Rioter in #Kenosha knocks an elderly man to the ground while people are looting all around him. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/hMb85QtRUr

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 25, 2020

“We’ll burn your shop down too.”#Kenosha #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/m41xhcbowt

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 25, 2020

1) In a scene that played out several times Monday, a Black Lives Matter protest that began in Columbia Heights confronted White diners outside D.C. restaurants,  chanting “White silence is violence!” and demanding White diners show their solidarity. #DCProtests pic.twitter.com/fJbPM76vb0

— Fredrick Kunkle WaPo (@KunkleFredrick) August 25, 2020

Black Lives Matter activists have gotten far more bold and daring than they have ever been before. They aren’t frightened of innocent civilians because they know that it’s highly unlikely that innocent civilians will fight back out of fear of enraging the mob and putting themselves in harm’s way.

And herein lies the danger…not the for the civilians, but for the activists.

Earlier Tuesday I reported that the largest surge of gun ownership American has ever seen is currently ongoing with just seven months of 2020 outpacing records set in previous years and this year isn’t even over yet.

(READ: 2020 Has Seen the Largest Surge of Gun Ownership In History)

As of just this year, five million people have been added to the ranks of gun owners.

What happens when one of these rioters gets a little too comfortable with threatening people and decides to make a move? What happens when these mobs accost a family with children in tow? What happens if the wrong car is crowded around and rioters begin busting its windows and opening its doors?

We already know because the last one on the list actually happened already.

Rioter Garrett Foster was carrying an AR-15 and attempted to intimidate a man into getting out of his car. The man, seeing he was being threatened with a rifle, drew his own gun and killed Foster.

There are millions of gun owners out there who have purchased a firearm, and likely because they’ve watched what happens to those who don’t have a means by which to defend themselves. They don’t want to be suddenly caught up in a situation where they are at the mercy of a mob who has a very particular habit of showing no mercy at all.

At this point, it’s not an “if,” but a “when.”

A rioter or activist will get too aggressive or will push a normal, everyday civilian too far and he or she will suddenly find themselves at the end of a smoking barrel. If the rest of the mob is lucky, the bullet will stop there but that’s not always the case. It may very well end up that several people are hit, especially if the gun owner is frightened and hasn’t had enough practice.

This is why it’s beyond imperative that city leaders where these riots are happening move to get these riots under control immediately. Not just for the safety of everyone, but because someone shouldn’t have to live with the fact that they killed someone if the entire situation could have been avoided from the start with elected leaders doing the jobs they were sent to do.

These riots have no good reasoning behind them in the first place. The riots, meant to defend black lives, are the leading cause of entire black neighborhoods being burned to the ground and black lives ruined. They need to be stopped by the elected leaders before they’re stopped by normal citizens.

One is going to be a lot less bloody than the other.