And even if there’s no “protest” as cover, 100 guys in trucks rolling up with body armor and illegal automatic weapons would be a huge problem if NG isn’t already in place and settled in.

they can be tucked out of sight on capital hill grounds. Set up barriers and emplacements ahead of time. if you have the space it takes just a few minutes to get an MG emplacement set up.

The reality is, though, that non-scalable barriers needed to have been used the first time around. the crowd control barricades are only really useful for guiding crowd flow when the crowd is compliant (like, at concerts or stuff, to just keep people moving the direction they’re supposed to go. They’re not meant for riots.)

For riots (or potential riots,) you need something like these:

Or:

The first is outside Hennepin County Gov center after the Floyd protests broke out. The second is the US supreme Court building after the RvW leaks ahead their Dobbs decision. HCGC has since updated their external security perimeter to permanent non-scalables that fold out in a hurry. Otherwise they’re basically tall, triangular steel towers that look “almost” like some kind of art.

Basically each tower serves as 3 sections along a fence. two sections swing out and lock into the sections of the next barrier-tower. Normally, they’re folded back to allow more or less free movement (but they also act like bollards to stop vehicles and things.) but can be quickly deployed once word goes out that something is coming. IIRC, they added those only around the entrances to the HCGC, and the courtyard would have to be secured separately. Those only took like a year to install at HCGC.

and to anyone saying the optics are bad. The Jan 6 optics of insurrectionists smearing human feces on the wall were, and remain, far worse.