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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

Seems like it ought to be possible to have both, to some degree. I don't want the capitol to be a fortress, but they need to prevent stuff like this. I mean... the US spends massive amounts of money on the police and military.

I think it should be kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid. Walk in slowly and peacefully and it's ok. Try and punch it, it solidifies quickly.

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American history[1] shows this probably isn't a requirement - beyond a foreign military attacking, which is clearly out of scope of policing, the other attacks were acts carried out by isolated people. "Storming the gates" hasn't happened before now.

I suspect the main reason that this hasn't happened before is that very large protests/gatherings are often met with a large show of police force to ensure the protestors know this isn't an option. Why that didn't happen today will be interesting to investigate. We all probably have a theory, but what comes out of the inevitable hearings on this will be interesting to see.

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/us-capitol-violence-histor...

They’re often not met with a show of police force. Here’s a picture of the Million Man March in the 1990s: https://images.app.goo.gl/WSvMYDK4asyav5HX7

There are hundreds of thousands of people behind the camera, going all the way to the Lincoln Memorial. You can see some security milling around, but no large show of police force.

The Million Man March's attendance didn't include people with an established history of bringing weapons and wearing body armor at ostensibly peaceful demonstrations.

That couldn't be further from the truth. A large group of Black Panthers armed with assault weapons stormed the CA capitol in 1967 as part of a protest.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/history/article148667224.h...

That was almost 3 decades before the Million Man March, and a completely different organization.

The Fruit of Islam weren’t there?

The Bonus Army protests weren't entirely without conflict.

I think the reality is that we could have prevented it. We just chose not to murder half the crowd. Preventing it without using lethal force requires a much larger force than you want to keep on hand.

I actually really like this analogy. I'm curious if there's there's a term for that kind of playbook for folks who are more familiar with building security.

The only analogue that comes to mind is in financial fraud detection: moving money slowly or in a predictable pattern (monthly rent payments etc.) triggers no alarms, but large or unexpected transfers raise alarms.

I remember when I left my last job that my manager cautioned me against making any large file transfers since it would trigger IT alarms about employees trying to steal the company's IP.

Clearly, he didn't think I was a threat, or if I was, that I would have been smart enough to do it long ago, and slowly :-)

If the people really want to overthrow the government, some jacked up defenses around capitol buildings won't stop anything imho, it just means the resistance will bring heavier weapons to match.

Occupying buildings is, honestly, pretty silly if your goal is to overthrow the government.

A few years(?) ago, Mitch McConnell's dinner at a restaurant was interrupted by protestors yelling at him. And that was after what happened to Gabby Giffords.

Targets with higher ROI are available to people willing to take, ahem, kinetic actions.

There are, for instance, buildings with large areas that are open to the public and other areas which hold large amounts of money that are very important to protect.

> I don't want the capitol to be a fortress, but they need to prevent stuff like this.

And they would have, had the Trump Administration not denied the D.C Mayor's request the day before for the D.C. National Guard to be deployed.

The Administration also delayed approval of requests by Virginia and Maryland to send Guard units to the Capitol in response to urgent calls for aid from Congressional leaders when it became clear the MPD and Capitol Police were overwhelmed.

Of course, it's a problem when the person inciting the insurrection has authority over important components of the security against it.

They (the people inciting it) were literally dancing and having a party and watching the start of the chaos on livestream while it went down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQDgBSSYjI

Do you have a source for this? I read that it was actually the other way around:

> A new report Thursday revealed that Sund turned down an offer from the FBI and the National Guard to help cops in the event of unrest.

https://nypost.com/2021/01/07/capitol-police-chief-steven-su...

> I think it should be kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid. Walk in slowly and peacefully and it's ok. Try and punch it, it solidifies quickly.

I love that so much.

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