to leave on foot. Which isn't really a decent option either.

**Warning**​
This is getting REALLY close to a TSHTF thread--a contrived scenario where it seems reasonable to discuss causing the death/injury of large numbers of people with little concern for legality or morality.

That kind of thing is off topic for TFL.

Remember that for every protester that is actually attempting to/willing to seriously injure a person, there are many who are only there for the thrill, for the chance to steal, or for the actual cause of the protest. The idea that it's acceptable to plow through a crowd of protesters with a car is not consistent with the acceptable use of deadly force because it is indiscriminate. Same with shooting into a crowd.

Unless it can be reasonably assumed that every person who could be struck by the car or by a bullet is a deadly threat to the defender or a person he/she is responsible for, such an action would be murder/attempted murder/assault with a deadly weapon.​
 
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