Why do very fine people need so much weaponry?

When I was in college, a lot of people my age were protesters. They protested against a lot of things, but mainly it was the Vietnam War.

At any time during those years, if a gang of young people had shown up outside a state capitol dressed in camouflage clothing, wearing bandana masks and armed with handguns or assault rifles, they would have been shot on sight. No questions asked. I mean, c’mon, four young kids were shot dead at Kent State University during a peaceful demonstration in 1970 and they weren’t even carrying signs. I believe a couple of the victims were carrying nothing more threatening than college textbooks while walking across campus to get to class.

At the very least, crowds of demonstrators from my era would have been dispersed by riot police with teargas, nightsticks, rubber bullets and angry dogs. I know this because, well, because that’s what actually happened.

It’s a new world today, boys and girls. Demonstrators are showing up in cities and state capitols around the country carrying handmade signs, waving American and Confederate (and sometimes Nazi) flags and strapped with AR-15 rifles across their backs like one of the Magnificent Seven. Not only are they shouting and waving signs and blocking traffic, but yesterday a herd of protesters shoved their way into the Michigan statehouse and tried to get onto the floor of the House of Representatives.

It was so bad that some members of the legislature were wearing bulletproof vests and said they feared for their personal safety.

Was anybody killed? Not that I know of. I didn’t read that anybody was even arrested.

So here’s the irony of the situation: These heavily armed gunmen were out in the streets and in the halls of government protesting a statewide directive designed to protect them from a killer virus just a day or so after the number of fatalities from the disease surpassed the 20-year death toll in the Vietnam War. To say it doesn’t make sense is a colossal understatement, but that’s about all I’ve got at the present time.

Let’s recap: In the 1970s, we protested against the war in Vietnam. In 2020, we protest against an order to keep us alive while a virus kills more people than the Viet Cong. Can you see why I’m having a hard time getting my head around this phenomenon?

Here’s what’s even more troubling: These protesters are mostly bearded and angry white men who are hanging their hats on their First Amendment rights to assemble and speak their minds. As a former journalist, I’ve always been a staunch defender of the First Amendment, but I’m starting to wonder just how far it allows people to go.

I guess a legal scholar would have to answer that question because frankly, I don’t know.

And here’s what’s the most troubling: In a tweet on Friday morning, Donald J. Trump described the Michigan protesters as “very good people” and suggested that the governor should strike a deal with them. “The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire,” Trump wrote. “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.”

“Very good people,” he said. That’s kinda like Trump’s famous declaration about “good people on both sides.” It makes me want to run down the street with a bullhorn shouting “Charlottesville! Charlottesville! Charlottesville!"

Before I die, I want someone to answer a question that has been nagging me for years. If these people are just expressing their First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly, why do they need the guns? I suspect they paid a lot of money for these assault rifles and don’t get to wave them around very often, so they take advantage of any opportunity to show them off in public.

Finally, I want to make one more point. I don’t know if these demonstrators realize how seriously they are endangering their own health – and the health of anybody else with whom they come in close contact – by ignoring stay home orders and staging these rallies en masse. This is exactly the kind of gathering the doctors have warned us about, and the very reason for the stay home orders in the first place.   

Of course, I guess you could argue that those Kent State students didn’t know how seriously they were risking their own lives by walking along a campus road to get to class. Some of them were very fine people too, I suspect, but that was a different story altogether.