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White protestors were allowed to occupy a state building with guns without a single bit of teargas.

>>pjc50+(OP)
Not to mention the Malheur Refuge standoff where heavily armed protestors were handled with kid gloves.

Maybe it's to do with having guns?

>>pjc50+(OP)
Well yeah, if all of the protestors are armed, the police realize they can't escalate the situation and get away with it.

>>frabbi+J3
Given that one of the subjects of the protests is whether police can murder on mere suspicion of a weapon, I suspect not. The chances of a comparable hypothetical BLM armed occupation being allowed to live are small. If they surrendered they would likely be shot in the back of the head while handcuffed.

>>pjc50+0h
Or the police would preemptively send a death squad to their house to murder them, as happened in the 60’s

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton

>>exolym+D9
So the question here is: Would the response have been the same if all the heavily armored folk were black?

As a born and raised American, I'm inclined to think not. I could be wrong of course, but everything that I've seen and experienced growing up and living in the US has led me to believe otherwise.

I want to think that more protestors being armed would make a difference, but ultimately I believe it will just lead to escalation and more deaths by cop (and/or the national guard, as we're finding out in Louisville currently).

>>frabbi+J3
A few of those protestors were chased through a road block and shot at, and one was killed. It is ironic that you are calling the police killing someone handling with "kid gloves" in a thread about deescalation between protestors and police.

(Don't get me wrong, what those protestors did was senseless and the epitome of entitlement.)

>>andrew+uj
"Would the response have been the same if all the heavily armored folk were black?"

There's precedent for this. In the 60s the black panthers open carried in California to protest, of course, police misconduct. Reagan signed in the Mulford Act [1], banning open carry in CA.

If BLM want stricter gun control laws (not sure if they do), all they need to do is arm themselves at protests.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

>>andrew+uj
In a historical precedent that doesn't particularly clarify the situation, in 1967 the Black Panthers were able to enter the California state capitol building with guns. [1]

Apparently they were let in, then arrested, then released without charge and their guns returned as they hadn't broken the law. However, they were there protesting against the 'Mulford Act' that intended to disarm them, and it was subsequently passed. So they didn't get shot, but they didn't get what they wanted either, and they did get banned from doing it again.

Of course, there's a lot more detail than I've put into this post, and society was pretty different at the time. Reagan supporting gun control? The NRA as a sporting organisation that supported gun control? And the panthers were Marxist? So I'm not sure it's a very instructive example about how the same thing would go today.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party#Protest_at...

>>creato+pu
> A few of those protestors were chased through a road block and shot at, and one was killed.

This is a highly misleading way of describing the situation.

The police set up a traffic stop to arrest them. They fled the stop. Finicum told the police he wasn't going to surrender and that they'd have to shoot him. He reached for his gun in his pocket, and then he was shot.

If black men were only being killed by police after fleeing arrest, refusing to surrender, challenging the police to shoot them, and then reaching for a gun...then we wouldn't have much of a police violence problem.