........while I respect your opinion, I disagree. I was alive and draft age during Kent State. If those mid sixties Ohio National Guardsmen had had 500 ex Army, ex Seals, ex marines and plain ole citizens and cowboys and snipers facing them all armed to the teeth and just madder than hell, Kent State would almost certainly not have happened. They would still even until today have planes with loud speakers low-flying over the Canadian Wilderness blaring out something like “it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s all over, you can come home”.
Now, before a bunch of guardsmen attack me, I’m not putting their service down one iota. It (the guard) has been the main stay in Irag and Afghanistan and is a superbly trained force compared to the mid sixties. For example, back in the sixties, some of the guard and naval reservists, like me, had little training and little motivation to engage in combat with anybody. Many of them (Ohio guardsmen at Kent State) wore peace signs and a flower in their lapel.
My boot camp for example was 2 weeks long. Frankly, one reason guardsmen may have not have ended up in Nam because all hell was breaking out here at home and they were needed here on the homefront.............like Kent State. Anti-war demonstrations today are laughable compared to the all out warfare of some similar motivated demonstrations (Chicago) in the sixties.
Most of these quardsmen back then, like many of us, had low draft #’s and they did not join up so much “to serve” in those days as they did not “to fight” in Vietnam. Much to their/our credit though, thousands fled to Canada and some are still there.
Then too, those young punky lefty college students, or their comrade non student pals, most on dope or worse, were just simply no comparison to the group of tough guys from all over the US that the BLM faced at Bunkerville. Let’s face it, Assistant Sheriff Lomabardo saved the BLM’s ass and many of his guys and himself (by his own admittance) from outright anilhation when he gave the order to turn the cattle loose.