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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

The protest was planned, that’s for sure. But here the context is the attack, not the protest.

Can somebody explain, since this was a long planned coup attempt against a Capitol that has its own police force, in a capital that has one of the largest and most heavily armed police forces in the world, why did the guncrazy far right militants leave their guns at home? And instead behaved mostly like an out of control protest with a few dozen violent rioters? It is a very peculiar way to attempt to overthrow a government.

I suspect they thought there'd be more complicity or active support from the police/guards. bringing your guns out in the open directly would have been too visible a giveaway up front, giving people time to react/block.

You don’t need the guns if you have people on the inside. And a good number of the rioters seemed really quite surprised when law enforcement fought back against them. After all, they were carrying Blue Lives Matter flags, surely the cops are on their side!

(and besides, there were a good number of people with guns at the protest. And some others brought pipe bombs. Thankfully neither ended up being a factor but no one would have known that at the time)

Doesn’t add up. How are you going to hold the Capitol or any hostages without weapons?

As I said, they did have weapons. Not an overwhelming amount of them certainly, but more than enough to pose a threat if they managed to capture Nancy Pelosi.

And again: if you have the support of the police (and potentially also the armed forces) it’s all pretty moot anyway.

The QAnon "storm" narrative revolved around unnamed "true patriots" within some unnamed national security service rising up to overthrow the corrupt.. something.

Or at least that's the common interpretation of QAnon ramblings.

But the point is that there wasn't any centralised leadership plotting this. There was some groups (who did have weapons) who were absolutely planning this, but the protestors in general was much more decentralized in purpose and method.

The FBI divulged this morning that the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia, were trying to trap congress members in the underground tunnels of the capitol to gas them.

No, they didn't. FBI charging documents make zero references to any of the OK defendants possessing any form of lethal, or even irritant, gas weapons.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

FBI charging documents do make references to the telecommunications of the OK defendants, where they are trying to trap and gas congress people under the capitol.

Hrm. You made a very specific (and false) claim, got called on it, and now you say "references to... trying to..." in apparent attempt to weasel around it.

Neither the FBI nor Capitol Police has made claim that any lethal gas was present, period. Not in possession of "Oath Keepers" or otherwise. Not in "underground tunnels" or anywhere else.

No reputable news agency seems to be claiming thus, either.

So, the burden is on the claimant to show that this isn't pure narrative fantasy.

masonic is ignoring the possibility that "gas" talk was figurative. It was reported that Oathkeeper Thomas Edward Caldwell received facebook messages during the insurrection: “Tom all legislators are down in the Tunnels 3floors down,” and “Go through back house chamber doors facing N left down hallway down steps,” and “All members are in the tunnels under capital seal them in. Turn on gas,” according to the FBI.

Perhaps "seal them in, turn on gas" was a figurative way of saying "trap them and kill them". Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/conspiracy...

A lot of the protesters have said they expected the police to be largely on their side. I suspect that when things got violent both the armed rioters and police realised that guns would just end up in a blood bath on both sides, and the first person to shoot on either side would probably end up dead pretty quickly.

If I suspend my disbelief for a second, do you have a link to any interviews or similar with those protesters?

Surely you are not conflating quotes from peaceful demonstrators against (alleged) election fraud, with militants trying to violently overthrow the government?

Here's a WP article on it. I remember seeing video of a woman retreating from the Capitol saying something about them being on the same side as the police and complaining why they weren't joining them, but I can't find it, sorry. One of the protesters was carrying blue lives matter flag.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IKWa_6...

Is this the same woman who was crying, “they pushed me down and maced me” while dabbing her face with an onion?

That's the one. There's a theory that onions help neutralise the effects of mace, they've been used by protesters in the Middle East for this and it's possible some of the Capitol rioters came with them and gave her one.

That sounds dubious to me. Have you chopped onions? What I’ve heard is that she probably wasn’t maced and was just using the onion to irritate her eyes and force tears to fake being maced. (People who actually get maced tend to be slobbery, snotty messes.)

I suspect the police weren't shooting because they realized how overwhelmed they were. I've seen a couple of videos where they had drawn their guns and prepared to fire but they were simply surrounded.

The interaction I saw between the rioters and those defending the Capitol just after the woman was shot seem more enlightening than this theory.

Crowds would have dispersed pretty quickly if the cops started shooting

Probably not. Even when actually shot, people don’t always run. It would be pretty hard for them to stop the crowd with a few cops and a few handguns.

Or they would have stormed the cops in a blind rage, killed them, and taken their weapons.

> why did the guncrazy far right militants leave their guns at home?

Because despite their public rhetoric and willingness to carry guns when they don’t expect law enforcement opposition, they realized that their only chance of success at the Capitol was to not be treated by law enforcement the way that law enforcement (including the Secret Service) would treat a visibly-armed mob surrounding the Capitol during proceedings (which include Secret Service protectees).

How did they coordinate not bringing guns? Or did they each individually realize this strategy without coordination? I think you’re giving them too much credit here.

I agree that “realized their chance of success” makes it more group-strategic than is probably warranted.

“Realized that the likely law enforcement stance likely at the Capitol would make visibly carrying a firearm increase their personal risk rather than their effectiveness” is probably more accurate.

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