The Ferguson Asymmetry

The one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, a black man, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, was understandably marked by black protests. While most protestors were peaceful, the protests did occasionally get out of hand, as when on the fourth night of the protests some of them formed a human chain that blocked Interstate 70.

But this is what they did not do: no black protesters showed up with assault weapons in order to help to maintain peace and order, or to keep whites from harming them.

However, on that fourth night, five white men showed up at the protest with assault weapons. They did not use them, but they kept them ready to hand. The police kept them under surveillance but did nothing to keep them from being ready to, within less than a second, begin opening fire, had they decided to do so. The white men were members of an organization called Oath Keepers. In the words of its founder, Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers should “go armed, at all times, as free men and women, and be ready to do sudden battle, anywhere, anytime, with utter recklessness.”

It seems obvious to most of us that this act was intended to antagonize not just all blacks but all Americans who do not share the wild-west mentality. Notice that Rhodes did not say, be ready to do battle if it should become necessary after deliberation, but “to do sudden battle,” and not to use firearms in any kind of careful or measured capacity but to do it “with utter recklessness.” Recklessness means something that is done without any reckoning or forethought. The whole purpose of the organization is to be ready to explode into terrorist shooting sprees whenever, in one member’s opinion, some line of intolerability has been crossed. I think this organization is just one step away from being a terrorist army. I say this not because they have assault weapons but because of their emphasis on sudden and reckless use of them.

What do you suppose would have happened if black men had shown up with assault weapons? Even if they made no move to use them? Even if they just stood silently and grimly around like the white men did? Would the mostly-white police have simply stood by? This seems unlikely, given that in recent weeks white police officers have pushed black men down and repeatedly beat their heads into the pavement in response to traffic violations.

It appears, from this incident, that gun-rights advocates defend the right of white males to carry assault weapons in public and proclaim a thinly veiled threat to use them.