
“My Opinion on the Kent State Shooting”
by Peter Thompson
In reality, the National Guard officers were the people responsible for the shooting. The protesters, despite being angry, were completely harmless in their action and were not armed. The guardsmen had no reason to fear for their lives. In reality, the best way to handle the protest would be to let it calm down and do very little to actually handle the protest. Overall, the protesters were being fairly harmless and were not going to affect anything in reality. I think that if the shooters did not fire, or at least did not fire until protests became more violent, they would have stayed calm and fairly under control.
Another possible course of action could be to warn the protesters that the guardsmen were armed. If they had done that, the protesters may have acted with more caution and calmed the protest down. People could have left, causing the protest numbers to dwindle down and make the environment less dangerous. Many people could have left, and nobody would have to get shot until the guardsmen absolutely had to. Overall, this incident could have been easily avoided had the guardsmen taken more precaution before firing into the crowd. In reality the biggest danger to the guardsmen was after the gunshots were fired, as the protesters were shocked that the guardsmen would actually fire. This led to anger within the protesters and an increase of violence.
In conclusion, I think that the Kent State shooting was completely the fault of the guardsmen. Even though the protesters were disobeying the police and the governor, the guardsmen could respond to this disobedience in many other ways that did not result in the deaths of four people and the injuries of nine more. More importantly, this event, which would become more fuel to the flame of the protesters, could have been easily avoided.