[Phil153]

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Read the post again. William Knox Schroeder was in the ROTC, he was walking to class when he got it in the back.
Likewise, Sandra Lee Scheuer, an honors student, was also walking to class. Notice the distances. The majority of the students killed or injured where well over the length of a football field away when shot, too far away to injure "Peacekeeping" National Guardsmen.

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I've read about the incident, but the OP doesn't properly frame the circumstances. This was far from peaceful assembly. There had been widespread rioting and looting previous days. Many national guardsmen had had rocks and other projectiles thrown at them both on the day and on previous days, and over a dozen had been injured. Citizens were quite literally afraid for their lives after the looting and violence by these students, as were many national guardsmen it seems, who lacked any riot protection gear. They'd had projectiles thrown at them that very day by the same crowd.

The shooting itself doesn't make any sense. The circumstances you describe are accurate, and it makes no sense at all that they would fire from a distance. My best guess is that heard a shot, panicked, and shot back. The stories report the National guardsmen being very afraid for their lives at the time. I guess a deliberate indiscriminate shooting isn't out of the question. But if it wasn't deliberate, I daresay the students brought such an accident upon themselves, and are responsible for the innocent bystanders that got killed.