Let me tell you about the time I went to a climate march in Austin and saw a dude strapped with an AR 15 sipping a pumpkin spice latte outside a yoga studio. It was 2020, peak pandemic cowboy cosplay meets civilian militias, and after this week's news from Utah, Im realizing America still hasn't solved its 'good guy with a gun' fan fiction problem.

Matthew Alder, a 'safety volunteer' at a 'No Kings' protest in Salt Lake City last June, just got charged with manslaughter for shooting an actual kingmaker. Arthur 'Afa' Ah Loo, a beloved fashion designer and former Project Runway contestant, took a bullet meant for another guy assembling a rifle nearby. The irony here is thicker than the plot armor on every Batman villain combined. A man hired to prevent violence became the violence. A local artist died over political theater. And now prosecutors are twisting themselves into human pretzels explaining why the guy with the AR 15 walks free while the self appointed protector faces prison time.

Utah, like 45 other states, loves open carry laws. Love. Them. You can practically buy a Glock with a Happy Meal in Salt Lake City under their 'if it moves, arm it' philosophy. Thats how Arturo Roberto Gamboa thought it was cool beans to assemble his AR 15 near a crowd chanting anti authoritarian slogans at the June rally. Hes either the world's slowest mass shooter or the world's most committed performance artist. Either way, he scared Alder into firing wildly because wearing a neon vest that says 'safety' suddenly makes you Dirty Harry.

The kicker? Prosecutors say Alpiois third bullet over the crowd like he was in a 90s action movie flick was reckless enough for charges, but Gamboa gets a 'boys will be boys' pass. I remember when open carry activists stormed Michigan's capitol in 2020 armed to the teeth. News coverage framed them as passionate patriots. But when Black Lives Matter marches happened, suddenly rifles near crowds became public menace numero uno. Apply that logic here. If Gamboa had been a left wing activist assembling a rifle near a MAGA rally, hed have been Swiss cheese before the bolt clicked.

Ah Loo's widow Laura called the charges 'moral and just.' She's tougher than a two dollar steak. Losing your husband to a stray bullet while hes exercising what we quaintly call 'democratic participation' is the kind of trauma that shatters communities. I spoke with organizers after similar events post 2020. They're terrified of both actual shooters and the paranoid Rambos who show up 'to help.' This is where Second Amendment cosplay butts heads with reality. More guns don't equal more safety. They equal more crossfire.

The No Kings movement itself is fascinating. Born from the digital anarchist soup of anti establishment sentiment thats seeping into both left and right spaces. Their whole vibe? No rulers, no masters, no centralized power structures. Which sounds great until someone brings an AR 15 to the party and junior deputy Gungrave overreacts. This mess proves their point about power structures crumbling. When citizens cease trusting institutions to keep protests safe, they improvise. Sometimes lethally.

Heres where I mention Ive worn the neon vest. Not as security, but as a legal observer. The safest protests have professionals handling safety, not volunteers playing action hero. Yet funding for that vanished faster than bipartisanship after 2016. So towns rely on Matthews armed with more enthusiasm than training.

Alpinis lawyer will argue he feared a mass shooting. Gamboa's lawyer says his client had the gun pointed down like a 'responsible' open carrier. Meanwhile, a father and artist is dead. This is American crisis management. Everything burns, so light a Molotov.

Whats the solution? Maybe admitting putting armed randos in charge of crowds is dumber than putting Elon in charge of Twitter. Maybe regulating open carry during organized events. Or heres a thought. Fund actual trained professionals so volunteers don't play judge Dredd.

Im not anti gun. Im anti tragedy. Ah Lau deserved to see his kids grow up. His community deserved better. And America deserves political spaces not pregnant with threat.

When Montana tried banning guns at rallies in 2021, the NRA sued and won. Utah Senator Mike Lee actually tweeted 'self defense is a human right' after this shooting. Cool story, bro. Humans are also dead right now.

To every would be protest protector. Volunteer unarmed. Train properly. And for the love of god, shoot less. If security becomes the danger, we've already lost.

Now who’s got the voter registration link? Because clearly, we can’t holster our way out of this one. We gotta vote our way out.