Armed activists at San Jacinto Monument vow to use force to defend Texas landmarks
A crowd of activists carrying rifles and handguns gathered at the San Jacinto Monument Saturday to warn Gov. Greg Abbott that if police don’t do more to protect the state’s historic sites from vandals, then armed volunteers will do the job for them.
“Abbott, if you don’t do it, then Texans are going to do it. And you’re not going to like the way we’re going to handle things,” said Brandon Burkhart, president of This Is Texas Freedom Force, a nonprofit group created to “protect Texas history and Texan’s rights.”
Openly carrying firearms is legal in Texas, and the group’s members say they’ve been “standing watch” at San Jacinto, the Alamo and other historic landmarks after the death of former Houston resident George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked outrage and widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism in the U.S.
The group blamed activists tied to Antifa, the Brown Berets and the Black Lives Matter movement for defacing a Christopher Columbus statue in Houston; a Confederate monument in Huntsville; a statue of Confederate leader Lawrence Sullivan Ross at Texas A&M University; and the Cenotaph at the Alamo, a memorial to the Alamo defenders who died in 1836 during the Texas Revolution.
Read more: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Armed-activists-at-San-Jacinto-Monument-vows-to-15354911.php
