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

This story is part of Holiday Gift Guide 2019, your source for the season's best gifts and deals, hand-picked by the experts at CNET.

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. 

Wild 😂 #blackfriday #fight #BlackFriday2019 pic.twitter.com/mcDZuAGPI4

— custom iphones (@iphones4sale145) November 29, 2019

BLACK FRIDAY FIGHT: Tensions ran high at the Walmart in Hendersonville yesterday. Video courtesy Toolie Durrett pic.twitter.com/RK3SINNBKS

— FoxNashville (@FOXNashville) November 29, 2019

#BlackFriday
Last night, supposedly 2 girls got in a fight on the third floor of #TysonsCornerMall and one of their wigs were last seen falling graciously to the first floor. #RIP to that wig 😂
People tried to get it back up to her though. #NotAllHeroesWearCapes pic.twitter.com/yS1GoFhjbU

— soo (@sookyunghan) November 29, 2019

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. 

WOMEN FIGHT IN BLACK FRIDAY WALMART LINE pic.twitter.com/CIEfyRhOVU

— Charlotte Alerts News (@AlertsCharlotte) November 23, 2018

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. 

How I intend to spend Black Friday pic.twitter.com/zyEU4NmfWe

— Leslie Katz (@lesatnews) November 29, 2019

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.