What would have happened if the police had started firing immediately at the people who tried to overtake the Capitol building?

I think it could have been handled better had police not opened up barriers and ushered them in.

The National Guard was not called in soon enough (or in advance) to stop the domestic terrorists.

Some Capital Police either turned a blind eye or actually ushered in the domestic terrorists.

Both of these things happened because certain people are sympathetic to the domestic terrorists.

Contrast the response against the way Black Lives Matter protesters were treated.

Please stop using the word anarchists. That word has a specific political meaning and history. “Domestic terrorists” is much more accurate.

But the point I want to make is that there are a lot of deterrents that can be used besides shooting in to the crowd. Look at the famous picture being posted of National Guards in full riot gear in front of the Capitol when the BLM protests were held. There is tear gas, there are mass arrests, there are billy clubs and beatings. There should have been many more law officers there. This should not have been a surprise and it wasn’t.

Larry Hogan, Governeor of Maryland, offered many times to send his National Guard in and was refused by the DoD The same DoD whose head, Mark Esper, was replaced by a Trump lackey some weeks ago.

If the police had shot first, there would have been dozens dead. Would have sucked for them.

But it would have been righteous shooting – after all, they were storming the US Capitol. In a way, it’s too bad it didn’t happen that way – shoot first.

The problem with playing with fire – is that sometimes you get burnt.

More chaos, more mayhem.
Guns should only (and always) be used as a last resort. The police should have been equipped with night sticks and should have used them.
With these thugs running loose, gunfire will erupt soon enough.

Just noticed the use of “anarchists”.

As an anarchist, it’s an annoyance to see this word misused. Anarchism means “without rulers”. It is the political philosophy of people oragnising themselves as equals, and the rejection of unjustified authoritarianism and hierarchy. It isn’t mayhem or mob violence.

Unlike a lot of people, I don’t think it would have been a good idea to use more police and military force. 5 deaths was more than enough.

I also don’t agree with casting the demonstrators who stormed into the Capitol as terrorists. Judging from some of the testimonies, there are some incredibly naive and impulsive people among them. Even if some had ill-intent, it seems to me many were there with the earnest belief that the election had been stolen, and they were confident in their righteousness.

There has to be more reflection on the rise in outlandish conspiracism and the moral panics related to them. It’s not good enough to simply condemn actions of individuals and groups while ignoring the broader context of what swayed their beliefs and motivated their actions in the first place. We can apportion blame to Trump, but even Trump is only a symptom rather than the cause.

Many of the invaders were carrying firearms, along with ropes, tape, baseball bats, and other weapons. The mob was crazed, and its numbers greatly exceeded those of the Capitol Hill police officers. How many shots could the police have fired before being overtaken? They would have been killed by gunfire, lynching, or beating. The carnage, on both sides, would be staggering.

Well National secrets on laptops and Smartphones wouldn’t be in the hands of terrorists and foreign agents.

Government IT and Cybersecurity experts are beside themselves, some didn’t sleep until Friday.

Oh and the foreign agents might have left behind a few bugs and listening devices.

I agree with @Kropotkin.

More force and death would not have been a good thing. However, I find it interesting (my way of warning you I’m pointing out hypocrisy) that certain people said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” in regard to BLM/Antifa but now from those same people it’s “we need more compassion”. Is it just that we’ve learned a lesson from what happened in 2020 or do we treat protesters differently depending on their ideology?

@Demosthenes It’s that “we treat protesters differently depending on their ideology” and I might add, the color of their skin.

First there were not enough police there. If they fired what would have happened more likely was they would have ran out of ammo and the mob tramples them all to death.

I can understand why the cops didn’t martyr themselves putting up a fight. Their superiors and their superior’s superiors are ultimately accountable and at fault.

Those security people who were not caught on camera but tried to fight hand to hand, all heroic, if some of them actually did something like that.

That one security guy who died apparently got beaten by a fire extinguisher was a true hero in my book.

With the small number of police on site, they might have been lynched if they were shooting.

If the city were packed with thousands of police and National Guard like it was for peaceful Black Lives Matter protests they could have gunned down the front row and stopped the mob from vandalizing and looting the Capitol.

@Kropotkin They are terrorists in my mind. They aren’t ten year olds. These are grown adults, and they don’t get a pass with some excuse about being naive. When they were a crowd protesting on the lawns that’s one thing, once they decided to breach the Capitol, forget it. I’m going to say 90% or more of the people there knew the plan for the day including going in if Pence wouldn’t take action to nullify the vote of the electors. These groups around the country and the world are just like ISIS. Cells just waiting to harm people for what they believe is righteous.

