“The next incident is right around the corner,” said Captain Michael Rinaldi, counterterrorism chief for the New Jersey State Police. “Someone will run someone over, or someone will get shot and there will be a melee and it will gain momentum. There is definitely concern for what you saw in Charlottesville, that you’ll get a group and then counterprotesters and then you’ll have casualties.”

Gagliano, a former senior FBI SWAT team leader and crisis management coordinator in New York, said many of the protesters at recent public events appeared to be better equipped than he was as an FBI tactical agent deployed to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.

“Allowing openly carried weapons at an assembly, where tensions oft run high and counterprotesters now proliferate, is a recipe for disaster,” Gagliano said.