If the Second Amendment does not apply to this exact kind of moment, what do people think it is for?
A citizen can lawfully carry, see masked federal agents beating someone in public, move toward the scene to help, and then get erased with a hail of bullets because “he had a gun.”
That excuse is an insult in a country where possession is legal by design, where the whole point is that the public never becomes a disarmed audience watching state power operate with impunity.
I’m not interested in arguing frame-by-frame footage. I’m interested in the principle that a free people cannot accept a standard where lawful carry becomes a death sentence the second authority feels threatened.
If that is the standard, then the 2nd Amendment has been reduced to a vibe. The founders did not write it so Republicans could do militia cosplay on weekends.