Democrats and their media have insisted loudly that the Capitol Riot was not a riot, but an insurrection, that there had been a plot to storm the capitol and somehow overturn the election by means that have yet to be explained.
Oddly, despite how many guns people on the right have, and the involvement of groups like the Oath Keepers, there were no guns involved.
If there was a conspiracy to storm the capitol, take hostages, and execute them, you would think that some of those involved would have brought guns.
Instead, they brought the sort of gear that’s fairly typical equipment for a riot these days.
Or as NPR shouts, “Yes, Capitol Rioters Were Armed. Here Are The Weapons Prosecutors Say They Used”.
In the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, a popular narrative has emerged: that because rioters did not fire guns that day, they were not really “armed.” But a review of the federal charges against the alleged rioters shows that they did come armed, and with a variety of weapons: stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats and flagpoles wielded as clubs.
Flagpoles are standard protest equipment. Stun guns and pepper spray are basic self-defense gear that doesn’t reveal hostile motives. Baseball bats and, more relevantly, shields are actual riot gear. Or stuff that you bring to a riot when you’re expecting a fight.
Considering 2020, it’s not surprising that they showed up at the riot.
There were a whole range of people there, including ordinary protesters, some of whom were allowed inside. There were assorted bad actors, a number of Neo-Nazis and figures associated with the Groyper movement. Despite the media’s obsession, the vast majority had nothing to do with QAnon, there was at least one BLM/Antifa leftist type, John Sullivan, and a whole bunch of people who don’t fit traditional political paradigms.
In other words, it was a mess.
There were a bunch of people who were just there to protest and were caught in the middle of the fighting between the police and a small group that had a plan to professionally breach the building. This group, as reported by bystanders, seemed to have military training. All of this is fairly typical of a riot in which a small group starts a fight in order to drag everyone in to the fighting.
(A notable difference between the Capitol Riot and a year of this sort of thing involving BLM is that there was no sequel. Conservatives understood what was going on and didn’t let themselves be used again. All the racists at the BLM “mostly peaceful” protests kept going back for more for months while acting as human shields for the rioters.)
This wasn’t an insurrection. And it wasn’t armed.
Gunmen are armed. These were mostly defensive/offensive weapons being used for riots. The media’s insistence on describing a riot as an insurrection also requires misleadingly using ‘armed’ to mean carrying pepper spray or a flagpole.
But if the media is going to describe rioters carrying poles as armed, then what of the BLMers in those mostly peaceful protests? Are they armed?
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