My county got 2 armored vehicles, which sounds quite reasonable. We have some scary guns randomly in this whole county. And some scary people, frankly (of various colors and religions and ideologies, thankyouverymuch
). The ones going to fight for ISIS are the ones I'm particularly freaked out by, but the meth labs are probably more personally dangerous. Hard call.
To the contrary, I think it's vital that we understand why this particular event tripped the trigger. We need an engaged citizenry, and if we can learn how to encourage that engagement, we'll all be better off in the long run.
Like you said, the fuse needed to be lit a long time ago. I'd like to know how.
On my TL in Twitter, which has a ton of selection bias as you might imagine, it seems that the string of horrible incidents with innocent Black folks as victims has caused more and more scrutiny of incidents like that on "Black Twitter" (which I'm 'on'). Then you have the libertarians, including journalists who write with a libertarian bent. Many of those are international.
Then you have the international left or more radical left, who are really big on the US being over-militarized for ages now. That also is an international theme, as you might imagine. All of them are all over this case.
A state declaring Emergency Powers over riots/looting is a big deal itself, though. I feel like if it hadn't already been a big story then, the curfew would have turned it into one.