Sorry, were the protestors who burned down a police station or occupied a block of Seattle unarmed? I'm pretty sure they had rifles, compared to our insurrectionists which had.. flagpoles?
Or is trespassing on federal property worth a death sentence now?
That isn't what OP was talking about, but to answer your separate question--in Seattle you have unarmed people who pushed some concrete blocks into the street, in Oregon you had well armed people occupying a federal building.
The Jan 6 rioters injured 114 law enforcement officers (leading to one death) in a few hours. The leaders expressed a desire to overturn the government unlawfully and their followers proved they were willing to use violence to do so.
The fatal Seattle shootings happened more than three weeks after the CHAZ/CHOP zone was established, and when most of the protesters had gone home. The organizers were using their illegal occupation to push for political reforms through the local government.
Those are substantively different situations.
P.S. It’s clear that the CHAZ/CHOP organizers lacked the skill to maintain security for such a large area. Whether they bear criminal liability is up for the courts to decide. (Just like it is for the Jan 6 rioters.)
Your entire post is merely reiterating exactly the sort of misleading information that I pointed out in mine.
The point once again (the "goalposts") was not whether they were armed, but why they would stage an insurrection without guns. And it is an established fact that save for 1-2 out of, what, 300+? There were no guns. Because this was a protest which turned into a riot, not an insurrection.
>that beating a cop with a flagpole until he's dead, throwing fire extinguisher
The original articles referenced an officer being beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Note that if you have been keeping up, they have all since been quietly retracted/deleted because the entire story was a fabrication. The officer died of a stroke within days of the protest, not from injuries.
>They had to remind them to only bring certain weapons to their peaceful protest.
This is pure speculation and its quite a stretch. The vast majority of participants weren't actually part of any of the so called "far right" groups (e.g. oathkeepers, boogaloo boys, or whatever the media's boogeyman of the day happens to be).
>"kill him with his own gun." He must be exaggerating
Yet not a single officer was killed so, again, not much of an insurrection.
>Damage estimates range from $1.5 to $30 million. Do you read the news?
From heavily biased sources. If you watched any of the livestreams you'd see protestors constantly telling each other not to damage anything. Can you find me any pictures or videos of damage on that scale?
>Jon Schaffer plead guilty to entering a restricted building with a dangerous weapon
Straight from the horse's mouth[0]:
>admitted that he breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021, wearing a tactical vest and armed with bear repellent
So still no guns and guilty of attempting to obstruct certification. Hardly an insurrection, and only one person. Where is the coup?
You have been mislead by political theatre and are spreading misinformation.
There's no point in having this discussion if you're continuously going to represent my words.
1. I said vast majority. I didn't day such people weren't present. These are not large groups to begin with.
2. Once again you are twisting the word "armed" to conflate flagpoles and bear mace with guns.
My original point stands. You don't go about an insurrection in 2021 without bringing your guns. The rest of what you wrote is irrelevant. This was neither a coup nor an insurrection, because the vast, vast majority of protestors did not bring guns to the capitol, and in fact I'm not aware of a single such firearms arrest/conviction.
You could say that it was a 99.9% peaceful riot - and again I'm only aware of a single person being shown to have a gun, not "armed" with flagpoles and mace, out of hundreds of protestors.
Are you saying the police in Bellevue and Kirkland showed up with AR-15s and knocked on private residences? I haven't seen any claims to that.
Are you saying residents there own AR-15s? I'm aware DC has very strict gun laws while Washington (state) is more pro-gun. But on the flip side, I'm not aware of protesters holing up in private residences.
So I don't see where your comment has merit. Can you clarify?
I agree, most of the violent rioters were armed. It is well documented that organizers had to encourage attendees to leave their guns at home or in their cars (as you mentioned, several were arrested with firearms in their cars on their way to or from the riot).
> The vast majority of participants weren't actually part of any of the so called "far right" groups (e.g. oathkeepers)
LOTS of self-recorded evidence shows that isn't true.
"wait for the 6th when we are all in D.C. to insurrection [sic]"
We know many members of the Proud Bois were there (since arrested). The Oath Keepers even had their little logos printed on their hoodies! You linked to an admission of guilt from a founding member of the Oath Keepers, you...do realize that right?
> The officer died of a stroke within days of the protest, not from injuries.
Strange, the medical examiner disagreed, saying "all that transpired played a role in his condition." Hmm he was pepper-sprayed and beaten by a violent mob, only to die of a stroke hours later. What a cowinky-dink!
The other officers had no history of mental illness. After being beaten by a violent mob, their partners described them as acting unlike their usual selves, shortly before committing suicide. Another chance coincidence I guess!
The medical examiner said of Officer Jeffrey Smith that the "acute, precipitating event that caused the death of Officer Smith was his occupational exposure to the traumatic events he suffered on January 6, 2021." Are you really that gullible?
How quickly we forget the heavily-armed antifa militia that occupied 3 city blocks in downtown Seattle, whose assault rifle-wielding “security team” assaulted journalists, intimidated residents, and murdered an unarmed black teenager.
