The Second Amendment protects our right to bear arms in general, but it’s up to state and local laws to spell out exactly what that means. In Texas, for example, you enjoy quite a few explicit freedoms as a gun buyer and owner: no registry, no waiting period, no need for a license to carry if you’re toting a rifle or a shotgun (it’s only necessary if you’re carrying a handgun). And unless you wave your weapon around “in a manner calculated to alarm,” as Texas Penal Code Section 42.01, subsection (a)(8) obliquely puts it, you can carry your gun around most public places—and many private ones—without fear of arrest.

In short, Texas is a great place to be a gun owner. Unless, as Mark Hughes discovered, you are black.

On the morning of July 7, 2016, Hughes decided to exercise his right to open-carry a weapon in order to make a political statement. By that night, he would be the most wanted man in Dallas.

Maybe you remember Philando Castile, the black man who was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, the evening of July 6. Castile had informed the officer that he was carrying a handgun and that he had a concealed-carry permit. He went to reach for his wallet—it’s not clear whether he did so under instruction or not—when the officer, Jeronimo Yanez, shot Castile several times in the arm and torso. Diamond Reynolds, Castile's girlfriend, remarkably calm as her boyfriend sat slumped and bleeding beside her, started live-streaming to Facebook Live immediately after the officer fired. Within hours the video could be seen on every major news network.

The White Reverend Who Organized the Deadly Dallas Black Lives Matter Protest The Reverend Dr. Jeff Hood was the lead organizer behind the Dallas rally where five police officers were shot and killed. Many accused him of provoking the violence.

By the time of Castile’s death, the so-called "police-involved death" had become an tragically recurring occurrence. Two years earlier, police shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson. Three months after that, an officer shot and killed a twelve-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, in Cleveland. Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge had been shot and killed by an officer only a day before Castile. The death count of black men—and boys—killed during police altercations climbed, each fanning the flames of the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement.

Hughes, a native of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, had taken part in marches and rallies against police brutality already. He and his brother, Cory, a former pastor-turned-activist based in Dallas-Fort-Worth, had protested in Ferguson, Baltimore, and beyond. Since news broke about Philando Castile's death, Cory had begun to organize a march for the evening of July 7th in downtown Dallas. Hughes planned to attend, but as a black man and a gun owner, he resolved to speak up for Philando Castile in a way that went beyond marching and holding a sign.

"I knew what I wanted to do, what I wanted to stand for," Hughes told me. And that meant taking his gun, an AR-15 rifle.

The protest started at Belo Garden Park at 7 p.m., with roughly 800 people heading up Commerce Street. By 8:45, the protesters had begun to disperse. About ten minutes later, shots rang out. And at 10:52pm, with the shooter still at large and downtown Dallas still on lockdown, the Dallas Police Department tweeted out a photo of Hughes holding his AR-15 rifle, declaring him a suspect.

“I got instantly fearful,” says Mark. “I didn’t think I was going to make it home.”

By taking his gun to the protest, Hughes only wanted to make a point: that a black man should be able to exercise his Second Amendment rights, in full compliance with local and federal law, without fear of police harassment. And he had told his brother Cory as much.

“He said, ‘man, I’m going out there, these two brothers got killed, one of them in particular, Philando Castile, had a gun. It was legal. I’m taking my gun out there.’

Cory grimaces as he recalls their conversation. "I’ll be honest with you, the first thing I told him is, 'Bro, don’t bring your gun.'"

But Hughes was determined. He bought a shoulder strap that afternoon, having heard that a strap was a requirement to open carry a rifle in Dallas (it isn’t, although law enforcement groups had unsuccessfully lobbied to require people to strap or holster their weapons while open carrying earlier in the year). Either way, he figured that not having his hands on the gun would make him appear less threatening. Then Hughes drove downtown and joined the rally, which included roughly twenty other Second Amendment advocates carrying guns.

"When I got out of the car with my gun, there was four officers on horse. And they immediately turned and looked at me, and it was a cold feeling," Hughes says. "And I was like, 'Okay, maybe this isn't the best thing to do...'"

But another officer stopped and chatted with Hughes about the modifications he'd made to his AR-15 and how it performed at the gun range, sizing him up in the way that enthusiasts do. From that point on, the march was “phenomenal,” he says. “A bunch of individuals in unity, a march for equality against police brutality. Very positive message.”

Then the shooting started. The aftermath would reveal that Micah Johnson, a 25-year-old Army veteran, had staked out a position near El Centro College and opened fire intending to kill Dallas police officers who were working the protest route. But that would be hours later.