Odd this day

1 March 1954

Today is the 70th anniversary of four Puerto Rican nationalists getting into the United States Capitol with pistols and shooting 30 rounds into the House of Representatives, injuring five members of Congress.

You don’t see semi-colons in headlines much any more, do you?

They wanted independence for Puerto Rico, which they didn’t get, and were charged with (among other things) attempted murder and seditious conspiracy, and sentenced to 75 years each in jail (apart from the one woman, who got 50). Jimmy Carter pardoned them in 1979.

The important thing, though, is that the incident, marked as it is by the Library of Congress…

1954 Shooting at the U.S. Capitol | Headlines & Heroes

…taught the United States some valuable lessons about the safety of allowing people to carry semi-automatic weapons, and the fragility of democracy, and nothing like it was ever permitted to happen again.