It was Meal Team Six versus the Snack Panther Party in Dallas over the weekend, in a competition to see which wheezing group of blowhards equipped with cheap Chinese knock-offs of military gear could cause the most gun safety violations in the shortest amount of time.

Kids, this is why daddy drinks.

A tense, armed, anti-Muslim protest concluded Saturday with no reports of violence.

Police officers spread out across Dallas streets, sanding watch over a Nation of Islam mosque on Martin Luther King Boulevard. Members of the New Black Panther Party and the Bureau of American Islamic Relations rallied some members of the community surrounding the mosque to join the counter protest.

Dallas Police were notified in advance of the demonstration and deployed “significant resources” in the area to provide for the safety of everyone involved, as well as bystanders and members of the community.

Bureau of American Islamic Relations (BAIR), was composed to fight against Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil rights group with links to terrorist groups that seems to primarily exist to remind everyone that “We didn’t do it!” after terror attacks.

If they’d done even rudimentary research, however, they would know that the Nation of Islam is based on it’s own peculiar blend of Dianetics and black nationalism, not anything like the Sunni Islam CAIR supports.

In other words, BAIR’s protest was as misplaced as protesting Fox News because you’re against fox hunting.

Opposing BAIR was the Huey P. Newton Gun Club and the New Black Panther Party, a Dallas-based black nationalist group that has attempted to hijack the name of the original Black Panthers.

Both groups of armed morons were watched by the Dallas Police, who could have arrested people on both sides for brandishing weapons (like Mr. Timberland Boots above). Others, like man in the middle of the photo above, muzzled one another or themselves repeatedly, suggesting that they had little or no safety training in their lives.

This is the United States and we do have the Freedom of Speech, which includes the freedom to public assembly and protest.

Protesting with weapons, however, typically ends up poorly, especially since we routinely see many protesters (regardless of the cause they claim to represent) exhibit such pathetic gun handing skills. We’ve covered groups in the past who have come out to protest or to “guard” locations, only to have negligent discharges because they don’t know jack about firearms safety.

In situations like this, where tensions and dislike are high on both sides, there is a significant risk of a negligent discharge igniting hotheads in both groups, setting off a skirmish between countering protest groups that could easily devolve into a three-way gun battle between protest groups and police.

I’m sure there are dumber ways to protest, but picking the wrong target, gearing up like a mall ninja in poorly thought-out kit and then muzzling both friend and foe alike isn’t the way to do it.