Armed guard members will carry the type of weapon they are normally issued and trained on, typically M17 handguns and M4 semiautomatic rifles, similar to assault-style rifles, the Defense Department officials said. Some guard members will carry M9 pistols.
The military weapons are similar to those used by local police departments across the United States. The M4 is a standard semiautomatic rifle and has roughly the same capabilities as semiautomatic rifles used by law enforcement agencies.
Completely incorrect. NBC is clearly trying to downplay the seriousness of this. M4 rifles are not assault “style”. They are assault rifles, fullstop. The M4, and other assault rifles, are not legal for civilian use. They have full automatic or burst fire capability, depending on the specific model.
The weapons these soldiers are carrying are not AR-15s. These are not “assault weapons”. These are weapons of war. They are not for civilian hunters or shooting competitions. They are for killing human beings.
I dunno I think an article about the specific guns the guard members are carrying is a little less important than the fact that the guard should NOT BE THERE AT ALL. Every siren that exists should be going off and yet NBC and the rest just don’t give a fuck, they’re like happy about it
I get why they used assault style if they’re semi automatic.
Do I agree? No
It’s a semi automatic assault rifle not a semi automatic assault style rifle
Locked and loaded?
Well ofc… The state doesn’t violently control people with nerf guns.
Expecting to use violence to control people in the USA is like expecting to control bears with bear spray.
If Trump thinks he can pull a Tiananmen Square then he’s about to find out the tanks can lose.
I mean…civilian gun hoarders vs the US military? We wouldn’t win. Sure, you could see a long drawn out guerrilla war, but head to head we do not have the advantage
They are not for civilian hunters
Ohhh, sorry OP. I think M4s are specifically designed for civilian hunters. They seem very useful when hunting them.
(Jokes are my coping mechanism 💜)
“Powerful M4”
Just… Like, the M4 is a Carbine. Don’t tell me it’s not an AR-15. That’s like saying a Chrysler Neon is not a Dodge Neon. Most M4s don’t have full auto.
There is some nomenclature problem with the article and general public by in large. The M4 designation is specifically a military thing. And all the ones assigned in the military may shoot the same ammo we do as civilians, their M4s have three round burst and full auto. While not “more powerful” I would argue they are more deadly especially to dense crowds. You but something labeled an M4 as an American citizen, you can even get ones with full auto if you pay and wait. But regardless what they call them, if an Ar-15 style weapon is sold on the civilian market it is not an M4.
Can someone explain to me who these people are? What were they doing before they’ve been ordered to DC? Are they a standing army, training while they’re not ordered somewhere? Or are they reservists? Or police from elsewhere?
They’re brainwashed children serving fascism.
The National Guard are the remnants of the militias that the US used to depend on and that the second amendment was actually about. The idea of civilians with military training who can be raised in times of great need and… what many (most?) Global North countries have as their default.
Many of them are former active duty military (e.g. The Army) who wanted to keep pulling an extra paycheck and benefits after becoming civilians. Others are just dumbasses who got tricked by the “Just spend two weekends out of the year training and you too can have an ice sword that kills dragons” nonsense.
Their actual role is… questionable. Sometimes they get pulled in to help with natural disasters but they have no meaningful training outside of holding guns to scare people and maybe building sandbag walls. According to a climbing buddy who had to interface with them back during Hurricane Katrina… they actively made everything worse and got in the way constantly and she had to unofficially allocate resources to protect the Guard that could have otherwise been spent helping rescue those in need. But, Support The Troops™ and all that. Back in uni, they were the jackboots who were called out any time people “rioted” (theoretically because a sports team lost or it was Spring Break. Mostly because kids started protesting) and their job was to look intimidating and bully/beat on anyone who was out past curfew.
A not insignificant number were also sent to Iraq/Afghanistan when the US Military realized they couldn’t keep stop-lossing everyone who was dumb enough to sign up for the Military proper.
In their day to day civilian life? They are basically just normal people. Some work in tech, others food service, and MANY are small town cops because that also lets them carry a gun. The key unifying factor is they all will act like they are heroic veterans who killed fiddy men and make damned sure to flaunt their military credentials to board planes faster or to get a discount at the hardware store.
Like a lot of things modern military, it is worth looking at the Invasion of Ukraine. The professional soldiers (former standing military and PMCs from around the world) make up the forces that actually take ground or are deployed for operations where skill and discipline are needed. The civilian population that were conscripted and given a gun man the trenches because all that is really needed there are bodies to send bullets down range and soak up the ones coming back at them.
The National Guard are very much the latter.
That’s not correct at all in regards to your last paragraph. NG is on average older and much more experienced than an average infantry 18 year old with no deployments.
