Ground Report: Bloomington Day of Resistance

So I took a couple of the tribe and my daughter to the Bloomington Indiana Day of Resistance pro gun rally today down at the courthouse.  It was surprisingly large-about 50 people overall.  It got cut short early, before I had a chance to give the speech I had prepared and, of course, plug my book.  Other than that, it turned out pretty well.  We showed up with some donuts for the war effort which I think everyone appreciated.  None of us were open carrying but there were a few people that were, mostly pistols although one guy had a bitchin' tac'ed out shotgun.

The speakers were OK; it was hard to hear some of it because the mic went dead early on and it was mostly just talking loud over the ambient noise.  I got to meet the libertarian candidate Andrew Horning, who is a pretty decent guy.  I think everybody speaking was passionate and most of them had some good messages, but nobody really wowed the crowd with their oration the way I would have...but that's to be expected.

The police did not show up until almost forty five minutes after the rally itself started and they remained discretely positioned about twenty yards away.  To me, this signifies that they didn't know about the event in advance or I feel there would have been both more police presence and they would have been there the whole time.  Still, they were polite and non confrontational, and the crowd was the same.  In general I have no complaints about the local police; if this had been the Indianapolis rally, God knows they would have been drinking, but Monroe County Sheriff's Dept and BPD both are pretty competent.

Gracie had a good time regardless; she kept wanting them to start up the chant and sing the national anthem again, she had a lot of fun with that.  She ate donuts and played in the mud and charmed everyone there to the point where they will probably remember "The Creepy Longhair with the Cute Kid" rather than "Chris By-The-Throat, author of the upcoming novel Codex Kalachnikova."  C'est la vie.

Anyway, I just wanted to drop some ground truths from my AO.  Did anyone else attend one of these events?