I also believe these extremists to be anarchists. I don’t believe most of them are conservative Republicans, I think most would identify as libertarians, but they take it to the extreme of no government. These alt-right groups adopted the Republican Party, because there is no other choice for them really, and with Trump they got someone who encourages them. The alt-right has successfully brainwashed a lot of Republicans the last 3–4 years, and a lot of Republicans have no idea what is influencing them.

That’s my opinion anyway.

I think there definitely should have been more of a presence of law enforcement before the session ever started. I agree opening the doors for them needs to be investigated. I also think Trump refusing to ok National Guard once it was in full swing was criminal, but I don’t understand the delay for police arriving from Maryland.

I am suspicious about all of the intentions and hopes for what this type of mayhem could accomplish.

Like I said on a couple of Q’s a couple of days ago, reminds of King picking Selma because he felt fairly sure the cops there would be violent.

I also think about the first protest in Minneapolis after George Floyd was killed. They (I don’t know who exactly) burned down the police department. Authorities let it happen, it was just so awful Floyd being killed, I think the government understood they couldn’t interfere with what that fire represented.

I agree with the thinking that says they were not terrorists, causing destruction for the purpose of calling attention to a cause or ideology, like the Charlie Hebdo killers. They were insurrectionists, disrupting the orderly processes of government for the purpose of stopping and overthrowing those processes.

But firing immediately on a crowd, even an inflamed mob? No. I hope we never come to that. Do you think they ought to have mowed down the rioters in Watts? How about Berkeley? No, ma’am. The shame and tragedy of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre are still too important to forget. And if you don’t remember that, remember Kent State.

They are terrorists for intimidating Congress. Their plan was to force Congress with violence to overturn the election and keep Trump in office. They were hunting for Pence and Pelosi with zip tie handcuffs.

I don’t believe most of them are conservative Republicans,

They are mainstream Republicans. 45% of Republicans approve of the attack on Congress.

The GOP is the party of white nationalism. It has been the core tenet of the party since Trump rode the escalator and declare that Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers. Actually it has been since Nixon and the Southern Strategy, but they are no longer pretending otherwise.

If you don’t like the word Anarchists, how about Seditionists, 5th Columnists, Treasonistas, Insurrectionists, or simply Assholes?

Or ^^ how about Brown Shirts?

@JLeslie: “I also believe these extremists to be anarchists. I don’t believe most of them are conservative Republicans, I think most would identify as libertarians, but they take it to the extreme of no government.”

You believe that people who want a strong authoritarian government…want no government? Your incorrect use of terminology makes it quite difficult to understand what you’re attempting to say.

And your understanding of the Republican party appears to be quite confused, as @Call_Me_Jay correctly points out.

Rubber bullets and bean-bag round as well as other non-lethal means of crowd-control (water cannons, tear gas, etc.) would have been preferable. I even heard there are rounds that contain a liquid that is absolutely repugnant smelling (it makes you want to vomit). Hitting the leaders with such non-lethal liquid would make everyone give them a wide radius.

Leader: “Follow me!”
Crowd: “Get away from us. You STINK!”

@gorillapaws Yes, there is plenty that could have been done without firing guns into the mob

I never said Republicans don’t support what happened. I have no quarrel with at least 50% of them supporting the attack on the Capitol. What I’m saying is the people who actually were there, who show up armed, who are willing to take the action of destroying federal property, terrorizing our congressmen, I think most of them are on the fringe, it’s like a cult.

Back to the Q, I wonder if there had been a larger presence if the crowd would not have even tried to go onto the Capitol grounds or inside.

I think shooting into the crowd would have been disastrous, but I have no problem with them shooting that one woman to stop the people from going into the next hallway.

If they shot right away, there would have been more deaths, and they likely would have been treated as victims and/or martyrs to the cause of Trump’s lies etc. But they would have been stopped from trespassing etc.

I think that the priority should have been protecting people. Give them loud and clear fair warning that they’ll be prosecuted for trespass and violence if they commit such. If they mob forth, let the fools in and take their pictures etc and prosecute them later. If they do threaten people with serious violence or do serious damage, use force.

Another option would be having more force on hand and making it really really clear no one wants to cross a certain line. Then shoot anyone that crosses the line. But that would require having some better armed people in place in more numbers, which was not done, apparently because of Trump’s new replacement crony in the Department of Defense denying requests for National Guard help.

@Zaku What you said does not make sense. Priority should be protecting people. Which people on which side? Warn a mob and if they still push forth then just let them in because you think they might just take pictures? And if they don’t then what?

What if there’s one guy amongst the mob who was hiding an Uzi and ready to spray bullets slaughtering people once he’s inside? I don’t think anybody working on any security detail should ever think that way.

We might have thought we had all been teleported to China.

