Siege on U.S. Capitol was about guns, and it wasn’t about guns
Comb through the photos and videos of the protest in Washington D.C. and the siege of the U.S. Capitol last week, listen to the voices on the scene, read the signs and the messages on social media sites. You’ll find a lot of gun culture.
You’ll find people angry at the thought, let along actual efforts, of guncontrol laws such as bans of semi- automatic, military- style “black” rifles and univeral background checks. You’ll hear people lining up behind soon-tobe-ex-President Donald Trump in part over his support for gun rights.
You’ll see calls for armed protest and in extreme cases, armed rebellion.
What you didn’t see much of on Jan. 6 were actual firearms. Yes, there were some 15 arrests for illegal possession of guns or ammunition, with investigations continuing. But the mob raid on the Capitol complex, which led to both chambers of Congress locking down for hours, was a siege by bully clubs, not, thankfully, firearms or more than five people would have died.
And yet, guns and the pro-Trump protest live in the same place in our minds, not incorrectly, for several reasons. Gun rights stand as one of the central issues of the rightwing “freedom” movement that led to the siege. Guns are part of the imagery of the movement, part of the language.
“Come armed at your own discretion,” said one online poster for a series of rallies this weekend, which the FBI flagged on Sunday in a warning to police in all 50 state capitals. Culturally, it’s like
the message at a baseball game: Have a beer.
And guns, along with explosive devices, form the reason for the rightful fear that what we’re seeing, incited by one man, is the coming of a terror uprising.
Unpacking the link between firearms, especially black guns, and this fringe insurgency now takes on new urgency. In some states, including Michigan, the siege sparked debates over firearms in Capitols and other public buildings. In Congress, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and others intend to move quickly on measures to quellgun violence, perhaps fueled by the uprising.
On Wednesday, as we we sort out what hap
pened one week ago, we will witness an unimaginably unlikely impeachment debate in the U.S. House of Representatives and prepare for the transition of power in one week. With guns as part of the backdrop, it’s a difficult moment in a long, difficult reckoning with the national love of firearms that’s growing stronger — after a year of record-breaking sales.
The link between last week’s protest and siege and that gun culture is not direct because the event that went awry was not a pro-gun rally, it was an anti-Democracy mob for a dangerous cult leader.
“I don’t think it’s, ‘ Hey, we’re pro-gun, this is why we’re in D.C.,” said Jonathan Hardy, a Hartford resident who heads training for the Connecticut Citizens Defense League. “It’s a shared interest more than anything.”
Hardy, who also sells guns at a Waterbury retailer, was not at the Washington D.C. protest and Capitol siege but said he had friends there from the gun-rights movement. He’s been a leader of the movement in Connecticut for many years.
“I don’t think it was the threat to Second Amendment rights as why they were there,” Hardy said. But he drew connections: For example, a lot of people that tend to be progun, tend to be pro-liberty.... Seeing a threat to that liberty may tend to get them more engaged.”
We celebrate engagement, of course. We don’t celebrate takeovers, even unarmed and temporary of the national seat of democracy.
“It’s domestic terrorism,” Blumenthal said when I asked him about the connection between guns and the siege, where he, along with all the other U.S. senators, had moments of fear and hiding.
It is, he said, not a link that’s given to sound bites or slogans. On that he, Hardy and a spokesman for te gun industry all agreed
“There’s no question that guns can be illegally or wrongly used by domestic terrorists and these fringe extremist groups are made more dangerous by the prevalence of illegal firearms,” Blumenthal said. “But the armed insurrection and assault on the Capitol to stop counting votes didn’t depend on guns. It was a violent attack on our democracy by a mob of rioters who were incited by the president and part of the investigation needs to focus on whether and how widely firearms were used.”
Blumental added that even though pipes, bats and “other instruments of blunt force” were most visible, “There were firearms....it could have been instrumental in forcing the Capitol police to allow people to enter.
Hardy and others in the gun-rights movement object to callng what happened last week terrorism. “Where is all the domestic terrorism? We’ve had more people die from leftist protests over the summer,” he said, repeating a popular meme from conservatives including state Rep. Vin Candelora, RBranford, the House GOP leader, hours after the insurgency last week.
Hardy has long been a very thoughtful advocate, for example, arguing that last week’s events and reaction, which are being compared to the novel 1984 by the right were actuakly more like the 1930s classic Brave New World. He did have a boneheaded move in September, reposting an image of state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest surrounded by threatening figures. But he uses that as an examole to priove a point about the gun rights movement: When criticized for the posting, he was associated with gun rights even though it had nothing to do with the movement, he told me.
In that way, he said, gun control advocates tend to over-generalize about the alleged danger of firearms.
“What they’re trying to do is historically what regimes have done in the past is shut down communication and ways for people to share thoughts,” Hardy said. “I guarantee this has nothing to do with home-based terrorism, it’s purely about ideology.”
I don’t know about terrorism, but for my money, the true attack on democracy on Jan. 6 was by the 147 members of Congress who votes to reject certified state Electoral College results.
And one key question is what effect the siege will have on the gun debate.
“What you saw happening on Capitol Hill was not representative of who we are as an industry and not representative of the beliefs that we hold as an industry,” said Mark Oliva, public affairs dorector for’ the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, which reporesents manufacturers and sellers. “It was abhorrent and was in defiance of everything that we hold to be valuable in our nation to vigorously debate out strong beliefs, that does not include violence.”
And yet, it might help advance some of the gun control legislation that NSSF opposes. Sen. Chris Murphy said banning military- style rifles is not the highest priority right now, “but for those of us who have been concerned about the proliferation of AR-15’s, one of our fears is that law enforcement will get outgunned.”
Against this backdrop, as a gun-rights president exits office, one way or another, the number of federal background checks for gun purchases rose by 59 percent last year, to 21 million, NSSF reports.
“Business Saturday and Sunday was like Black Friday,” Hardy said, adding, “Gun owners are the ost law- abiding citizens there are.”
Blumental is looking broadly. “Put aside the gun issue, our nation needs to wake up to the threat of domestic terrorism and effectively act against it. My hope is that this incident will galvanize that effort.”