Indiana MAGA rioter pleads guilty to losing gun in crowd while storming the Capitol

On Friday, CBS News' Scott MacFarlane, a key figure covering the criminal cases against the January 6 defendants, reported that Mark Mazza, a Capitol rioter from Indiana, has pleaded guilty to a firearm offense.

As MacFarlane noted, he has signed a statement attesting that he carried, and then lost a "firearm while in a crowd of people who were involved in violence against law enforcement inside the tunnel area on the West Front."

Defenders of the January 6 rioters, including Fox News' Tucker Carlson, have tried to claim that none of the perpetrators were armed. However, fact checkers have demolished this as false.

Mazza is not the first January 6 defendant to be accused, convicted, or plead guilty to a gun charge. Lonnie Leroy Coffman of Alabama was apprehended with multiple guns in his car, in addition to Molotov cocktails. Guy Reffitt of Texas, the first Capitol rioter to be convicted in a trial, was found guilty on firearms offenses due in part to testimony from his own son. And Christopher Michael Alberts of Maryland allegedly carried a loaded handgun at the Capitol, which attracted the attention of law enforcement and led to his arrest.

Moreover, noted PolitiFact's Samantha Putterman, firearms were far from the only weapons carried by the perpetrators.

"The definition of 'armed' is not legally limited to guns; it refers to any weapon used for defense or offense and as a means of protection," she wrote. "Other items used as weapons on Jan. 6 included bats, crutches, flagpoles, skateboards, fire extinguishers and chemical sprays."