On Mob Violence

If you are part of a mob in which some members are being violent, by throwing chairs rocks sticks etc, or carrying displaying or using Molotov cocktails or firearms or knives or any other object that could be considered a weapon, or assaulting anyone, or threatening to assault anyone as part of a group such that a reasonable person might be in fear for their life then it does not matter if you are only carrying a phone camera. The mob is a weapon and by being part of the mob you are part of the weapon. If there is an armed mob then that is a Deadly Force situation. If you are part of that mob then you may be killed or grievously wounded.

Sworn law enforcement officers tend to be held to a higher standard than the general public. While they also must articulate a reasonable fear that deadly force was facing themselves or another, and often their rule is that they should act to defend themselves or another LEO but may act to defend civilians, the sworn officers are held to a high standard in risking injury by only confronting the one person specifically and individually posing a threat while the mob at large must be controlled if possible with nonlethal force. The public are not trained in or expected or even allowed to carry and use all the nonlethal means, sprays tasers and batons not used as clubs, that law enforcement officers carry.

While the police may arrest someone and you if you survive or your family if you die may say that you were not armed or violent but only documenting with your camera and chanting slogans you may well be a legitimate target for someone under attack who responds with their own deadly force. Once you join a mob you give up the right to claim that you are a peaceful protestor or an innocent observer. If 50 people are standing in a park not blocking people and holding signs and chanting slogans then that is peaceful protest. If one person leaves that crowd and attacks someone then the crowd is still peaceful and not a legitimate target. However if 200 people attack a restaurant then every member of that mob is a legitimate target if any of the people in the restaurant feel in reasonable fear for their lives and respond with deadly force.

The politicians and the BLM/ANTIFA activists have by pressuring the police not to confront criminals, and by releasing those who are arrested, made it more reasonable that a peaceful citizen might feel the need to defend themselves and not wait in the expectation that the police will protect them as a threat escalates. While six months ago a jury might have felt that someone carrying a weapon was seeking to be a vigilante and had escalated prematurely to deadly force or killed an innocent person who was not themselves a threat, and this point has nothing to do with the general right to bear arms, now if anything the use of force by civilians is both more likely and more justifiable.

I would go further and say that unless they have been kidnapped or are legally incompetent, like the child that Saddam Hussain pawed on television, a person is liable if they do not move away from the mob as fast as their furry feet will take them. If you intend to join a peaceful protest and when you look around you see people with shields, clubs, gasoline, rocks, helmets, unlicensed medical trauma teams, and those that anyone old enough to walk to school on their own should recognize as bad to be near or totally crazy then it is on you if you are part of the mob when violence breaks out.