Alameda County sheriff Frank Madigan justified the use of shotguns loaded with lethal buckshot by stating, "The choice was essentially this: to use shotguns—because we didn't have the available manpower—or retreat and abandon the City of Berkeley to the mob."
Madigan also stated that some of his deputies, many of whom were Vietnam War veterans, had been overly aggressive in their pursuit of the protesters, acting "as though they were Viet Cong".

In an address before the California Council of Growers on April 7, 1970, Reagan defended his policies for dealing with campus protests: "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. No more appeasement."

Reagan was steadfast and unapologetic, saying, "Once the dogs of war have been unleashed, you must expect things will happen, and that people, being human, will make mistakes on both sides."

"Shock and hemorrhage due to multiple shotgun wounds and perforation of the aorta".

Reagan conceded that Rector was probably shot by police but justified the bearing of firearms, saying, "I think it is being very naive to assume that you should send anyone into that kind of conflict with a fly swatter. He's got to have an appropriate weapon."

The Black Panther, the official newspaper of the Black Panther Party, stated in an issue on fascism that "[The pigs] tear gassed and beat up a lot of innocent people ... The chemical that they used, is the same kind of chemical that the U.S. Imperialists are using against the Vietnamese people."

The Washington Post wrote of the incident in an editorial: "[T]he indiscriminate gassing of a thousand people not at the time in violation of any law seems more than a little excessive."
The editorial also criticized legislation before the U.S. House that would have "cut off Federal aid to universities which fail to head off campus disorders".

Reagan pledged that "whatever force is necessary will be on hand", although protest leaders declared the march would be non-violent.

Demonstrators engaged in shop-ins, park-ins and other non-violent tactics to counter the police action.

On May 20, National Guard helicopters flew over the Berkeley campus, dispensing airborne tear gas over protestors that winds dispersed over a wide area.

One of the largest deployments of tear gas during the Vietnam era protests and an action which Reagan would later admit might have been "a tactical mistake".

Everything old is new again.

Our star's core can fuse hydrogen for billions of years before its lower atmosphere begins to boil. It swells into a red giant, then keeps expanding until its outer gases blow away. Left behind it a hot core that can no longer fuse, called a white dwarf.---Posthaste!