The recently-elected President Donald Trump has often called for a return of law and order to the country. Although these calls involve fiery rhetoric that seems dangerous for specific minority groups in America, the president is right, perhaps unintentionally, that America currently lacks a sense of law and order.

For about six months now, the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline has been waging without rest at Standing Rock in North Dakota. There have been protesters, calling themselves the “water protectors,” at the scene all day and night, attempting to halt the construction of the poisonous oil pipeline and protect the lake that the Sioux Nation tribe relies on as its primary water source. These protectors have continued to remain peaceful even in the face of fierce brutality from the country to which they belong—they have been beaten, shot with rubber bullets, sprayed with pepper spray and mace and in some cases shot with explosives. This grotesque and inhumane behavior by the American government is shocking, but unfortunately not out of character, and illuminates the lack of law and order that President Trump refers to.

On one cold day at Standing Rock, someone approached the water protectors with a semi-automatic weapon, at a protest where any kind of weapon was previously a foreign object. This man stood in the water and began pointing his loaded machine gun at the peaceful, innocent protesters. While many of the protectors ran or hid in fear, one man walked through the freezing water toward the gunman. This man, Brendan Nastacio, convinced the man to put away the gun and leave the protest, likely saving multiple innocent lives.

The gunman was initially taken into custody by authorities, but despite endangering dozens of innocent lives with an automatic weapon, he served no jail time. On the other hand, the water protector that stopped him, the hero that saved dozens of lives, was placed on the county’s most wanted list, and charged with a felony for terrorism, along with two other protesters, Michael Fasig and Israel Hernandez. This felony charge will likely ruin these innocent heroes’ lives and make it exponentially harder for them to find jobs and lead normal lives. “I kept telling [the man] I would make sure nothing happened to him if he gave me his gun,” Nastacio said. “I was trying to protect him and everyone in camp. Right now with all this police violence in the media I knew that cops could aim to kill. I didn’t want him to get shot. I just wanted the gun.”

Not only was Nastacio trying to protect his fellow protesters, he was even concerned for the man aiming a lethal weapon at them. Once again, we see complete injustice not only supported by, but facilitated by the American government, further illustrating their complete corruption and lack of law   and order.

One of the purposes of prosecution is to deter someone from repeating the crime they committed. Yet late last year, the CEO of Wells Fargo, who spent a decade scamming millions of his company’s customers and fired thousands of employees who were forced to do so, simply got off with a fine.

Likewise, the criminal behavior and violence being committed by the police and National Guard at Standing Rock and elsewhere is unpunished and undeterred. Yet, the saving of dozens of people has been met with a felony charge, and maybe that behavior, or the behavior of the people being brutalized for expressing their first amendment rights, will be deterred, and next time, dozens of innocent people could die instead. Although I doubt President Trump was referring to these abhorrent injustices when he spoke of the lack of law and order in America, these are shocking instances that must be rectified and cannot be allowed to occur in this nation’s important future.