>How many guns, bombs and zip ties? Was it even enough protestors to be called a minority who bought bombs?

Stop and take a second to listen to yourself. Is there an acceptable numbers of guns, bombs, and zip ties that are intended to be used on the leaders of this country?

I doubt you are going to convince the parent poster with facts. The comment suggests either the poster is not asking questions in good faith or letting opinions cloud the judgement. As one other comment mentioned - you are bringing facts to an emotional fight. If all the facts and evidence over past few years cannot convince them, nothing will.

No, there isn't. But there is also no reason to assume that a protestor with no gun, bomb or ziptie is equivalent to one that has one.

Lone wolves and troublemakers out to get Congresspeople exist. There might be a few in the mob. But the mob itself isn't made up of people like that. This is the same logic that was being applied to protestors all through 2020. It is hard to get away from the BLM protests being peaceful even with burning buildings in the background.

How many "lone wolves" do you see in this clip[1]?

No one is saying that every member of that mob had intentions to kill. There is no doubt that some people in the mob did and they got shockingly close to having the opportunity to do it.

[1] - https://twitter.com/CalebJHull/status/1348334770103660553

0. That looks like a mob fighting police. If there were a few more yellow vests it could be France. A few more chants of "All cops are bad" and it could be footage from 2020.

There are no pipe bombs. No guns. They do not deploy zip ties.

They are beating a police officer who is on the ground. Another officer was literally beaten to death. How many videos can you find of that happening during the BLM protests?

It is difficult to find good videos of the BLM protests, for an event that went global for a week or few YouTube is rather light on videos.

But I found one [0] leaves me comfortable in assuming a similar scene happened at some point over the week in Minneapolis. It would have ben a very scary time to be a police officer, the burning of the vehicles from 2:28 to 4:00 for example looks a lot like a threat of violence. Those protesters wanted to hurt the police.

The US has a pretty high tolerance for violence in its protests. If anything, I'd guess that rather than attitudes of the protestors the lack of police deaths in the BLM protests were because the police knew that they were going to be targeted with violence, and it caught them off guard coming from Trump supporters.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCPzQg3668g

PS. Also your video is a bit indistinct, I'm not sure it does show them beating a police officer who is on the ground

Once again, I will ask you to take a step back and listen to yourself. You are putting the literal beating to death of a police officer on the same level as people taking their frustration out on an empty vehicle. These two are in no way comparable. That was the best you could do out of months of protests attended by millions of people in dozens of cities in which the protest was in direct opposition to police violence. You can't find anything approaching the violence seen on display on Wednesday. Do you not see the difference?

>PS. Also your video is a bit indistinct, I'm not sure it does show them beating a police officer who is on the ground

You can see them drag someone down the stairs in the first few seconds of the video and then you see them beating someone on the ground. One man is literally beating an officer with an American flag if you are one for symbolism. The next tweet in that thread shows a photo from above in which you can see the officer down on the steps and there is a reply that has video from a different angle.

> You can see them drag someone down the stairs in the first few seconds of the video and then you see them beating someone on the ground.

It looks to me more like flag-holding-man throws it away to help someone get up, who then joins the protestors. The police officer in the yellow vest is under the arch on the right on the start, away from where the protestors are doing whatever they are doing. When a bloke in black gets up off the ground he joins the protestors too.

I don't think that is a video of protestors beating a policeman. If they were the video would probably have been more violent. I think the protestors might be helping the bloke in the blue jacket stand up at the start.

The intent of the mob is entirely comparable, at any rate. Protestors hurling stuff at police vs. protestors igniting stuff.

Starting at second 9 of the first video and 17 in the second video, you think the man with the long black hair and beard with the American flag is trying to "help someone get up"? I don't know what to say beyond that you are letting your politics literally cloud your vision.

Well FYI, what you needed to say was to look at the second picture. I was looking at the wrong part of the frame, under the arch and didn't see the staircase. Yeah, that looks pretty brutal. The police needed to be a lot more active in putting the protestors down.

But that, at best, upgrades the scene from a mostly peaceful protest torching vehicles to a violent clash with the police officer. Violent protests are not unheard of. It doesn't justify the idea that anyone was trying to irreversibly stain American history with the blood of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the chain of command of the United states of America.

I mean, the fundamental argument here is that we shouldn't mix the actions of the people on the stairwell facing the police with the rest of the protest. That line of thinking applied to protests was roundly debunked in 2020.

I am clearly not going to convince you of anything despite what evidence I provide. Also I did refer you to that photo a couple comments ago.

> How many guns, bombs and zip ties?

Good question. We don’t know the answer because federal authorities have not held a press briefing on this incident.

> those that I've seen look like very poorly behaved tourists with souvenirs and selfies

Perhaps you should watch this:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CJxPQcXgq6H/