A timely warning, Lauren, but don’t get caught up in the adrenal surge that always happens when things get violent and shots are fired. Everyone should read Gene Sharp’s manual “From Dictatorship to Democracy” (which is available for free online) because he demonstrates how any effort to counter violence with violence inevitably (1) hands the advantage to the oppressors, who have all the money and weapons they need to wreak havoc on any resistance group, and (2) quickly becomes a chaotic and barbaric mess as the rule of law breaks down altogether into warring gangs. Instead, Sharp clearly demonstrates how organized, nonviolent acts of “defiance” (his favorite term) have consistently proven far more effective at undermining tyranny than acts of mass resistance, which simply give the oppressors (and those they have brainwashed) the license they crave for mass murder and brutality.

https://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FDTD.pdf