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Comment by bingohbangoh | Hacker News Reader

> Furthermore, i find US fascination with their theoretical ability to fight their government with small arms adorable and misguided.

Didn't a couple of unarmed protestors take the capitol building on January 6th?

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> Didn't a couple of unarmed protestors take the capitol building on January 6th?

Yes, you are correct.

1. Many of them were armed 2. That was because the Trump administration refused to send in the national guard for several hours after the terrorist attack on January 6th.

If the government does not stand up to terrorists attacking the US Capitol, then yes, they can take the building quite easily.

they were armed? do you have a source for that?

The gun charges were dropped.

A couple examples here, before, during, and after the attack:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/stun-guns-stinger-whips...

If you pop their names into a search engine you can see the DOJ indictments with more info.

How many of those weapons were discharged? And how many were “seized” is not as interesting as how many were being held illegally? The government can illegally seize all sorts of things from citizens, including cash, but the process of doing so doesn’t make the original possession a crime

I was answering the question about whether any were armed or not, of which, the answer is yes: some absolutely were.

Getting a permit to carry in DC is extremely difficult to the point where there's no chance any of the protestors had one. That makes possession illegal. Also, a lack of proper licensing is mentioned several times in the article.

Hmm, that’s a good point - I’d forgotten that I used to have to leave my firearms in safe territory back in Arlington VA before visiting DC proper

Lol, stun guns. The only weapons that you should take seriously in a situation like that are firearms.

“Stun guns” are in the headline as an example but the article also describes conventional firearms like handguns and rifles.

No, you're conflating people who were in DC with the yokels who "stormed" the capitol. As I recall, only one of the yokels had a gun. But it makes for more polarization if we can all make it seem as though they all had guns!

>terrorist attack on January 6th

Are you seriously comparing what happened on January 6th to 9/11? How about the Oklahoma City bombing? Lockerbie bombing? Get some perspective dude.

Yes, whenever people storm the Capital, calling for the VP's head - that's totally not a big deal. Maybe in the 3rd world that's just another Wednesday, but in the U.S. it was a very big fucking deal.

Off topic, but I'm curious, how do you feel about the death of Secoriea Turner?

3,000 people died in 9/11 + countless long term deaths from asbestos, 2 wars that lasted around 20 years with what, 500K - 1M civilian deaths in Iraq and Afga? 168 deaths in OK City bombing including women and children, 270 deaths in the Lockerbie bombing including women and children. What are the long term affects of January 6th? Oh absolutely nothing? Get off the propaganda.

In the US it was made into a very big deal,

A coup is not as simple as getting a bunch of armed people into a building, you need widespread support from powerful agents to have any chance at all and I frankly find it funny that anyone in the US loses his head over this since the US has promoted coups through the world as if it was a sport, you would expect for people to at least understand how it works.

It provided an excellent opportunity to display Trump supporters as awful and it was used as such, but to call it an act of terrorism is absurd.

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