My pal Kurt Schlichter joined me (along with his four-legged friend Bitey) on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co for a deep dive into the current state of the union and what the conservative response should be to the unrest in the streets and the toppling of statues in cities like Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Kurt’s been making some excellent points on Twitter about the need for conservatives and those on the Right to think strategically and tactically about the angry Left’s trashing of deep-blue, Democrat-controlled downtowns. As he points out on today’s program, the Left is hoping to get conservatives angry and demoralized at the lack of a heavy-handed response from the federal government. Rather than tanks in the streets, Schlichter says the Trump administration is using attorneys in federal courtrooms.

Strategic patience does not mean treading water. A key weapon system is federal law.@realDonaldTrump needs to have Wray and the US attorney for DC in the Oval Office every morning explaining exactly what the status is of the continuing operation against leftist organized crime.

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) June 23, 2020

There have already been dozens of federal charges filed against rioters and looters, and Trump said today that those trying to tear down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square on Monday evening will be facing federal charges as well.

I believe there’s also another strategy at work on the far Left as well; get conservatives so riled up about the destruction of statues and war memorials that someone lashes out and does something stupid that the media can then pounce on. We almost saw something like that take place this weekend in Lake County, Illinois, when an armed citizen confronted two people he suspected were planning to deface a local memorial to those who died in the Korean War.

Officers responded about 10:35 p.m. to a memorial site which commemorates Vietnam and Korean War veterans at U.S. 231 and 145th Avenue in Leroy, according to a police report.

The man who called 911 claimed he was driving in the area when he thought he saw a male and female vandalizing the property, police said.

So the man pulled out his pistol and kept it at a “low ready” stance as he approached the individuals, the police report states.

After officers responded to the scene, a man and woman told police they were in an argument and left their house to “have a civil discussion to work things out,” the report states.

Police said nothing appeared to be vandalized, and the individuals denied defacing or damaging anything at the site, the report states.

In theory, this armed citizen could have been charged with harassment or intimidation, but thankfully the couple in question declined to press charges. The local police reminded the gentleman that if he was suspicious of activity at the war memorial to call the authorities instead of drawing his gun out of his holster and confronting the strangers.

It’s a sad fact, but the news media is much more interested in covering stories of legal gun owners behaving badly than in documenting the surge in violent crime that’s taking place in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, and other cities. As gun owners, we know that the media is not a level playing field when it comes to gun ownership. We see that same bias when it comes to angry Americans trying to tear down statues and angry Americans wanting to protect them.

Kurt’s advice: let the Left own their violence and destruction. Unless the president wants to invoke the Insurrection Act and send troops into cities where unrest is taking place, it’s generally up to local authorities to respond. The fact that they’re doing a poor job of it in many cities may be reason for some on the Right to demand some sort of military response from the Trump administration, but both politically and constitutionally, it makes more sense for the administration to use federal laws instead of federal firepower to ensure real consequences for those responsible for acts of destruction whenever possible.

Be sure to check out the entire interview with Kurt above, and stick around afterwards for more news, including a Wisconsin man sentenced to probation for a violent attack on his girlfriend, an armed citizen in Ohio who defended a young girl being attacked by a dog, and a police officer in Astoria, Oregon who was in the right place at the right time to save a baby from a burning home.