So from what I understand ~200-300 people died in Tiananmen Square in 1989, right? Like, that's not ideal, but also not 3000 people. Still, I generally subscribe to the "murder is bad" school of thought.
The death toll is a mix of civilians and cops/soldiers, since many cops were sent in unarmed or with like a stick to try and control the situation, so theres some very graphic photos of lynched corpses burned to a crisp, plus some protestors/rioters managed to get a hold of firearms or even an APC with a machinegun in one case, which theres footage somewhere of it firing wildly into the air and driving erratically.
And of course its all over Beijing as well, the "Tiananmen Square" portion of the protests were mostly controlled and not violent, but in other places it was chaos and violence, people throwing molotov cocktails onto trucks.
