Trip20, I have to agree. Had this Congress-critter's report been poo-pooed, and a real incident have occurred, these same posters would have railed against the governments "business as usual" approach.
Again, if you were sitting in your chair, and heard what was ostensibly gun-fire, would you just turn the page? Heck no, you'd be checking on the welfare of your family, gun in hand, and gathering the little ones away from the windows.
This also doesn't appear to be an incident of a single report, either. Usually, nail guns aren't single-fire uses. There were probably a series of "shots", a pause, and then another series of "shots". Given that there are multiple layers of parking, a muffled series could well have been interpreted as gunfire.
The response is massive in part because of the varying jurisdictions in D.C., and the location of those jurisdictions. You know, the building is under federal control, the streets are under Metro PD control, the various individuals may be under Secret Service protection. Last I knew, you had the US Park Police, the Secret Service Uniform Division, the Secret Service Agent Division, The Executive Protection Service, the Capital Hill Police, the D.C. Metro PD, the GSA police, the Treasury Service police, the FBI, the Armed Forces Police, the US Marines, and God knows who else in an LEO role assigned to various locations, roads, and buildings in D.C.
