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Even the 1% clubs, like most gangs, are a lot more nebulous and pourous than most people assume. They will have a core group of hardened criminals, but most of the guys hanging around the club, including a large portion of members, never do anything more extreme than some disorderly conduct and bar fights. Most of the older guys have aged out of the crime and are basically just ordinary suburban dads who get a little rowdier than usual on the weekends. It can be hard to tell who is who because the gun-running meth heads with prison time under their belts hang out with basically fully legit mechanics and retired cops, wearing the same cuts and riding the same bikes.
For every actual criminal, you'll have three or four peripheral hangers-on who want to feel dangerous and intimidate the normies, but are basically ordinary people with regular jobs who like to play dress up and go on road trips with the boys. The ordinary members shield the criminal members behind a veil of plausible deniability, providing cover stories and helping the criminals blend in to the larger group. To an outsider, the nice veteran who runs the club's annual Christmas toy drive and the guy smuggling fentanyl for the cartel are virtually indistinguishable.
(Source: my best friend growing up had a rough childhood and spent a few years as a full member of one of the major outlaw clubs. While people around him were selling drugs and guns, he was able to mostly steer clear of it, outside being given the occasional package to deliver that he wasn't allowed to ask questions about and showing up as a show of force whenever one of his brothers got into some sort of fight)
1%er gangs won't allow members who have ever been in law enforcement or correctional work, at least in theory.
Yes, in theory, but I've found that local law enforcement tends to be much more intertwined with organized crime in practice than you would expect in theory. Cops and gangs tend to recruit from very similar populations of violence-prone working class men, with your typical highway patrolman having far more in common culturally with his biker neighbor than with the teachers at his kid's school, for example.
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It's interesting to ponder how that mirrors the common description of Antifa around here. I guess some tactics Just Work, and every group that succeeds in the long term eventually converges on them.
Yeah it's a very similar dynamic that seems to repeat everywhere you look. The vanguard actually willing to engage in personal violence is always dwarfed by the masses of people willing to hide and protect them but not willing to engage in violence themselves.
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