They’re so lucky it wasn’t much, much worse in Charlottesville. It had the potential to be a bloodbath. The lines of communication were poor between the various protest groups and the Charlottesville authorities tasked with keeping people safe.

But it nearly came unstuck. At the moment this man aimed his gun at a counter-protester using an improvised flamethrower, the C’vill police were up the street to the left and behind barricades. They were out of position for keeping the two groups of protestors separate.

This man has been identified and arrested. Fortunately, his safety was on the first time he aimed; his re-aimed shot went into the bushes.

The authorities had some challenges, as some of the militia-style rightwing protestors showed up in very credible-looking body armor, including some unit patches (but no visible name patches). One official mistook them briefly for reinforcements, there to help maintain public safety. He was startled to realize they were not “the good guys.”

Arriving in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a rally planned by white nationalists earlier this month, Virginia’s top homeland security official nodded to a nearby group of men clad in camouflage and armed with semiautomatic rifles, believing they were soldiers in the state’s National Guard.

Then he did a double take.

“They’re not ours, are they?” said the official, Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran, who described the exchange in an interview. “No, sir,” came a reply from his deputy in the passenger seat. “I don’t think they’re with us.”

Source: How Charlottesville lost control amid deadly protest – Chicago Tribune