Oath Keepers Ratchet Up Tension in Ferguson

As Ferguson, Missouri remains on edge and in a state of emergency as a result of the one-year anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, a potentially explosive new element has been added to the situation with the arrival of Oath Keepers, which are a far right militant group that openly carries heavy weaponry.

NBC News reports that members of the group, which pledges to protect the constitution "against all enemies foreign and domestic," were seen early Tuesday morning as the city tried to cope with protests. On Sunday night, peace protests were marred with shooting incidents, one of which left a man seriously injured.

Images showed the Oath Keepers wearing bulletproof vests and carrying assault rifle with handguns holstered on their hips. They are also carrying walkie talkies and claimed they were at the protests to protect journalists from the website Infowars, which denied that it had asked the group to do any such protection work

The group says it has more than 30,000 members, but that didn't stop the local police chief and protesters, who have often been at odds with each other, from saying that the group and its volunteers were not welcome.

The Oath Keepers previously made headlines when they rallied to defend tax cheat Cliven Bundy in the state of Nevada, aiming their rifles at federal agents who were preventing him from grazing his herd of cattle on federal land, despite the fact he had not paid the requisite fees for such privileges, in violation of the basic tenets of free market capitalism.

Many of the protesters claimed that if they, or black and brown people, were as heavily armed the as the police, they would be shot or arrested, while the police in Ferguson did not even approach or question the Oath Keepers for openly brandishing their weapons.