>But I don't blame you for believing the protesters carried weapons into the capitol. it's because of the intentional framing of the media and the government.
They literally did carry weapons into the capital. There are many instances of this. People have been tried and convicted on those charges. You can literally see weapons present on them in pictures:
First of all, you're moving the goalposts from "weapon" to "loaded gun".
Second of all, you said that "none" of those articles say that the guns were loaded, but the first one I just checked did literally specify that the gun was loaded, and a second one did specify that video evidence shows he had actually fired the gun, so obviously it was in fact loaded.
>Federal prosecutors said that Mazza, "while armed with [a] .40 caliber *loaded* firearm, engaged in multiple efforts to break through the police line: he repeatedly pushed against officers using the combined physical exertion of the mob; he armed himself with a stolen police baton and assaulted officers with the baton; he yelled at officers telling them to get out the mob’s way and to 'Get out of our house!'; he held open the door to the tunnel entrance against the resistance of officers, and after being rebuffed, he gathered additional rioters into the tunnel area to continue 'heave-ho' pushes against officers in the doorway."
...
>The FBI affidavit said that the footage published by Evans, as well as CCTV footage highlighted by NBC News last month, showed Banuelos "raising the gun over his head, and, at approximately 2:34 p.m., firing two shots into the air."
Third, even if the articles didn't literally say the guns were loaded, the lack of the word "loaded" in the article isn't a good reason to assume the guns weren't loaded.
There's not a single indictment of any protester for possession of a rifle inside the capitol.
This is America. Guns are cheap and easy to obtain. They could have all marched into the open doors of the capitol armed but they didn't. Why do you think that is?
Why you wrapping it in all of these conditionals? Why does it matter whether the many people with firearms went inside the capital itself or if they just helped other break through the police barricades outside the capital, which they did? Why are you making a distinction between whether someone with "a rifle" was caught inside or any other type of firearm?
There were many people verified to have brought firearms onto capital grounds, and several of those people tried to get inside the capital building itself, and there may well have been others that succeeded. Or not. Either way, there is little difference.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/08/jan6-defe...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/missouri-man-sentenced-fe...
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/977879589/yes-capitol-rioters...