Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley confirmed that soldiers who were deployed to Washington to quell the protests over George Floyd's death were given bayonets.
Members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg in North Carolina and the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment based just outside D.C. were mobilized to D.C. last month as demonstrations over police treatment of Black Americans rocked the city.
For their June 2 deployment, these soldiers were given bayonets but instructed to keep them in their scabbards and not linked to their rifles