Well it isn’t a new school of thought. It was widely argued outside the anti-Vietnam protest movement in the 70s. I haven’t read anything recent but I can summarise the arguments from then. Part of it is a bit like the Darwin Awards. Ie The protesters believed themselves so entitled that they were stupid enough to stand in front of men they knew to be armed and throw rocks and bricks at them. The argument that rocks are deadly weapons was supported not by the middle eastern method of execution but by a then well- known case of a railway worker killing a threatening bear by throwing rail ballast (rocks) at it.

The school of thought has been argued this way:

It helps if you are aware of the players. The majority of the National Guardsmen were about the same age as the students. The National Guardsmen were working class locals, most of them employed locally and could be expected to identify with local town businesses. They had been called up and were deployed legally as a result of a declaration of civil emergency triggered by students rioting, and trashing and looting down town businesses on Friday, May 1st 1970.

The students were mostly middle class, with sufficient family money to enable them to continue their education rather than being forced to get jobs. There had been previous riots on campus resulting in criminal charges and imprisonment. On Saturday they had set fire to the ROTC building on campus and the arsonists had attacked the local fire brigade preventing attempts to extinguish the fires until the arrival of the National Guard. They continued sporadic incidents of vandalism and arson. They resented the presence of the National Guard and did not believe they had authority to be there. There was a history of “Town and Gown” conflict with the students believing that the university was separate and had its own rules.

On Sunday morning the Governor arrived for a news conference and after he had departed, in the afternoon and evening, the demonstrations grew, resulting in the Ohio Riot Act being read to disperse them and an attack on President White’s house being driven off with tear gas. Disturbances continued late into the night and the students threw rocks at police and guardsmen and cursed them,

On Monday, a bomb threat resulted in closure of the Education building, there were additional disturbances. 96 men and 7 officers of the National Guard were ordered to disperse a crowd of about 2,000 students. After firing tear gas and being pelted with rocks, the 103 men retreated up Blanket Hill followed by about 200 students, some of whom continued throwing rocks. On reaching a structure called the Pagoda on Blanket hill, one end of the marching soldiers turned and fired on the students. 28 soldiers fired 61 shots, killing 4 students and wounding 9 others. 4 of the riflemen admitted firing into the crowd. The other shooters said they fired into either the air or the ground. The soldiers had been on duty and under threat for long hours. On average they each had 3 hours sleep the night before.

So the school of thought usually presented was that the soldiers should not have fired without orders but that anyone so stupid as to continually attack tired, armed soldiers with deadly weapons, shouldn’t be surprised if they get shot at. Further, while middle class America might think of college students as children, to the National Guardsmen they were just criminal, spoilt, privileged peers who were attacking them.

For details of the Kent State Riots and Shootings see source material at http://www.kentstate1970.org//index2

For the details of the point of view see an Analog Magazine Editorial from the late 1970s