The ending point for the march today was at the State Capitol building (starting at a high school not many blocks away). A fairly routine rallying point locally, but this gathering was not treated routinely by our Republican government. All government facilities in the complex were locked and held off limits to these particular citizens. No sight seeing, no drinking fountains, none of the inside restrooms. All attempts to find out why were met with noticeable belligerence.
In Utah, we’re still able to make noise about our dirty air, and, yes, pretty much everyone at the Capitol pretty much ignores everything said. But that is still met with a “there they go again” shrug, and no one has been in danger of being arrested just for wanting to step inside “the peoples house”
There was greater helicopter surveillance of this gathering than of the one a few months ago where Trump smiled at the cameras while destroying a couple of our National Monuments. The police presence was noticeably greater than anything I have personally ever seen mustered in Utah. And on the whole they were a surly bunch. No NRA members among them, I’m sure! To my several efforts to find out if there were an active threat to explain the massive show of power the most friendly response that I got was that it was none of my business. The kids, though, (and of course there were plenty of non kids as well) were generally just satisfied that they were being allowed to convene at all.
So if a large crowd actively protesting guns in this time, place and manner really does present an active security risk, wouldn’t it help everyone to have that risk openly highlighted. I mean, one result of not doing so is to create a reasonable suspicion that this group of citizens is simply going to have to get used to being discriminated against by the Utah brand of Republicanism. On the other hand, what if the need for protection is actually legitimate? What if people in Utah can’t protest these types of things without some local gunnut or gunnuts at least attempting to go off in a major way? If the gun crowd legitimately presents this kind of danger, isn’t that newsworthy? Doesn’t that actually reinforce exactly the points, and objectives that were so peacefully and eloquently expressed by multiple thousands of Utahns on this very occasion? If we can’t even talk peacefully about the dangers of guns, then isn’t that all the more proof that this is exactly the conversation that our society must be engaged in? Because I’ll tell you I don’t think that all of those bomb sniffing dogs and roving patrols of armed cops were justified by a good faith belief that this particular group was clearly prone to rampaging at literally any second.