Surviving a Riot
With today’s uncertain times, the prospect of civil unrest is rearing its head. Here are a few things to keep in mind if this beast ever comes back to the United States.
What, me worry?
Today we see amazing footage on our televisions and mobile devices of frightening riots but these are in exotic far off lands such as Turkey, Egypt, and Greece. We say to ourselves, this could never happen here. However, it has in our near past. Even if you forget the madness of the more recent 1992 LA Riots, all you have to do is Google the 1967 Detroit Riots in which 467 were injured or the Newark riots of the same year to see this is very, very possible here.
The National Guard only put down the 1967 Newark riots after the liberal use of force. In a week-long bout of civil unrest, the New Jersey State Police reported firing 2,905 rounds; the National Guard fired 10,414.
While many of these came about from racial tensions, some riots, such as the 1999 Seattle WTO events, in which 157 anarchist protestors where arrested, can be blamed on anything from political unrest or simple crimes of opportunity as after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 New Orleans.
(For the first couple of days in a large scale civil unrest event, the police and National Guard may only be there to wish you the best of luck)
During the LA Riots, the vaunted LAPD abandoned entire areas of the city until National Guard forces could be mobilized and sent to restore order. This could be several days. The established start of the LA Riot was at about 5:30 PM on April 29, 1992 when, at the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues beer cans were thrown by crowds at passing motorists. This soon ballooned out of control and evolved into a full-blown riot with huge parts of the city totally lawless. It wasn’t until the afternoon of the next day that the first National Guard units were deployed to the city. An estimated 12,000 US Marines and California National Guard then fought what some have called the Battle of LA for four days until relative peace was returned to the city although a curfew and armed military patrols continued for some time.
What do you do if 911 doesn’t work?
Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com
