The legal ramifications could also offer a precedent for other cases. Christopher Slobogin, a law professor at Vanderbilt University said a verdict like this “makes protesting a more dangerous enterprise because it sends a message that aiming a gun at someone doesn’t necessarily constitute the kind of provocation that would undermine a self-defense defense.”

The notion of there being more armed individuals at protests is more likely to lead to violence, research shows. Armed protests are six times more likely to turn violent compared to protests where no guns are present, according to a study by the gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety and researchers with the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). The study analyzed more than 30,000 public demonstrations in the U.S. over an 18-month span from January 2020 to June 2021.