“Minneapolis residents in some areas still recovering from rioting and unrest are forming community watch and security groups, some bearing firearms, to fight a surge of crime,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

While no one can blame the residents — in fact they should be applauded for doing what it takes to protect their own – this is, in ways I’ll explain below, not good. It is, however, a sign of things to come in countless Democrat-run cities:

In late June, residents near a commercial strip that had been looted, and the 3rd Precinct station that was abandoned and burned, were seeing a surge of shooting and drug-related crime on their block.

“It got to the point where crime had no consequences,” said Tania Rivera, 30, who runs a child-care center with her mother. “It was being done deliberately out in the open. Drive-through drug dealing, drive-through prostitution, everything from gunshots to assaults to sex out in the public. Everything you didn’t want your neighborhood to look like.”

So after a number of community meetings, neighbors began constructing a barrier to close off two blocks of their street, first with trash cans, then debris. For a while, a boat on a trailer protected one intersection. Eventually, a nearby iron maker constructed a permanent gate. Police gave their approval as long as emergency responders could get through if requested by the neighborhood.

It goes on to say that men in the neighborhood “began an armed patrol, kicking out anyone who didn’t belong on the block after dark.”

The Journal provides a number of other examples.

So what we have now, in a major America city, are desperate residents constructing barriers to keep out people who, in their opinion, do not belong…

Listen, the first, the very first priority of government is to protect our God-given rights from being violated, most especially by others. We have a God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the government has no higher purpose than to see to it those rights are not interfered with. To say the Democrat-run city of Minneapolis is failing on this point would be an understatement. The city, which has not had a Republican mayor in nearly 50 years, slashed the police budget and turned its police department into eunuchs who are either unable to respond due to budget cuts and ridiculous policies that make it impossible to enforce the law or are unwilling to respond for fear they will become CNNLOL’s Villain of the Day…

And now the city’s residents are forced to go to extraordinary lengths to protect their family and property. This is no way to live. This is why, even in the Old West, townspeople elected a sheriff.

At first, forming a local militia might sound kind of fun. Hell, at first, the coronavirus was kind of fun. We all thought we were living through a zombie movie. How cool is that? But over time, just like lockdowns and face masks, patrolling your own neighborhood is going to get old.

To begin with, how many of these people have jobs? So now, instead of enjoying their off-hours, they’re out in the streets. That is supposed to be the government’s job. The residents of Minneapolis pay taxes to avoid having to do things like patrol their own streets.

What’s more, how effective is a local militia, a local patrol? Again, once the excitement of the newness wears off, people are going to get bored, lose their lack of concentration. It’s only natural. Besides, the last people you want out there are those who want to be out there – the overeager hall monitors.

Finally, who wants to live in a city where local militias are asking if you have any business entering their streets? That is not how life in America is supposed to work.

This is all bad, very bad… Untrained citizens with firearms patrolling the streets is a terrible idea. The potential for civil rights violations, for someone getting hurt or worse needs not be pointed out.

More from the Wall Street Journal:

Council member Linea Palmisano said armed neighborhood patrols, or even efforts to just keep unfamiliar people out of a neighborhood, opens a Pandora’s box.

“We are lurching for solutions,” she said, noting she doesn’t support the idea of doing away with the police department but supports the idea of letting residents vote on it.

With the neighborhood patrols, “you could very easily create the same things we rally against,” she said.

Well, no shit, lady… But what do you expect? Do you expect people to just sit around and wait to get robbed, raped, or killed; to see their property values implode while you “rally” around your own self-righteousness? 

Militia groups are a better idea than doing nothing, than the only alternative they have, which is to allow violent criminals to run rampant and to lose their life’s investment into their homes and businesses. They have to do something; they just should not be forced to do something by a failed Democrat-run city government.

The good news is that urban Democrats are finally learning the value of the Second Amendment.