On Tuesday, some folks began talking about an incident. It seems that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was at a campaign stop, stumping for a Democrat.

Unsurprisingly, not everyone in the state is a fan of Pelosi’s. In fact, a lot of those people decided to show up and let their voices be heard by protesting.

That’s their right as protected by the United States Constitution. So long as they were peaceful, that is, and all indications so far are that they were.

That may not have stopped someone from treating them like a threat, though.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stumped in South Jersey Saturday on behalf of U.S. House Rep. Donald Norcross in his campaign for re-election. Pelosi was joined by New Jersey Governor, Phil Murphy (D) and Senator Corey Booker (D), all of whom are staunchly against Second Amendment rights, and are known to push for gun control. The Democrats were met by hundreds of peaceful protestors who filled the sidewalk at Camden County College, demonstrating and holding pro-Second Amendment and pro-Trump signs. A civilian on the sidewalk snapped this photo, showing a member of the Democrats’ security force, dangerously pointing a firearm at the crowd of civilians. By any standard, this unequivocally violates basic safety rules and calls into question training, and protocol. William J. Hayden who attended the protest said: “You can clearly see he is pointing the weapon at us. This is why they want complete and total disarmament of the civilian population. And in New Jersey, where the right is diminished, this should be a wake up call to even those that think only the government should have firearms……”

I’ve looked at the photograph in question–you can too, it’s at the above-linked post. I’m not posting it because it’s not our picture–and yeah, it really does look like someone pointing a rifle at the cameraman.

However, the picture isn’t particularly clear. It’s fuzzy enough that I’m not about to rule out it being something far more mundane, like someone with a camera. I don’t like Pelosi and would love to say unequivocally that her detail was threatening peaceful citizens, I just can’t.

It sure looks like it, though.

If that’s the case, then this represents a real problem. After all, you never point a gun at something you don’t intend on destroying. Pointing a rifle at peaceful protestors is a clear violation of the basic rules of gun safety.

It’s an unnecessary provocation at a time when people are already tense. People talking about a coming civil war isn’t just something they do for their own personal amusement, it’s because things are tense enough in this country that such a thing could happen at any time. Pointing guns at political opponents isn’t exactly an act designed to make people feel better.

Then again, rules against that are for the little people like you or me. Important people are more valuable than we are. They get to play by a different set of rules.

Of course, that’s assuming what we think we see is what’s actually there. The last thing we need to do, though, is blindly decide it was a threat and make a stink over it, only to turn out to be wrong about what we saw.

Yet if we’re right, then heads need to roll. Metaphorically speaking, at least.