Armed Protestors March on Texas Jail: No One Gets Shot

New Black Panther Party (NBPP) members marched on a county jail with rifles to protest the suicide of Sandra Bland, who killed herself in a jail cell three days after an arrest for a traffic stop.
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A group of armed New Black Panther Party members marched on a jail in Texas yesterday, in a story that has been wildly under-reported by the media on both the local and national level.

Anger billowed over at the Waller County Jail Wednesday as a group of demonstrators protested the Sandra Bland incident.

“Sandra Bland didn’t have to be here,” said one protestor. “America allowed this to happen,” he continued.

The heavily armed demonstrators from the New Black Panther Party were greeted by a wall of mounted sheriff’s deputies from Harris County.

The riot response team was called in to provide backup after demonstrators stormed the lobby of the jail on Sunday. Four Waller County Sheriff’s deputies were slightly injured.

There was no violence during the protest on Wednesday. But police barricades surrounding the jail’s entrance and the show of force by police didn’t sit well with some bystanders.

Yes, some of the locals actually complained that the authorities brought in a sufficient numbers of deputies to prevent a second violent storming of the Waller County jail.

Breitbart Texas reporter Bob Price notes that the New Black Panthers were once again sharing the warm, inclusive rhetoric we’ve come to expect from the group:

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The revolution is on, said the chant leader. Off the pigs, the group chanted back. The chant continues, Time to pick up the gun… Off the pigs. No more pigs in my community… Off the pigs. No more brothers in jail… Off the pigs. No more sisters in jail… Off the pigs. The pigs are gonna get scared… Off the pigs. The pigs are gonna get dead… Off the pigs.

A NBPP member (left) carries and AKM-patterned rifle, probably a Saiga. The man in the center of the frame has an AR-15 slung behind his back.

Price also notes that some of the Panthers may have been more aggressive with the way they were carrying their firearms, which might have led to arrests in a different environment. Authorities wisely chose discretion instead, and let the protesters get away with the sort of minor violations that has led to the arrest of long gun open carriers in the past, both white and black.

Some of the NBPP protesters carried rifles with standard capacity magazines. Others opted for higher-capacity drum magazines.

It remains a horrible practice to bring visible firearms to a protest, and in many jurisdictions, such an act would be illegal.

The incident does clearly puncture yet another myth, however, spouted by “Black Lives Matter” protesters, who continue to push the claim that open carrying minorities will be shot on sight, a claim that has no merit based on incidents we’ve reported on in the past.

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As we’ve covered on numerous occasions here at Bearing Arms, NBPP members in Houston regularly carry out open carry marches, and we recently covered the story of an black Air Force veteran who was (in our opinion, wrongly) peacefully arrested for a minor infraction in San Antonio open carry march.

The NBPP was protesting the death of Sandra Bland, a woman who committed suicide by hanging herself in her cell in Waller County Jail three days after being arrested after a confrontation with Texas State trooper during a traffic stop. The trooper, Brian Encinia, remains on administrative leave for failing to follow proper procedures.

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