Gun supporters outshoot opponents at Dallas NRA protest

Practitioners of the First and Second Amendments faced off on the plaza at Dallas City Hall Saturday, one block away from the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center where an estimated 80,000 gun rights advocates were attending the 147th Annual Meeting of the National Rifle Association.

One side carried guns while the other stayed mostly stayed silent in a political and social standoff that most likely may be repeated when the NRA brings its 2019 conference to Indianapolis next spring.

After two anti-NRA protests, when demonstrators were nearly outnumbered by the media, gun rights supporters, many of them armed and proudly displaying their weaponry, congregated at a corner of the plaza to celebrate their interpretation of the Constitution, emboldened by the visit Friday of the President and the Vice President who assured them that, “you have a true friend in the White House.”

“I know there’s a lot of stuff going around how they’re trying to hack away at our Second Amendment right and I think it’s important to make it known where you stand,” said Ryan Scogin of Dallas from behind mirrored sunglasses with a pistol on his hip and an assault-style semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. “I imagine there’s a good number of people who see me and would rather not approach me to have a conversation.”

That’s what Drew Deal, a non-gun owning Dallas resident who tried unsuccessfully to engage a pair of women with signs detailing their concerns about school violence found out.

“If people come to take guns, I just want them to shoot me first because I would rather lay down my life for my friend than to just be caught up in an escalating battle,” he said. “At the end of the day the First Amendment is the last sense of protection because once you can’t say words anymore then you do start resorting to guns.”

Despite the invitation to dialog, gun violence opponents preferred to remain mute, presumably assuming their silence spoke volumes.

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