It is no secret that the Michigan reopen protests and the Minneapolis Protests have been compared, and many questions have been drawn on why the unarmed protesters in Minneapolis were shot and gassed, while the Michigan reopen protesters were not attacked at all. The majority opinion is that the answer is racism, but there exists another, less contentious option.

Guns. The reopen protesters had firearms, and the protesters decrying Floyd’s murder did not. Brian Cash, known for the infamous photo from the reopen protests, openly threatened an officer who had just assaulted a young woman the prior day, and not one officer swung at him in a crowd of armed protesters. The secret sauce of not being assaulted by police is guns. When enough people are armed, the Police are afraid. Don’t believe me? Just look at history.

It’s the year 1966. Matthew Johnson has just been murdered. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale brainstorm a way to get the community involved in protecting themselves from the ever present specter of police violence. Their solution? Get armed patrols using their second amendment rights to follow police around, and ensure that they know there are several well armed men ensuring that they behave themselves. The police thus followed behaved themselves.

But it’s not just the copwatch that benefited from openly carrying weapons. Early 1967, another young man is murdered in the streets. His family contact the Black Panthers to ask for their help in the community after his murder is answered with a shrug from officials. Unsurprisingly, the armed rallies they held to teach self-defense were not interrupted by the police.

But all good things come to an end. In may, republican assemblyman Don Mulford pushed forth the Mulford act, which banned open carry in California. It was signed into law by Ronald Reagan. It had bipartisan support. It even, infamously, had the support of the NRA. John Schmitz called out this reversal of course by the normally fanatically anti-gun control NRA by saying “Members of the National Rifle Association in California should know that their organization, despite its record of opposing gun control bills in the past, favored this bill and that without NRA support it almost certainly would have been defeated.” The statements and fears of Reagan and his cronies mirror those of the Michigan government today.

Back in the present, modern folk, presented a false history where the civil rights movement is portrayed as ancient history instead of the recent actions of our parents and their parents, have forgotten the blood. We have been told a there was a struggle, but the retelling has been sanitized, stripped of the violence, and demonizing those from whom it could not be divorced.

We’ve been told a history where Rosa parks sat on a bus seat and was a hero for not getting up, but not the time she was almost killed by a driver for picking her purse up. We’ve been told a history where Selma was brave and bold, but not one where protestors were mutilated by police with dogs and tear gas for it. We have been told a history where Huey Newton is a monster who murders police, but not one where he holds the police accountable.

The only way forward is armed. We cannot simply allow ourselves to be battered by petty tyrants who call themselves the law. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.