Black Friday 2019 fights prove shopping for deals is as perilous as ever

Black Friday wouldn't be Black Friday if it didn't include amped-up consumers swearing, shoving and punching their way to post-Thanksgiving deals. 

Just take a scroll through the tweets below, which capture scenes of Black Friday mayhem at retailers around the country. One shows guys punching each other out on the ground in front of a Forever 21 store at the Lehigh Valley Mall in Whitehall, Pennsylvania, while another shows employees and security guards at a Walmart in Hendersonville, Tennessee, rushing to break up a profanity-laced melee. 

As one Twitter user wrote: "What's Black Friday without fights?" He included a couple of laughing emojis (because if we didn't laugh we'd cry?), but Black Friday can be flat-out dangerous, with plenty of violence and even some deaths reported in recent years. 

In a video from last year of two women who look like they could be MMA wrestlers duking out it out on the floor of a Charlotte, North Carolina, Walmart, one shopper's hands get perilously close to the other's neck. Pretty chilling stuff. The video has gotten close to 4 million views, with responses expressing both amusement and utter dismay. 

If you have a helmet handy, here are the best Black Friday deals we've spotted so far. Or you could follow my lead and adopt a retreat-from-humanity approach to this year's bargain-shopping blowout. 

Fortunately for all of us, there's always Cyber Monday. 

Have your own crazy Black Friday experiences? Tell us in the comments and include links to your tweets. 

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