Residents and businesses owners are currently suing the city for abandoning the neighborhood’s police station, providing porta-potties to the armed occupiers, and ceding control of this area to the violent mob for roughly a month.
edit: Downvoted for relevant, if uncomfortable factual statements on HN? I thought we were better than this.
DC resident. They came here with bombs, knives, guns, pepper spray, zip ties, set up a gallows on the lawn that's usually covered with families and little kids. They attacked police officers—one died.
DC is more than capable of handling rowdy protests, we have first amendment activity every day. Capitol Police chose not to be prepared and declined backup from the other police agencies for over an hour after they were overrun.
This is what I was looking for thanks. It does not specify that the firearm offenses were on the capitol and I know a few of them were from people marching while open carrying off the capitol grounds which is illegal under DC law.
The molotovs is a tidbit I didn't know about thankfully no one actually used them.
So, totally different from people in Portland barricading a Federal building, then trying to set it ablaze with people inside?
Did this crowd of "insurrectionists" actually threaten anyone? There are reports someone set a couple of pipe bombs, but not in the building, and the FBI is investigating it and has offered a $50K reward, but inside the building, it was kooks and protesters who were pretty quickly rounded up and arrested. I don't condone what they did at all, but comparing it to burning down buildings like in Portland and Atlanta... the mind boggles at this moral equivalency. True mob violence did not occur on January 6, and thank God for that.
You cite the conviction of a couple "low-level" people who only trespassing, but there were certainly people who were violent. Multiple people died. They threatened to kill the vice president and members of congress. If they weren't stopped, surely government officials would have died. It might be a strong word, but I don't think it is entirely unwarranted.
Why am I arguing this? Your initial claim, that protestors are trying to burn down the federal courthouse, is totally unsubstantiated and smells like bullshit. It's worth arguing against because it paints protestors as violent agitators.
The horror of arson does not excuse extrajudicial precrime tactics. In fact, it is reasonably well-argued that no crime can excuse extrajudicial tactics, simply because committing crimes in the case of seeking justice for crimes will lead to never-ending criminal acts.
By what evidence are you not convinced that these buildings are fire-resistant? The positive circumstantial evidence is that, from both an encyclopedic source and firsthand hearsay, the building is composed of quarried stone, steel, concrete, marble, and bronze. The negative circumstantial evidence that you've brought up, that the office-interior decor may ignite and that the building may burn out from the inside, is not just speculative, but doesn't meet the original criterion: The building would not burn down just because it has fire damage inside. Even worse, once again your unfamiliarity with the building hurts, because you don't know about the marbled entryways and stonework walls, which don't have enough wood in them to sustain fire damage.
And then you bring up 9/11. What a red herring. What a non sequitur.
Finally, you failed to address a sibling point: That after the Oklahoma City bombing in the 90s, the Feds stepped up their stance on defending federal public buildings like courthouses. We are not really exaggerating the level to which these buildings have been secured. Again, this is something that you may have to visit and see for yourself to grok.
Please watch less Fox News, or whatever it is that is rotting your arguments in this way.
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.
Several of the insurrectionists did have guns. The protest began peacefully, and turned violent following Trump's speech, where he urged the crowd to "fight like hell". These people aren't normal like you and I. They are extremely impressionable and subject to radicalization. Listen to the Channel 5 interview with the QAnon Shaman on YouTube. Does that strike you as someone that is capable of functioning in civil society?
Do you actually believe that graffiti and a couple small fires rise to the same level of criminality as an armed takeover of federal land? It's fully possible to believe the federal government should put a stop to armed takeovers of federal land and not be involved in graffiti on non-federal property without it being a partisan thing.
The problem is that people believe the protests in Portland are violent riots. They aren't. As long as people are manipulated so easily, I guess real policy discussions aren't going to happen.
There's a pretty clear dividing line in the fact that violence was involved or attempted.
So, yes, you can picket government buildings all you want, but the moment you start killing security and seeking to kill representatives, you've insurrected or are a party to an insurrection.
> Insurrection - a violent uprising against an authority or government.
Legal? Most occupy occupations were dismantled by the police, even in progressive cities like Oakland and Portland. Perhaps the police were wrong and the protestors had a right to occupy, but if so, why didn't the protestors on Jan 6 also have a right to occupy the Capitol?
Violent? The only violence on January 6th was between police and protestors. There was plenty of similar violence at Occupy protests, but the Occupy protests also had other kinds of violence, like Sexual Assaults Reported in 'Occupy' Camps[1]
Insurrectionist? "The FBI at this point believes the violence [on January 6th] was not centrally coordinated...there was no grand scheme...to storm the Capitol and take hostages."[2]
Sympathizers within the government? Like Obama?[3]
An attempt to disrupt the normal functioning of government? Yes, both were. That's actually a common protest tactic - protesters generally argue that a protest has to be disruptive to be effective.
Or is trespassing on federal property worth a death sentence now?
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