Of course, we also had Kent State, but that was a mistake, not a policy.
Mistake? Yes by the agitators, there would have been no confrontation without them.
Not a policy? Of course it was a policy to confront the kind of violence that started days earlier. The Guard did not get called up that day, walk on campus and start firing.
Folks the Ayers-Dohrn bombers and various actual and wanna be murderers were on virtually every campus. I was surprised to hear that the Guard carried ammo for their M-1s but would anyone be willing to be pelted with objects heavy enough to kill? Those old W.W.II steel pots and liners were noting like the headgear today. Fatigues was the uniform -- no better than jeans and a good shirt to protect against flying bricks and whatever.
Some claim to have a recording: "Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!"
"The recording captures the 13 seconds of gunfire – more than 60 shots were fired – that left four students dead and nine others wounded."
"Right here!" Right here? There was all kinds of commotion and people swarming all around throwing rocks and the like at the Gruardsmen -- plus the usual crowd of on-lookers. Right here? Where?!
"Point!" Point? Is it necessary to comment about "point"?
According to one source:
"Families of the victims spent the next several years trying to pin the responsibility for the Kent State tragedy on Governor Rhodes and the Ohio Guard. Criminal trials in both federal and state court were either dismissed or ended in acquittals. (Civil lawsuits filed by survivors and families of the four dead students were eventually consolidated into one: Scheuer vs. Rhodes.) A civil trial for wrongful death and injury failed when the judge excluded key evidence and the jury decided against awarding damages to the parents; but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati overturned the verdict because of jury tampering and a second civil trial began in 1978. On January 4, 1979, an out of court settlement was reached. The State of Ohio awarded the plaintiffs $675,000 in damages along with a statement of "regret" (not an apology or admission of wrongdoing)"