Basically reservists, the National Guard is brought up under control of the states/feds for emergencies/disasters. Generally you’d see them building flood levees or rescuing people in hurricanes or (occasionally) shooting college students in the '70s. They’re not really designed for peace time occupation but the admin’s gotta find jack boots somewhere.
If I’m not mistaken, the M17 is military name for the SIG P320… the one that likes to go bang whenever it feels like it, regardless of what the person holding (or not holding) it wants.
That’s fine… This is fine.
P320 is M17, shorter barrel is named M18. I suspect that just like USAF, the NGs use mostly M18 which were cleared from possible malfunctions except that they wear down from use too quickly for heavy use.
These guys play military two days a month. I sincerely doubt they’ve checked every single pistol for malfunction. There’s a chance they didn’t even hear about the airman.
Oh I personally still wouldn‘t touch that pistol, but what choice do NGs have? Let‘s hope noone gets hurt
Armed military trash pickup patrol. What a fine use of taxpayer dollars, bravo.
I don’t care what weapons they have, they ARE NOT TO BE USED AGAINST AMERICANS. The constitution is very clear on this, but the administration hates the constitution. Plain and simple these troops being sent out are illegal orders and hopefully the servicemen and women obey their oath to the constitution and do not report for duty.
Yeah. Hopefully these brainwashed children are extra brainwashed but the “right way”, the lib way. Surely they’ll worship the holy document more than the holy man… \s
Don’t worry, he’ll make sure all the shot people stop being citizens after the fact.
They’re only repeating the technical-sounding terms they have heard over and over again in other news reports about firearms without really understanding what they mean.
And because these reports they’ve based their limited understanding on were majoritarily about gun violence perpetrated with civilian rifles, they don’t understand how to talk about actually military firearms.
These news reporters are literally just as bad as generative AI.
The whole thread is mostly on semantics of firearms and their presence. Does it really matter if the National Guard was issued pink polka-dot pogo sticks instead?
It is still a military force present on civilian soil, which is in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act in the way they did it. The Federal government continues to violate its own laws, as well as the Constitution. The core issue of everything going on right now.
Gotta be extremely naive to believe laws are for anybody except the poor, minorities, indigenous, etc.
It’s always been more than legal to enforce privilege through violence, planetary destruction, etc.
We can all assume that the act in question is going to be repealed soon enough.
The whole thread is mostly on semantics of firearms and their presence.
I’ve found this to be pretty much any article that even tangentially relates to firearms. Gun nuts will never leave semantics and have an actual discussion.
I am amazed at how gun nuts argue whether or not it’s semi- or fully automatic. Who cares?! It could still fire at a rapid rate and kill more people in a matter of seconds than matchlocks or knives. And don’t get me started with the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” rhetoric. Cars and knives could kill people, sure, but guns are designed specifically to kill living beings.
I’ve increasingly noticed that Lemmy has a LOT of gun nuts. The “Kids who grew up playing call of duty and want to make like Swayze and scream ‘wildcats’” crowd make sense since that is an increasing number of progressives and internet leftists.
But I’ve increasingly noticed the other flavor of “moderate” who are rabidly guns’ rights activists but who also are adamant that nobody is allowed to criticize the military and doing so is going to let the fascists win. And… I am increasingly noticing them coming from the sh.itjust.works instance. This thread used to be crossposted to their /c/conservative? Not sure if it still is and I just don’t understand UIs. And yesterday their /c/politics mod went batshit insane over people not standing for the pledge or whatever and was banning anyone who wouldn’t tell (let’s be real) him what state they live in.
Never noticed anything too bad from them in the past but they are rapidly getting to dot ml levels of crazy and might even reach dot hexbear if this keeps up.
The internet has a lot of gun nuts, and they are scared of everything.
What is a weapon for, if not to allay fear?
Huh? Is the National Guard issued some special version of the M4 without select fire? Wouldn’t the standard version be automatic? I feel like the term semi automatic is incorrect here.
They should be single and three round burst selections. Burst is rarely used and not really important. Outside of an unusual situation where you need to fire all your ammo asap, it’s usually just wasted because it’s less accurate. Exceptions do include a crowd of people swarming you.
Only the original M4 used three round bursts. The M4A1 switched to full auto.
Fully Automatic does should a little more aggressive, as it is much more aggressive. Can’t have facts in the media anymore.
This whole thing is a BS publicity stunt for both sides. Trump wants you to be afraid and distracted, the media wants you to be afraid, the reality is the National Guard isn’t doing jack shit and barely has any presence there.
From mainstream media reports, you would think the National Guard is patrolling DC’s streets, but as you can see in the video above, they’re nowhere to be found. People haven’t even seen them firsthand, it’s all second hand reports of “well, I haven’t seen it. But I HEARD they were seen by others elsewhere”.
