Right after last week’s massacre in Dallas I wrote on Facebook,

Today the New York Times explains why the Texas open carry law not only didn’t prevent the massacre; it made law enforcement’s job more complicated.

The Dallas police chief, David O. Brown, described to CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday the amount of confusion the armed protesters initially caused.

He said the event had attracted “20 or 30 people” who “showed up with AR-15 rifles slung across their shoulder.”

“They were wearing gas masks,” Mr. Brown said. “They were wearing bulletproof vests and camo fatigues, for effect, for whatever reason.”

When the shooting started, “they began to run,” he said. And because they ran in the middle of the shooting, he said, the police on the scene viewed them as suspects. “Someone is shooting at you from a perched position, and people are running with AR-15s and camo gear and gas masks and bulletproof vests, they are suspects, until we eliminate that.”

There were also some presumably armed men staging a counter-protest to BLM at the scene. I assume they ran also. It’s a wonder it didn’t turn into a regular battle, though.

Gun nuts gun rights activists have long argued that all mass shootings take place in “gun-free zones,” even though that isn’t actually true.

In a 2014 report, Everytown for Gun Safety, a pro-gun control group, said that from 2009 to July 2014, 18 multiple-victim U.S. shootings–meaning any incident where at least four people were killed with a gun–occurred in places where civilian handguns were allowed.

Of 33 incidents in public spaces, the report said, 18 took place wholly or in part where concealed guns could be lawfully carried. Conversely, no more than 15 incidents “took place entirely in public spaces that were so-called ‘gun-free zones,'” the report said.

The gun culties gun rights activists also like to deny that the presence of armed law enforcement officers count. For example, they will tell you that military bases are “gun free zones” because civilians and non-security personnel are unarmed. But the MPs are armed.

But I don’t think even Wayne LaPierre is demented enough to try to argue the Dallas shooting happened because it was a gun-free zone.