[richlevy]

Originally Posted by jaguar

I remember the big anti WTO riots in melbourne in 2000, the area around the building it was being held in and half the CBD was full of protesters, the vast majority of whom were peaceful. The serious action was throwing eggs at cars and sit-down roadblocks. Then there was the fringe who threw bricks at police, broke windows and generally used it as an excuse to get away with doing criminal damage. I don't think that all of us involved should be judged by their actions, same applies here.

Well, at Kent State the people who got shot probably weren't the ones who threw the rocks.

By being in or near a protest, you basically run the risk of injury, sometimes at the hands of law enforcement personnel. The odds of them being held accountable are not good. Some of those rules we learned in grade school - sometimes the entire class suffers for the actions of a few people, sometimes the person being attacked is the one who is caught and punished, still apply once we become adults.

The shootings killed four students and wounded nine. Only one of the four students killed was participating in the protest, and one of the students killed, William Schroeder (who was observing but not participating in the demonstration) was a member of the campus ROTC chapter. Of those wounded, none was closer than 71 feet (22 m) from the guardsmen. Of those killed, the nearest was 265 feet (81 m) from the guardsmen.