This is some horseshit. Nothing we read online is real anymore. They just push out a handful of troops for a quick photo op and then vanish, because the illusion of this happening is more important than if it’s actually happening. Which it’s not.
Yeah, just go ahead and keep trying to normalize domestic military occupation with the express purpose to apply lethal force to citizens exercising their constitutional right to protest, you fascist troll.
Except the thing is THEY ARENT FUCKING THERE! This isn’t “normalizing” it, it’s pointing out the whole thing is a fucking farce! How the fuck does that make me a fascist?! You god damn mouth-breathing, inbred, DUMB FUCK! Why are you so fucking stupid?! Did you even watch the video? Did you even fucking read my comment?!
lol u mad?
Lol, so to you “barely has any presence” = “doesn’t exist”.
Some dude interviewing people on the street isn’t exactly evidence of their absence, especially since the first few seconds of your video literally shows national guard vehicles in DC.
But keep trying to sanewash the issue, you fascist troll.
Any federal military deployment on US soil, regardless of size, is a big fucking issue. This is the administration testing the waters for larger scale deployments.
If the media keeps reporting about troops patrolling streets, cracking down on protesters, and marching around with guns drawn; but when someone actually goes looking for them they can’t fucking find them anywhere, then YES. At a certain point, you have to conclude it DOESN’T actually exist, and is just a distraction from shit like Epstein.
At least, you can make that conclusion if you have more than a single fucking brain cell. If you don’t, you instead go “Well, the media says it’s happening so it MUST be true. They NEVER lie or misrepresent reality! Anyone saying otherwise must be a fascist!”
Where are the troops? Are they in DC? WHERE?! Because people actually going there, in person, looking for them, CANT FUCKING FIND THEM! Doesn’t that at least tell you something in the narrative must be off?!
Bruh. You’re mad. Like, really mad. Makes me think you aren’t thinking clearly. Even if it’s “just a photo op” there are livestreams and plenty of photos of National Guard troops in DC. I found some from 2 days ago, and 2 weeks ago with a quick search.
Yes, this is also a distraction like most everything else has been. No, the sensationalist news media is not fully trustworthy. Yes, there are armed National Guard troops in Washington DC. No, having some people say they haven’t seen guards does not disprove their existence.
My question to you is, what makes you deny their existance so hard? Do you honestly believe publicity stunts don’t have an impact even as just stunts?
Ok, so remember during the George Floyd protests how gullible idiots on the right were convinced by their media that cities like Portland and Seattle were being burned to the ground? Remember how right wing outlets quickly ran out of real examples to keep their narrative going and resorted to showing things like a single burning trashcan, images from completely different protests, or just straight-up stock images of civil unrest?
Were places burned down? Yea, like a couple small buildings. Was that bad? Yes, absolutely. Did that warrant non-stop news coverage for months declaring the cities had fallen into anarchy and it was every man for himself? Of course not, and that’s so far off the mark that it’s safe to call out as complete BS. But try telling that to one of those right wing idiots and it’s like their brains would break, they wouldn’t even acknowledge that maybe their info was bad, or they were being manipulated into believing a certain narrative. They’d just immediately dismiss you as a liberal removed and continue to believe the horseshit they were fed.
Here, we have a parallel. Are there troops? I’m sure there’s a handful. Is that bad? Yes, absolutely. Are they literally goose-stepping across the National Mall, shooting/arresting any sign of protest? Are tanks rolling down the streets of DC. Do you even SEE any of them if you were to go walk around the city? No, and that’s so far off the mark from the narrative that it’s safe to call it out as complete BS. I’m already seeing news sites use stock images because they can’t get real shots that uphold the narrative their trying to spin.
I’m mad because people are fucking idiots who desperately want to believe that fascism has come full force. That protesting or stepping out of line will have you face harsh, immediate consequences. It’s a publicity stunt designed to make Trump seem all powerful and to make people afraid to stand up, and boy are people buying it hook-line-and-sinker. In reality he DOESNT have as much power as they are trying to show, and it is absolutely still safe to stand up against him and protest. But try pointing out to left wing idiots that they’re being manipulated and you’re dismissed as a fascist troll.
The only difference between the 2020 protests and now is that I actually AM a liberal removed, so at least they got the insult right.
There’s not much fashier than comparing anti-racist protests to a fascist military occupation. Very lib indeed.
I’m no longer going to engage with trolls trying to excuse military deployments on US soil. Do the world a favor and fuck off into obscurity.
Calling out a distraction =/ excusing military deployments. How about you go drive a railroad spike through your head? You might be a little less of a fucking idiot if you used that instead of whatever the fuck you’re using now in the empty cavern that is your brain cavity.
