On Saturday, 75 people, many of them brandishing military assault weapons, occupied the streets of Lewiston.
That’s their right under the Second Amendment and Idaho’s open carry laws. Elsewhere, members of the Black Lives Matter rally were exercising their right of free expression under the First Amendment to protest the death of George Floyd.
Just the same, the law only goes so far.
Carrying a firearm in public is fine.
Using it?
That’s something entirely different.
So tell us, Defend Lewiston and Liberate Idaho activists: Just what the hell were you thinking?
No violence occurred, but that may have been mere luck.
Please tell us you’ve studied the law.
Please tell us you know that deadly force can not be used to defend property.
Please tell us you understand that the only legal justification for drawing a weapon and using it is in the defense of your own life or the lives of other innocents.
You can’t draw a gun on a graffiti artist.
You can’t use your AR-15 to stop the proverbial brick through the insured plate glass window.
You can’t use your semi-automatic against looters (unless, of course, you’re defending your own property).
If you respond to vandalism with an armed threat or worse, you’ve just guaranteed that you and the lives of your loved ones will traverse the dark paths of the criminal justice system. You’ll be the one who’s arrested. It will be you whose life and career will be disrupted. You’re the one who will spend thousands of dollars on lawyers. You’re the one going to jail.
And all that stuff about shooting a fleeing felon? Forget it. That went out 35 years ago in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling. If you kill someone running out of a looted appliance store with a television set in his hands, you’ll answer for it.
Cops know this. They’re trained over and over again about a continuum of responses — sometimes called a “force matrix” — that starts with talking and then escalates as needed.
They know the limits of their authority.
They also have a lot of experience in detaining and arresting people dozens if not hundreds of times a year. Usually, it happens without incident. Sometimes they get it wrong, but they can fall back on the law. As deputized officers, they serve under a chain of command that ultimately answers to the voters. They have qualified immunity. And whether they deserve it or not, they get a benefit of the doubt in the criminal courts.
You Second Amendment protesters get none of those presumptions.
As far as anyone else may be concerned, you’re the guys who probably watched “Red Dawn” too many times as teenagers.
How else do you explain the downtown resident who got accosted by a gun-wielding member of your contingent — who essentially asked him for identification papers before he could go home?
What’s your version of reports that Defend Lewiston activists displayed hostility toward people who had every right to be downtown? How about those racial slurs people heard?
What was the point of this show of force? Could there be any reason other than to intimidate unarmed members of the Black Lives Matter rally? As Lewiston resident Noah Norwood put it: “I just feel that people don’t need to bring guns to peaceful protests.”
If that’s not the case, then consider what would happen if the roles were reversed.
For the sake of argument, say the BLM protesters were armed to the teeth while you were carrying cardboard signs and placards?
And if you set out to protect businesses, why were so many of them unappreciative?
“Saturday is usually my best day for business, but not this Saturday,” Main Street retailer Ed King told the city council Monday. “Basically, this event ran off any customers I might have had.”
Even before the pandemic, businesses from Safeway to Shopko to K-Mart and Macy’s were closing their doors. The trend has only accelerated.
If you folks truly want to help Lewiston’s economy, try this: Put down your guns and get out your wallets. — M.T.
