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Comment by caseysoftware | Hacker News Reader

"More guns" is right.

I watched it live and then dug through the videos, selfies, etc after and inside the Capitol, I found one guy who might have had a gun. The other weapons appear to have been convenient - a fire extinguisher, flags, etc. It looks less and less like an "insurrection" and more like jackasses doing jackass things.

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That’s what made it appear fake. Every republican protest recently has dozens of people carrying rifles. Why would it make sense for them not to do this when they are invading the capitol? It doesn’t add up. It’s almost as if they were not planning to really do anything except cause a diversion.

DC's gun ban is very strict so I assume most did respect that to avoid prison.

I agree with most of your reasoning but intrigued by the diversion bit. Any theories on what this was a distraction from? What got less/no attention as a result of this?

I'm not sure about distraction, but the whole exercise called to mind similar exercises in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ukraine, Hong Kong, etc. Those were run by CIA, so even though I don't have a good theory for why they (or parties within the organization; it's not a monolith) would do this, it does make one wonder... Keep in mind that even if a particular party staged this exercise, it might not have gone as they planned.

It’s difficult to narrow it down as there are dozens of potential answers that question. It’s possible even that whatever it was planned as a diversion for is not yet discovered.

This is a good point - this is the same group that is very gun rights focused and has been wandering around the streets armed with automatic weapons. It's kind of weird to see them without guns.

I don't know what the framework was, but open carry wasn't allowed prior to the rally.

This article quotes the police chief saying as much:

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/protests/march-for-t...

I would also expect anyone coming from the rally had been through some security screening.

Relevant data points:

- Open Carry is always illegal in DC.

- DC does issue concealed carry permits but doesn't honor them from other states (called reciprocity).

- This was talked about far and wide in advance on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere framed as "don't bring guns to DC! You will go to jail!" and supported by flyers posted throughout DC. (You can still find pictures of them online.)

I believe breaking into the capitol building is also illegal so I fail to see why people who are already breaking one law would care about the others

> why people who are already breaking one law would care about the others

Remind me not to get in your way when you're jaywalking.

Premeditating a felony firearms offense is one thing. I think the majority who entered the Capitol were probably thinking that most of the rhetoric they were hearing beforehand was hyperbole and were probably expecting to just protest outside the capital, and then got swept up in the moment and committed misdemeanor/felony breaking-and-entering.

Protests are big drinking events. For some reason people don't talk about this. Angry people go out planning to peacefully protest for George Floyd or Trump, they drink some liquor, their inhibitions go down, they decide to throw a couple bottles, break a couple windows. It's hard to miss the number of red faces in the videos of the capital riot.

Almost no civilian in the country has "automatic weapons" this is what people are saying when they mention theres a lot of hyperbole around this topic.

Slight correction: Legal automatic weapons. It is hard to estimate how many people have or could retrofit semiautomatic weapons into automatic weapons illegally. There are public plans for such modifications floating around the net, and at least some of them actually work, with some guns. And that's not counting the quasi-automatic stuff like bumpstocks or gimmicky 'trigger cranks.'

I once met somebody who wears a lightning link as a pedant around their neck. Probably it wouldn't be compatible with their rifle's receiver, but who knows.

I think the risk-to-reward ratio is pretty low for having an illegal automatic weapon. It takes a lot of trigger discipline even for average trained soldiers to not to quickly waste most of their ammo with fully automatic weapons.

Then again, just because it's not smart doesn't mean people don't do it.

It really depends on what their objectives are; what they think they might accomplish by having an automatic rifle. There are a wide array of tactical objectives, some better served by automatic weapons than others. Consider particularly the different tactical objectives terrorists and soldiers might have. Particularly, soldiers need more discipline because they're likely to be fighting people who can fight back. Having bullets come back at you would surely fray the nerves.

Point taken, but I think most people tempted to have illegal automatic weapons are the paranoid home defense crowd, not the massacring unarmed civilians crowd. They're probably imagining having to use them against SWAT and military.

Err... I mean reward to risk ratio is pretty low... probably even negative advantage gained, and lots of risk exposure.

Walking around with a gun in DC is an automatic felony with potentially years in jail, especially if it's in connection with a violent act which this insurrection was. DC is not a gun-friendly place. These people were stupid, but not that stupid.

To make sure I understand you: Your claim is that a bunch of people showed up to violently overthrow the government but didn't bring guns because that would be illegal?

They were deluded by their political puppet masters into thinking they were actually showing up to defend the constitution by intimidating corrupt politicians who knew they were corrupt.

They didn't bring guns because their goal wasn't to overthrow the government.

They didn't show up to violently overthrow the government, they showed up to violently overturn the results of a specific election.

There's a subtle but extremely important difference. Perhaps they are entirely equivalent to you, but they were not at all to the rioters/attackers.

What they did was crime, not war.

*semiautomatic weapons

Luckily, you're not a police investigator, because you can't be more wrong. All manner of weapons were confiscated - guns, ammo, explosives, crossbows, brass knuckles, etc. These were people who came to kill.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a35214244/cap...

Read your article. None of those things were found inside the Capitol.

If they didn't go into the Capitol, we're clearly talking about different groups. The unasked questions are: Why not? What were they there to do?

I did work in law enforcement in DC. One of the first things you learn is how to separate facts from conjecture from imagination. Mixing up the three isn't helpful to anyone and often taints you as an investigator.

What was the gallows for outside?

Conflating the facts is very useful to ones who are trying to establish or control a narrative.

These were people who came to kill.

Or protect themselves from counter-protesters? Are you saying anyone with a gun at the event had the mens rea for murder? There are probably more guns at the average baseball game.

I'm not sure about baseball, but the last time I went to a basketball game I had to walk through a metal detector, got my bag searched, and was patted down.

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