cerebus
Honorary Master
This is part of The Big Democrat Lie - that the protests were peaceful and what few instances of violence there were, were committed by others. Just like The Big Lie that the insurrectionists weren't Trump supporters and the actual Trump supporters merely filed through The Capitol like tourists.
There was some rioting and looting that happened during the protests but the majority of it was peaceful. A lot of the looting that happened according to police reports was through organized gangs that used the protests as cover. But there was still some amount of vandalism and outbursts of street violence from BLM, especially as the protests dragged on through the summer. There were also a lot of false flags from groups like Proud Boys.
'Peaceful protests got hijacked': Some criminals used George Floyd protests as cover for looting, police say
Some of the looting during George Floyd protests appeared to stem from demonstrations. In other cases, police say criminals used protests as cover.
eu.usatoday.com
Overall for the scale of the protests - the largest in US history - the George Floyd protests were quite restrained. I can still clearly remember LA in 1992, and if you go back to the 1960s race riots you can see some really disturbing imagery.
Point is, firstly Greg is right that you are being fed a narrative that the protests were just a cover to riot and loot, which is being fed by right-wing media. Secondly, in the specific case of the McCosky's they were in no apparent danger, they were in the middle of a peaceful march that happened to intrude on their cosseted existence, and they chose to grandstand and endanger everyone's lives by waving automatic rifles at the protesters. They are in legal trouble because of what they did, and now they're trying to leverage that into an awful political grift.