Every concealed carry course teaches you that when you are carrying, any conflict you become involved in is a conflict that has a gun in it, and that isn’t a fact that always makes you safer. Because anybody who knows you have it and has a good reason to think you’re about to use it is allowed to use theirs first. Especially cops. Having a gun never makes you safer in an interaction with a cop, and if you find yourself in a situation where you are interacting with a cop while legally carrying, you want that gun to cease to be an element of the encounter. Concealed carry courses teach you how to interact with cops when you are carrying. You display your empty hands — you put them on your steering wheel or in the air, you inform the cop that you are a permit holder, you tell him where the gun is, and then you wait for instructions on what to do next. If the cop feels that he is not safe, you are not safe. Because if he gets the idea you’re reaching for that weapon, he may kill you and your permit or your right to carry has absolutely no bearing on his justification to do so. If a cop reasonably thinks you pose a danger to him, he can justifiably shoot you. If you have a gun and you can get hold of it, then you reasonably pose a danger to the cop. The Second Amendment, your concealed carry permit or open carry laws in your state are not part of this analysis. They do not matter in any way. Taking your weapon to a violent demonstration where you will be among protesters who are clashing with cops is a wildly irresponsible thing to do, because the presence of a gun changes the way the cops are going to deal with you and everyone you are with. The Second Amendment and concealed carry permits and open carry laws in no way lessen the criminal implications of having a gun while committing a crime. The presence of the gun escalates the seriousness of the crime dramatically over what it would have been if you had committed the crime without a weapon, and it makes no difference whether you have a permit or whether you got the gun from a guy in an alley. Direct action — impeding federal law enforcement officers in the course of their duty, helping migrants to escape from law enforcement, assaulting an officer — these are all crimes, and every one of these crimes becomes much more severe if you’re armed while you’re doing it. Having a permit doesn’t mean it was legal for him to be carrying at the demonstration, because it is never legal to be armed while doing a crime.