You're equating Kent State with Islamofascist terrorism?!?
That would be funny if the first part of your statement wasn't just plain sick.
How old are you?
When you stick to religious issues, I am determined not to re-fight the reformation and counter-reformation here. Kent State had nothing to do with either and everything to do with deaths resulting from communist resistance tactics to my country and yours.
The ROTC building at Kent State was burned to the ground.
The student leftist violent criminals (my contemporaries since I was in law school at the time) nonetheless decided to confront the National Guard risking and, fortunately, in some cases achieving suicide by guardsmen.
The leftist mob charged against the guard and the guardsmen's drawn rifles.
The leftist mob included some who hurled chunks of concrete at the guardsmen, i.e assault with intent to injure or kill. Those not hurling concrete did not peel off.
If you think that guardsmen have some sort of duty to die without self-defense, lest some pampered left wing college student mob members and "revolutionary" wannabes might be injured or killed (and their weepy mommies just terribly upset) instead, that says more about you than it does about the guardsmen.
The leftist mob was in service to the communists as to the war in Vietnam. Kent State was part of the escalation of antiwar violence, exploiting a working class and largely day hop campus to suggest that the antiwar antiAmerican pro-communist movement was somehow not the plaything of despicable leftist elites at Yale, at Harvard and at Berserkley.
I don't think there is an equation between Islamofascism and the Kent State communist terrorism. Ho Chi Minh was a far more sophisticated and far more dangerous enemy of the United States than any other in its history. Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Hamas Fatah and the rest are minor leaguers and ignorami by comparison. Ho achieved monumental damage to this nation with little more than ideological fervor as is evidence by the fact that 38 years after the fact, there even some who imagine themselves conservative who weep rivers of crocodile tears over Kent State as latter day dupes of Uncle Ho. Ho played on a smaller stage than other red leaders but did so much more with what he had to work with. His skill dwarfed the skills of any soviet dictator, of Mao and his ilk, of even Castro. Ho was smart enough (unlike Osama) to avoid direct attacks on American soil, smart enough to skillfully deploy guerillas at the disposal of General Giap to demoralize the US and bleed our determination to death, smart enough to destroy for decades now the confidence of WW II victorious America and smart enough to gull you and others here.
If you suggest that the towel heads are a greater threat than the reds used to be, particularly Ho, then how old are you?
As to the low body count and poor marksmanship, neither the guard nor any law enforcement personnel should EVER fire warning shots. Use the gun only to kill those who need killing. Never refrain from killing those who need killing.
IF there are innocent bystanders (a very big IF), they are endangered by the stupidity of directing the firing of warning shots. This does not exonerate the stupidity of the purported "innocent bystanders" who, in an honest effort at self-preservation should have run like hell rather than rubbernecking. Unlike you, I did not accept the Walter Cronkite/William Scranton/Tom Hayden/Ho Chi Minh view of Kent State then, don't accept it now and won't ever accept it.
If the guard had poor leadership, it was that the leaders did not order the guard to fire into the teeth of the mob and particularly those who were throwing concrete. Two other common theories back in the day were that a provocateur in the crowd fired a gun or a starter pistol or set off salutes or cherry bombs.
In any event, more efficient killing of those directly responsible was preferable to risking (the remote) possibility of injury to actually innocent people. If anyone, innocent or guilty, died as a result of the criminal felonious action of mob members and their dupes, the government should have indicted the identifiable ring leaders for felony murder, riot, assault of law enforcement personnel, thrown the book at them and executed them in old Sparky at leisure.
Note, BTW, the noticeable absence of violent college riots attempting to kill guardsmen or cops since May 4, 1970. That is no coincidence.
You apparently are operating under the false impression that I might be affected by your opinion to turn into a retroactive Kumbaya wimpburger as to Kent State. I am not likely to do that now or ever. I am rather surprised since you aggressively pursue religious war here to see you siding with the wimps on Kent State. Whatever my reservations as to your principled religious arguments (with which I disagree), it had never occurred to me that a person of your views would be anything but a warrior on behalf of our nation. We more often see the Kumbaya syndrome among the clueless wing of my fellow Catholics who think that peace is just peachy keen and Kumbaya to all persons of whatever sort of will.
Speaking of Islamofascism, how does it feel to be allied with the likes of Scott Ritter??? Are you as angry at the deaths of 50 million who were certainly innocent as you are at 4 deaths at Kent State and 17 wounded of whom a few MAY have been innocent? At least the blame there would reasonably be placed on the mob perps.
AND, physician heal thyself.