All other facts aside, it was my opinion then and now that the Guardsmen were poorly trained and led. Riots had been going on for the previous few years and from what I saw there was a command failure.
That's certainly possible.Even if some (or even many) of the Guardsmen had real experience in,say,Vietnam I would think that that wouldn't qualify them to handle a riot.My feeling is that handling riots requires a very special kind of training and back then the National Guard was known pretty much to be a joke.
I agree. Many of my friends served in the National Guard during the 1960's. Their attitude was they were there to disobey and screw-up. It was a different National Guard than today's.
I served my time as active duty. We trained on riot control. We drilled using various formations with fixed bayonets. We were taught there were seven levels of escalation which would warrant increasing the use of force. The seventh level was to shoot live rounds. We were under the impression that such an order was very unlikely.
I'm convinced if active duty soldiers were deployed at Kent, the shootings would not have happened.
horsefeathers,, they wanted a violent revolution where only THEY got to be violent. The snots were asking for it, begging for it, for years.
A LOT of violence and bombings happened on their side first. I think it’s funny how AMAZED they were when the other side fought back.
“Riots had been going on for the previous few years and from what I saw there was a command failure.”
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My DH, just back from Nam was flown to DC during those riots in the circle but they weren’t allowed to have ammo.
Agreed. The retribution against the rioters should have been decisively more heavy handed and should have occurred days/years earlier. We were loosing our nerve due to the fact that they were "our children."