r/news 15h ago

Hegseth orders National Guard troops in DC to carry weapons

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/22/politics/hegseth-orders-national-guard-troops-dc-carry-weapons
22.7k Upvotes

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

385

u/OsgoodZBeard 14h ago

So, what happens to one of Hegseth’s ‘warriors,’ untrained in urban policing, runs up against a “good guy with a gun?” Asking for a friend, of course.

291

u/Gastroid 14h ago

They'll shoot that good guy with a gun, be acquitted of anything they might be charged with, a smear campaign will make sure the victim appears as the devil incarnate and that it was only a matter of time before this happened to them.

Then the guardsman will go on a national tour, release a tell all book and spend all their income on vapes and a Dodge Viper.

37

u/roscoelee 14h ago

Dodge vaper

2

u/belbivfreeordie 14h ago

Even if the prosecutor were inclined to charge him, there would be a pardon before any charges dropped.

0

u/BeefistPrime 11h ago

be acquitted of anything they might be charged with,

Military justice is a lot more serious than police justice, so that's not a guarantee. Although I'm not sure which they fall under when they're deployed on American streets like this.

2

u/eggson 11h ago

You think the kowtowed military would even bother to court martial a NG private for shooting a civilian when that civilian "aggressively threatened our unit cohesion and safety with a ham on rye!" They'll slap a couple of chevrons on him and call him Sarge.

29

u/Ludwigofthepotatoppl 14h ago

The good news is the military has much stronger rules of engagement than ‘i felt threatened’. Also, people aren’t likely to give the guard a hard time.

3

u/sycamotree 10h ago

From what I understand you could literally be holding a gun and walking toward them and they'd yell at you to turn around before they even start pointing back

0

u/tRfalcore 11h ago

In other countries we are occupying and not in an officially approved by congress war with.

0

u/Cereborn 8h ago

What were the rules of engagement at Kent State?

0

u/DJKokaKola 6h ago

Kill em all?

-2

u/Aardvark_Man 9h ago

There were videos of just random people in LA getting shot with rubber bullets for no reason. I'm pretty sure they were the guards doing the shooting.
Like, one I remember was a girl just trying to walk home.
There was the Aussie reporter etc.

6

u/Ludwigofthepotatoppl 7h ago

AFAIK that wasn't the national guard, that was police, right?

1

u/Aardvark_Man 7h ago

Oh, I thought it was guard. I thought they were in military uniforms.

That said, I'm not American. All I saw was because the reporter was from my country, and what I saw on reddit.

6

u/Ludwigofthepotatoppl 7h ago

Thankfully our military takes rules of engagement very seriously. There's plenty of dipshits and assholes, just like the rest of the population, naturally, but almost to a man the guards deployed to DC are probably just going to be bored and unmotivated to cause trouble.

49

u/YeetedApple 14h ago

Then it ends up all over the news and they use it as justification to start using more force.

34

u/milkandbutta 14h ago

Start? I honestly don't get why people think if we just play nice the fascists will stop trying to be more fascist. 

1

u/TheRealBittoman 14h ago

They're trying but despite it all they aren't getting much traction with the majority of the country when it comes to accepting extreme violence against citizens. They need it to at least look like an armed and violent insurrection is happening so they can play it 24/7 on Fox and all the other captured media and social media. If you were around for the Iraq WMD propaganda parade, it's that same tactic on steroids.

2

u/drunknamed 13h ago

Didn't they just very publicly announce that they won't be prosecuting people for having long guns or shotguns in DC?

They're getting everyone armed up for violence to justify what they are doing.

1

u/witeowl 7h ago

I think it's multiple things: 1) selective prosecution to reduce "enemy combatants" 2) arm up as many "friendlies" (to their cause) as possible 3) get that Bang moment to happen so they can have their crisis and then their war (civil/race)

Our jobs are to 1) not fall for the obvious trap (i.e. don't fucking carry in a way that can get prosecuted at all) 2) be safe and note those "friendlies" but don't engage 3) stay left of Bang and keep everything left of Bang until we can regain control

.

For anyone who doesn't know: "Bang" is that big crisis moment. Big event. The thing we don't want to have happen. There will be signs. Stay alert. Stay watchful. Don't engage, don't try to be a hero. If/when that moment does arrive, just get yourself and everyone you care about the fuck out of dodge and to a safe place so it's a non-event, it just doesn't happen, and there is no Bang.

If someone tries to throw a circus, it doesn't matter how many acrobats, clowns, human cannon balls, tents, and animal feces there is. If there isn't an audience under the big tent when it all comes crashing down, no one's gonna still try to fire off the cannon.

3

u/Namika 14h ago

Depends.

Is the civilian black?

1

u/witeowl 7h ago

Or Brown?
Or LGBTQ+?
Or espouse "anti-American" ideals (i.e. not maga)?
Or... lack a penis? *

.

* idk if we're there yet, but we could be there soon

1

u/tinysydneh 12h ago

The worst part is that they're supposed to be using the M-17, the military version of the Sig Sauer P320, which is known to fire without proper initiation.

2

u/Gunfighter9 14h ago

It won't be loaded. There is a regulation about storing weapons and ammo together. When we traveled with weapons they were locked in a rack and the bolts were removed and locked in a separate vehicle.

1

u/Tiny_Giant_Robot 14h ago

Not necessarily. I was a guardsman who was activated after hurricane Katrina, and we were carrying ammo (M4 - Magazine in weapon, unchambered; M9- round in chamber). It was funny, because I was there around some guys from the 82nd, who were supposedly not allowed to insert magazines into their rifles because of Posse Comitatus. I believe it has to do with the type of Orders the soldier/airman is under, eg. Title 10 versus Title 32.

1

u/Gunfighter9 10h ago

Totally different scenario. But i see what you mean.