11 officers shot, 4 fatally during Dallas protest over police shootings

[Ninurta]

Angry driver plows into protesters on I-70, police file charges against protesters for SUV damage

This was on Face Book, and the author seems to be more outraged that the SUV went through the line than the fact that these criminals were blocking the road.  Yes, I said criminals because, as Ninurta pointed out, this is against the law!   Pfft! 

The SUV starts moving forward at the 10:30 mark.  That horn blowing would drive me nuts!  No wonder people get outraged at these things!

In Missouri, driving a car into a crowd is assault, unless it's a crowd of protesters.
This video has been gnawing at me since the moment I saw it being livestreamed on YouTube by St. Louis American. During the livestream of the I-70 highway shutdown by Black Lives Matter protesters, an angry driver plowed directly into a line of protesters. The video bothered me on a number of fronts and made me question whether a St. Louis police officer might have even given the go-ahead for the SUV driver to run directly into the protesters. If you watch the video, you can see the driver motioning to a police officer, who comes over and has a very brief conversation with her.
We don't have any idea what was said, but you can clearly see in the video that from the moment the police officer began to walk away, the driver of the SUV began to drive directly into the protesters. The officer even looks back and sees the SUV driving into the line of people. More protesters gathered and stood in front of the SUV and then the driver punched the gas, pushing protesters to the side and dragging a "Ferguson is everywhere" box sign with it. A few protesters can be seen banging on the car to get the driver to stop. I watched with a mix of horror, anger and relief.
Horrified that the driver had willfully driven into a group of people. Anger that the officer actually looked back at the vehicle, saw it plowing into the people and kept walking away. Relief nobody was seriously injured.
Before we go any further, take :60 seconds to watch the scene unfold:

Source

Where I come from, that's called "self defense".

I may have just a wee touch of PTSD. Loud sounds make me jump, and if loud enough and close enough, dive for cover. This evening, there were 4 explosions of God knows what somewhere nearby here. Sounded like explosions to me, anyhow. If it was a firearm instead, it was a damned big one - something on the order of a cannon. My automatic reaction was to pull in a little tighter to make myself a little smaller, then grab a gun and go see what it was. I caught myself at the end of the walkway and came back into the house, and just sat and endured it.

The moral of that story is that I have automatic reactions to certain stimuli. Roadblocks scream "AMBUSH!" to me, and I react to get out of the kill zone as rapidly as possible. Now if there is a mob of folks blocking my way, it's an automatic assumption that they are up to no good. Normal folk with your best interests at heart do not unlawfully detain you. Blocked roadways imply snipers to the side and mines in the ditch to keep you from getting to the snipers, and the road blockage is to slow you enough for the snipers to get a good bead on you.

That's just the way my diseased mind works. The Skinnies in Somalia used trash and burning tires to block roads so the snipers could do their jobs. It's no different in a civilian urban war zone. If Reginald Denney had been possessed of a diseased mind such as mine, he probably wouldn't have gotten dragged out of his truck and been beaten in the head with a cinder block. He would have plowed onward, and left a few stains in the road.

Self defense.

When people who clearly don't like you block your way, you take them out and keep rolling, in the interest of self preservation.

Several years ago, I was "between jobs" and doing landscaping to pick up some spare cash. One sunny summer day, I, my wife at the time, and another worker were driving from one job to the next in a Ford F150 with an 18' trailer loaded with expensive equipment in tow. As we went through a rough part of town, a fine young gent stepped out of the hedges at the side of the road and proceeded to stroll across my path as if he had all day to cross the road, with the objective of stopping me. he got slower and slower, then stopped directly in my path and looked back over his shoulder at me with a grin.

That was the precise point that I floored the gas, and the engine roared to life.

Homeboy's eyes got as big as saucers when he divined my intent, and lemme tell ya, he left that road so fast he left a hole in the air where he had been standing. Right back into the hedges with the rest of his buddies who had planned to stops us, rob, us, and God knows what else us.

Problem solved.

The woman I was married to at the time didn't quite catch the severity of the situation. She was nearly hysterical, screaming "you almost killed that guy!", and didn't know quite what to think when I replied "I goddamned well meant to! He just moved too fast is all!"

Roadblocks equal ambushes. Protect yourself accordingly.

When the evil day came to Sampson, he brought down the temple on his own head and those of his enemy alike, taking everyone out. Whether or not that was the right decision was between him and his God - there were none left to contest it. There are just folks in this world who will most definitely put your Civil Rights in extreme peril should you choose to first screw with theirs.

ETA: That takedown at 21:00 was epic. I'd love to buy that cop a beer!