I've spent a lot of time urging folks on the left and middle to build competence with firearms.

I do not think adding more guns to Portland protests is a good idea. I carry regularly. I have been armed during several attacks on protests. I have never drawn my weapon. https://twitter.com/IwriteOK/status/1294746835270037504

This is because drawing a firearm during a chaotic and crowded situation, like a protest, is at least as likely to end with shooting the wrong person as the right person. Talk to soldiers who have tried to shoot moving vehicles, for instance. It is hard to do. You will miss.

Firearms are a critical part of community self defense. But knowing when not to use them is important. I vastly prefer some dumb chud firing into the sky in panic to having a gunfight in the middle of a riot.

There is exactly one justified occasion to draw a firearm: when you believe that other human beings will imminently be killed and grievously injured if you do not poke large holes in the body of a dangerous person.

The fact that every gun fired at a protest so far has ended without injury or death is proof that none of these situations deserved an armed response, frightening as they were.

No one has died yet. This suggests none of these situations would have been improved by armed leftists

I am specifically talking about Portland here, not Stone Mountain or Kalamazoo or whatever.