The magazines were kept out of the weapons because of orders originating in the White House and the Marines were kept in that barracks because our political leaders felt that it would be less threatening to our supposed "neutrality". Even the sainted Ronald Reagan could make stupid decisions.
I rest my case. If Ronald Reagan had loved ones in the U.S. Marine Corps over there in those barracks, you can be damn sure that the guards outside would be armed to the teeth.
One of my favorite figures from American history was Ethan Allen. He led the Green Mountain Boys, which was a colonial militia formed long before the American Revolution for the purpose of enforcing New Hampshire land titles in the disputed territory that had been subject to competing claims by the colonial governor of New York.
The Green Mountain Boys and its leaders are considered heroes of the American Revolution because of their role in battles of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, but most Americans aren't aware of the second part of the story. Within 18 months of those two battles, the Continental Congress was calling for General Washington to send an army to Vermont to subdue the Green Mountain Boys. Those folks from Vermont may not have liked the British, but they didn't trust a centralized Federal government in Washington or Philadelphia, either. That's why Vermont was conspicuously missing among the original thirteen states after the war ended. It basically functioned as an independent nation from 1777 until 1791.
When duty calls me, I'll be up in the Green Mountains waiting for anyone who wants to f#%& with me.
I suspect you do understand why I'm a touch resentful of what my idiot country did to us during Vietnam. Nothing like enduring the heat, the humidity, the bugs, the horrors of combat, the Dear John letters and coming back to a country having a great party. The "antiwar" demonstrations were one big picnic and it was no skin off their noses if it hurt any of our feelings to see enemy flags everywhere.
No bitterness here, mind.
The Green Mountain Boys were a force to be reckoned with, no denying it. But today, our oceans don't protect us anymore. Every vicious idiot out there has the means to reach us and thanks to the imbeciles we elected from both parties, we could see cities wiped out by people who haven't spiritually left the 8th Century.
The issue is, we have a responsibility to protect and defend our country and our people even if they lapse into craziness, like muttonchop sideburns, wearing flowered bellbottom pants, and chanting for our enemies. It's what American men are supposed to do.