You are so dumb, lol.
Yes, Capitol Rioters Were Armed. Here Are The Weapons Prosecutors Say They Used
Heard on
Morning Edition
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. An additional suspect also
allegedly planted pipe bombs by the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties the night before the riot and remains at large.
Those weapons brought violence and chaos to the Capitol. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died one day after two rioters allegedly sprayed him and other officers with what prosecutors describe as an "unknown chemical substance." Four other people in the crowd died in the insurrection, and more than 100 police officers suffered injuries, including cracked ribs, gouged eyes and shattered spinal disks.
Some supporters of former President Donald Trump have argued that the dangerousness of the Capitol rioters has been overblown. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has said, for example, "This didn't seem like an armed insurrection to me."
Others have
echoed that
view, and conservative and pro-Trump media, like
Breitbart,
The Epoch Times and the
Washington Examiner, have seized on the congressional testimony of FBI Assistant Director Jill Sanborn, who said the bureau did not confiscate firearms from suspects that day. But FBI spokesperson Carol Cratty told NPR that Sanborn was talking only specifically about arrests by the FBI, and not other police agencies that made arrests on the day of the riot — including arrests of people allegedly carrying guns.
Police officers have a much different memory of that day. "I've talked to officers who have done two tours in Iraq who said this was scarier to them than their time in combat," Robert J. Contee III, the acting chief of Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department,
said in January. At the time of his comments, he had just spoken with an officer who was attacked with a rioter's stun gun.
Federal court records, included in
NPR's database of more than 300 criminal cases, allege that at least three dozen people who took part in the riot used or possessed some kind of weapon that day.
This number is likely a low estimate of the total number of weapons that rioters brought with them. As the Justice Department has noted in
court filings, "no crowd member submitted to security screenings or weapons checks by Capitol Police or other authorized security officials." Most of the people who stormed the Capitol were not arrested during the riot itself. Many are still at large.
"This was a pretty heavily armed crew of people compared to what you usually see at protests," said Heidi Beirich, a co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. "Even when you see people who are armed at protests in states, for example, where they have open-carry laws, they aren't storming into a building using the weapons in the way that we saw at the Capitol."
Lorenzo Boyd, a former director of the Center for Advanced Policing at the University of New Haven, called attempts to downplay the deadliness of the weapons used on Jan. 6 a "false narrative."
"There were a lot of weapons that could be lethal weapons as applied," said Boyd. In his view, the fact that the rioters were armed with a variety of weapons clearly contributed to the Capitol Police's failure to protect the building. "If you see a lot of resistance and you're being outgunned, outmanned, outpowered, you tend to kind of fall back a little bit," said Boyd.
Beirich said downplaying the violence also undermines efforts to combat domestic extremism more generally.
"There is a reluctance on the part of some in conservative circles to accept that domestic terrorism is largely coming from right-wing extremist groups," said Beirich.