We haven’t talked a whole lot about the protest encampments that have popped up at colleges and universities all across the nation. Why? Because that’s not our regular wheelhouse. They’re political protests that deal with non-Second Amendment issues. Our sister sites of Townhall, RedState, PJMedia, and Twitchy have all hit on those a great deal in recent weeks.

We’ve been focused on other things because that’s what we do here.

Frankly, I find it hilarious that the people who keep claiming colonization is bad have basically tried to set up pathetic little colonies on college campuses. They’re not doing it well, mind you, since they’re not remotely self-sustaining nor even attempting to be, but they are what they are.

Yet a couple of instances have now brought these protests into our domain. It seems that guns have now entered the playing field, and not on the hips of police officers breaking up the encampments.

First, in Florida:

Anti-Israel protester Atah Othman, 39, was one of 10 demonstrators arrested on the USF campus on Tuesday — and he was busted carrying a gun in his waistband, Fox 13 Tampa reports.

Othman faces four charges including possession of a firearm on school property, trespassing, unlawful assembly and resisting arrest, arrest records show. He was released on bond just after midnight on Wednesday, hours after protesters gathered at the Orient Road Jail calling for the ten people arrested to be released. 

It is unclear if Othman is part of the school system or an outside agitator. The identities of the remaining nine people arrested are unclear. 

Now, in this instance, it’s just a guy who happened to have a firearm. As there are no charges about being an armed felon or anything, it appears he owned it lawfully and was carrying it lawfully under Florida law right up until he stepped on campus.

Florida does not have a campus carry law.

Honestly, this isn’t overly alarming. I mean, it’s just one guy and there’s really no reason to automatically assume he had any nefarious intentions. While I don’t trust the guy’s politics, that’s not grounds to assume he wanted to hurt someone. He may well have figured someone might want to hurt him and was trying to protect himself.

What happened at the University of Texas is another matter entirely.

Meanwhile, a UT Austin spokesperson says that guns were found on its campus hidden in a breezeway on Monday, Fox 7 Austin reports. Buckets of large rocks, bricks, steel-reinforced wood planks, mallets and chains were all found on campus belonging to protesters.

“University staff found a 5-gallon bucket filled with large chunks of concrete strategically hidden in a breezeway of Calhoun Hall leading to the South Lawn,” the spokesperson told Fox 7.

“An identical bucket was found in a similar location during last Wednesday’s protest. Similar buckets of rocks have been used during past protests in Austin to assault responding officers.”

Nearly 80 people were arrested at UT Austin’s protests on Monday after demonstrators set up tents and a barricade on the South Lawn despite lawmakers banning camping in public areas in 2021.

Nobody was charged with the stashed firearms. That could be because they don’t know who they belong to or it could be that officials figured that since campus carry is legal in Texas, they weren’t breaking the law.

I’m not so sure that the latter holds true since no one was actually carrying anything, but I’m also not an attorney.

Yet the fact there were guns stashed in a breezeway, along with buckets of rocks, bricks, and clubs–steel-reinforced wood planks are clubs. Don’t pretend otherwise–makes it clear that these kids aren’t any kind of peaceful protest. They’re looking for a fight.

What’s more, they know the most likely opposition in such a fight will be law enforcement. Since there are demands among some protests to abolish or reduce law enforcement, there’s zero reason to suspect these kids actually respect the police.

On Wednesday, I wrote elsewhere that I feared the strong possibility that these protests wouldn’t end well. While I support the right to keep and bear arms, even among those I vehemently disagree with, the circumstances in Texas don’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy about how things are going.