Our friend Andrew Branca of The Law Of Self Defense has a new post up at law blog Legal Insurrection which notes a list of demands that Ferguson activists have delivered to police in advance of the grand jury’s expected decision in the Michael Brown affair.

For those of you who have been pulling a Rip Van Winkle, Michael Brown was an 18-year-old the size of an NFL offensive lineman (6’4″, 292 lbs) who lived in Ferguson, Missouri (a St. Louis suburb). In August, a Ferguson, MO police officer named Darren Wilson attempted to stop Brown for matching the description of a strong-arm robbery suspect. Brown allegedly attacked Wilson through window of his police SUV and attempted to take the officer’s gun. According to accounts, two shots were fired in the vehicle in the struggle over the gun. Brown then attempted to flee. Wilson exited his vehicle and told Brown to freeze.

Eyewitnesses offer radically different accounts of what happened next.

Some claim that Officer Wilson then shot Brown in the back as he was fleeing, that Brown turned around and put his hands up, and that Wilson then essentially executed Brown as he stood there trying to surrender.

Other witnesses said that Brown never put his hands up, but instead had them out, and that he was advancing on Officer Wilson when he was shot, despite Wilson’s commands to “freeze.”

Leaks within the U.S. Department of Justice suggest that there isn’t evidence to warrant a civil rights case against Wilson, and there are leaks—seemingly calculated to deflate the tension—that suggests that Wilson did indeed act properly in shooting a felony robbery and battery suspect who was refusing command to stop and was advancing upon the officer to perhaps attack him again after attempting to take the officer’s weapon just seconds before.

Unfortunately, the latter, more probable reality flies in the face of a carefully crafted Michael Brown “hands up, don’t shoot” mythology that has made Brown an unlikely martyr and catalyst for a coalition of race hustlers, Marxists, anarchists, cop-haters, and opportunistic thugs, who seek to capitalize on a smoldering mass hysteria.

The document the arrogant activists provided under the title “Proposed Rules Of Engagement” may as well be titled “Get Out Of Our Way And Let Us Riot And Loot With Impunity.”

The 19-item list is—to put it bluntly—a bat guano crazy statement of intent to riot.

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They want a 48-hour notice in advance of the grand jury decision for riot prep (presumably to stockpile rocks, bricks, bottles, etc).

They want to be able to use social media and cell phones to shift and focus riots (a lesson they learned from the “Arab Spring”) with impunity and without communications interference.

They want to be able to assemble mobs as large as they want, wherever they want, for as long as they want.

They want police officers to allow rioters extensive latitude in their actions, while heavily restricting police response.

Perhaps most disturbing, they want to police to have minimal defensive protection against rioters, and assurances that the police won’t use the tools that may be needed to break-up riots once they turn violent.

And of course, they want virtual “get out of jail free cards” for both the leaders of their movement and the rioters themselves.

If I were a citizen in the St. Louis area—or any other area in the nation where there is history of significant and potentially violent racial tension where a Ferguson-triggered riot might break out—I’d be investing in practical long guns for home defense, putting aside shelf-stable foods and water, quality flashlights, and perhaps be considering an extra garden hose and a fire extinguisher.

One thing that we learned from the 1992 Los Angeles riots is that there simply aren’t enough police officer to handle a widespread riot with hundreds or thousands of rioters spread out across a large geographic area, and individual blocks of businesses and residential neighborhoods may be cut off and left to defend themselves as best as they can.

It may very well devolve into a complete failure of civility in some areas, where only the credible threat (or use) of force may be able to defend lives.

Some astute observers have noted that cold weather can be used to blunt rioters, and that a polar vortex is set to strike much of the nation next week. If authorities are smart, they’ll use the colder weather in from the middle of next week through next weekend strategically, providing that the grand jury has completed their investigation and has come to a decision.

Sadly, it seems that Michael Brown’s exploiters seem intent on using the mythology crafted around his death as an excuse to rage against the society at large.

Be prepared.