@mazingerz88 What I wrote continues to make sense to me, especially if your only resources are the lightly armed Capitol Police, with no support and no reinforcements coming.

If you have enough firepower to stop a mob from trespass, you can consider that option, but you’ll end up with a lot of bodies, caused by your decision.

And if you shoot them before they trespass, the survivors can say they were just coming to non-violently protest, and you shot them.

If Mr. Concealed Uzi were in the mob, he’d be slaughtering people in the mob he’s in. The Capitol Police did evacuate others. You can’t really stop Mr. Concealed Uzi from going someplace with victims before you’ve identified him, unless you get lucky..

Are you suggesting they should have shot into the mob? Mowing down an as-far-as-you-can-see unarmed mob of Trumpwits isn’t a very efficient way to find Mr. Concealed Uzi.

It could be the beginning of the 2nd civil war in the history of the USA.

@JLeslie “I have no problem with them shooting that one woman to stop the people from going into the next hallway.”

@doyendroll And? You have a problem with it? She was warned. That was the hallway leading to the congressmen. She was told that here were guns drawn and the guns were also plainly visible. She was trying to smash her way through a locked door in the US Capitol in a mob scene. She wasn’t some stray young woman who opened the wrong door while going to the visitor center. She wasn’t someone just walking in a protest on a public street. She was aggressively trying to gain access climbing up the wall to get through. The Police had every reason to believe she and her cohorts meant to cause harm.

Let’s not forget that the dead traitor had sworn an oath to the US army or air force, and she was in the process of breaking her oath. She was a traitor, and traitors are put to death.

So some people here think for the moment maybe a mob of angry people ought to be shot at until they stop?

What if instead of the mob misled by Trump’s lies, this were a protest of people who were mad because what was happening was Pence was throwing out the election and declaring Trump the winner, and they’d managed to have in place coup-loyal thugs to lock up anyone in Congress who objected? Would you still want the police method for dealing with trespassing mobs to be to shoot into any size crowd until it routs?

That’s what many of the Trumptards have been saying they wanted the government to do to the BLM protests….

@Zaku Truth.

We keep doing these “what if it were the other way around” scenarios but it’s important to consider the reverse situation. What if Antifa had stormed the Capitol? What if the woman who was shot had been black and unarmed? Remember, political views shouldn’t affect whether someone is shot.

^^What the heck are you insinuating? That if Antifa attacks Capitol Hill Democrats aren’t going to condemn their actions?

I can’t say that will never happen. Maybe if fascists take over Capitol Hill. But then that would not be a Democratic Capitol Hill anymore is it.

The biggest gripe of some Republicans and Trumptards are the Democrats didn’t condemn the structural damage done during BLM protests yet no Democratic politician supported that as far as I know.

But Trump? He is Zeus of provocation.

So it seems Trumptards and I’m sure a lot of Republicans think this recent attack in Capitol Hill is just one of many consequences of that inaction by Dems in condemning property destruction during BLM marches.

Truth is though racists and some non-racist Republicans do not give any shit that white cops murder black men, they care about buildings and stores destroyed by angry protesters.

They are not interested in fixing what’s wrong with policing but quite keen on finding a good excuse to shoot angry protesters.

Attacking Capitol Hill for any reason is wrong. Except if and when Trump, Putin and their Trumptard Army occupy it.

If Antifa or BLM had attacked the Capitol, I would be just as livid as I am today.

But asking “what if” questions doesn’t reduce the heinousness of the right wing terrorists last Wednesday. In fact, in this case, “what if” questions are irrelevant.

^^That is all Trumptards’ by the book procedure. Always been. Deflect, deflect, deflect.

@mazingerz88: ”^^What the heck are you insinuating?”

I think some people, like @Zaku, are correctly pointing out that there should be some attempt to evaluate an incident within the context of principles. If one feels that it’s important that the state not gun down protesters, then it might make sense not to advocate the gunning down of protesters you don’t happen to like.

Ransacking a building and a mob running towards our elected officials is not a protest. Any angry mob running towards an elected official anywhere would be seen as a threat.

And, for the record I was against the rioting and looting that happened during BLM and in favor of curfews while still being in favor of peaceful protests.

I also was in favor of the peaceful protest of taking a knee during the National Anthem at a football game.

A “peaceful” protest is not a protest – it’s a performance.

doesn’t reduce the heinousness of the right wing terrorists last Wednesday

Good thing that isn’t what I meant by my “what if”. I’m specifically addressing the woman that was shot and killed and whether or not using lethal force against protesters even if you disagree with everything about their protest is right. I don’t think anyone here who does not think that woman should’ve been killed or that the response should not have been more violent is trying to excuse the heinousness of those who stormed the Capitol.