The fires burned, the protests raged, and the talking heads made excuses. Despite the fact that all of this chaos is merely feeding my inner misanthrope, I think there is one thing we might be able to thank all of those rioters for in the end. They’ve proven that the “panic buying” of firearms during a pandemic has logic at its root. There’s also a second reason to thank them that I’ll get to in a minute.
Are any of these events really and truly a surprise?
People kept cooped up and jobless for months are motivated to protest and riot even if they are geographically a thousand miles from the apparent inciting event. Regardless of the “virtuous” reasons for the lockdown, who might have guessed that making people even more anxious and angry might provide a tinderbox for unrest? Who could have seen that coming?
Although there were some legitimately 1A-honoring peaceful protests and responsible citizens showing up to clean up the messes that others left behind, sadly, many of the “peaceful” protests turned into riots, arson, and property destruction. Who saw that coming? Armed Citizens did.
Armed citizens showed up with America’s favorite rifle to help protect private property and lives when the police couldn’t. The Modern Sporting Rifle as Defensive Tool – an illustrated guide. Can we say we told you so?
All of this in the middle of a serious infectious disease outbreak – but at least some of the looters wore masks – model citizens that they are. Is that a surprise either?
If nothing else positive comes out of this civil unrest, we’ve got our in-living-color justification for AR ownership, for 30 round magazines, and for self-defense laws. Because the po-po ain’t coming. Not that we really needed a justification per the Second Amendment, but it’s sometimes helpful to have PowerPoint slides available for the slow kids in the class.
And then there’s my second reason to be “thankful” for this chaos.
At least we’ve now got an unintended test case in the spread of COVID-19 under mob dynamics. IF the infection numbers don’t explode across the country within the next two-week incubation period, then you’d think we should have a reasonable basis for reopening schools in the fall, and continuing the return to normal-ish.
I’ll bet the rioters never imagined that they’d just volunteered to become part of the nation’s largest real-time public health study. See? They really are just altruistic citizens doing their duty after all. Maybe we should thank them for contributing to herd immunity for the rest of us.
