PRESS EDITORIAL: They came armed to intimidate

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment gives an individual the right to possess firearms to be used for traditionally lawful purposes, including self-defense within the home.         
    The court did not say that the Second Amendment cancels the First Amendment. Yet that was exactly what the armed men who came to a protest gathering in Port Washington were trying to do with their menacing display of military assault-style weapons.
    Their purpose in flaunting AR-15 type semi-automatic rifles, semi-automatic pistols and other military hardware was to intimidate people who had gathered in Veterans Park on the evening of July 10 to exercise their freedom of speech and assembly in a peaceful Black Lives Matter rally.
    There is no other explanation. Gun rights were not an issue in the protest. Nor was safety, at least not until the roughly two dozen gunmen arrived. City police were well prepared for the expected crowd and present in sufficient numbers. But performing their duty was instantly made more difficult—and potentially more dangerous—when the armed contingent arrived. As Police Kevin Hingiss said, “things can escalate.”
    A flare of rage by a gun carrier responding to some real or imagined provocation or a mistake by a nervous or incompetent operator of one the deadly AR-15s could have resulted in a blood bath.
    That, thank goodness, didn’t happen, but the armed men accomplished their purpose—they intimidated many at the rally. A Port Washington college student who helped organized the rally, said, “People were telling me they were scared. They felt harassed. We had cardboard signs and they had guns.”
    People attending the rally, many of whom were Port Washington residents, had good reason to be frightened by the display of weapons that were the type that everyone knows have been the firearm of choice in recent mass murders in the U.S.
        Some of the armed men who showed off these civilian versions of the assault rifle American soldiers carry into battle took extra pains to appear menacing. One of them was decked out in a faux military or police uniform and wore an ammunition vest with pouches for numerous magazines of high-velocity cartridges, had a handgun strapped to his leg and a rifle in his hands. Were it not so appalling, the image of the want-to-be warrior in his costume captured by the Ozaukee Press staff photographer would have been ludicrous. It had to be the strangest getup seen in Port Washington since last Halloween.
    It has been reported that the whistle that alerted the gun owners to reach for their trusty AR-15 knockoffs was a social media claim that an American flag would be burned at the Port Washington rally. The report was bogus. No flag burning or anything like it was planned or carried out at the local rally or at others like it across the country.
    It is worth noting, however, that, as offensive as it is to most Americans, burning the flag in protest has been held by the U.S. Supreme Court to be symbolic free speech protected by the First Amendment. Just what did the armed group plan to do if a flag had been burned? Lock and load and shoot?
    Free speech can be a messy business, as was loudly demonstrated at the July 10 event when unarmed counter-protestors exercised their First Amendment rights by crudely shouting down rally speakers, including a Black member of the Ozaukee County Board and a 15-year-old Port High student who was trying to read a poem. For their part, Black Lives Matter demonstrators were raucous and noisy in a march through the downtown and residential areas of the city following the July 10 rally.
        There have been several BLM demonstrations in Port Washington, and these surely have made some residents uncomfortable, including city officials who feel the attention-getting protests are stigmatizing Port Washington. Informed observers understand, however, that the protests are part of worldwide racial justice movement, and this community is not being singled out. The aims of that movement, according to a CBS poll, are supported by 68% of the American people.
    Gun control has not been an issue in the movement, but, ironically, the men who came to the Veterans Park rally with their war-inspired rifles focused attention on that need for citizen action. It’s time for voters to demand that Congress reinstate the federal assault weapons ban, which was the law of the land for a decade but was allowed to expire, though it does not conflict with the high court’s Second Amendment ruling.