Every circus needs a clown and the Dallas BLM march on Thursday night is no exception.  Mark Hughes, the brother of an organizer of the march showed up openly carrying an AR-15.  

You’d think he was the right guy, in the right place, at the right time when the shooting started.  Here were all these cops armed with handguns up against a sniper with a rifle.  Low and behold here is a good guy with a rifle exercising his Second Amendment rights ready to ride to the sound of gunfire.  Not so much.

DPD had noted Hughes carrying his AR-15 earlier and apparently did not interfere with him. When the shooting started they started looking for people carrying AR-15’s.  They didn’t know how many of these people there were, but they knew of one and they started looking for him.

In the meantime, Hughes decided it wasn’t any fun carrying an AR-15 around when somebody else in the vicinity happened to be firing one, to deadly effect. He could have acted in the traditions of Allen Crum who found himself in a similar position on the UT Texas Tower in August, 1966, but that remains a path not taken.  Instead Hughes chased down a Dallas Police Officer and surrendered himself and his weapon. Thus ensuring that whatever else happened, Hughes was out of harm’s way.

Once the shooting started, Hughes did the right thing.  My problem with Hughes begins when he left his house hours earlier, with that AR-15.  I am old enough that I observed some of the SDS protests of the late sixties, early seventies.  I was convinced back then and nothing has changed my opinion that protests have nothing to do with the message and everything to do with the messenger. The messenger may say look at me, hear my message, but what is really meant is look at me. In this manner marginal people like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Mark Hughes become spokesmen for a cause even when one is unsure what the cause is.

Whatever you do don’t misspell his name, that would be a tragedy.