As luck would have it, I was working the night shift at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, CA, in 1992 when the jury acquitted the police in the filmed beating of Rodney King. These types of videos were rare 25 years ago, and their impact was greater. The speed of the violent reaction to the verdict was amazing.
Within minutes, some co-workers were getting panicked calls from home, about mobs gathering outside. The one's who were at risk and had no firearms, left work together, to convoy over to Orange County, where they could buy shotguns without waiting.
After a few hours, we got increasingly bad reports, and decided to go to the roof of our hi-rise office building, to scout the city. The view stunned us all. There were numerous columns of black smoke rising in the distance, that reminded us of the oil-well fires that were happening at the time in Kuwait during the first Gulf War.
The police were overwhelmed and stopped responding to calls, but just escorted firefighters. When the mobs realized that, they lit more fires to keep the police busy. Only the eventual deployment of the National Guard stopped the rioting.
The repeated playing of the beating video on TV, and then the trial, had the community wound-up like a coiled spring. Nothing could stop the explosion, and help took days to arrive. Some of the people who were unprepared for defense, had to hope for mercy in the mob, but that seemed in short supply.
When it was over, there were 55 dead, but my co-workers all survived, though a couple had harrowing brushes with the mobs. Th first morning after it started, 5 shots were fired outside my home in a drive-by, but nobody was hurt.
The memory of that time is what comes to mind when I look at my "ready" collection of SD ammo, and why I keep all my small collection of guns loaded with SD rounds.
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