5/15/20 Pete Quinones on the Killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor

5/15/20 Pete Quinones on the Killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor

Pete Quinones discusses the recent killing of Ahmaud Arbery and the response from Americans on both sides of the political aisle. In a recent article at the Libertarian Institute, he discusses the incident from the perspective of the gun-owning community, arguing that the vast majority of serious gun owners view this killing as abhorrent, and that even if Arbery had not been shot, the behavior of his killers leading up to the fatal moment was still wildly irresponsible. Leaving aside the question of whether race played a role in the killing, he and Scott hope that people will see another side to this, and similar incidents: not black vs. white, but police vs. civilians. It has come to light that the man accused of shooting Arbery used to work in law enforcement, and that multiple prosecutors have had to recuse themselves because of conflicts of interest. Everyone should be able to see that in a case of such clear injustice, any normal civilian would have been swiftly arrested, charged, and probably convicted for this crime. In this case, however, as in so many others, affiliation with the police prevents the same justice from working that would apply to anyone else.

Discussed on the show:

Pete Quinones is managing editor of the Libertarian Institute and hosts the Free Man Beyond the Wall podcast. He is the author of Freedom Through Memedom: The 31-Day Guide to Waking Up to Liberty and is co-producing the documentary, The Monopoly On Violence.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.

The following is an automatically generated transcript.

[showhide more_text=”Show Transcript” less_text=”Hide Transcript”]
Scott Horton 0:10
All right, shall welcome and Scott Horton shell. I am the director of the libertarian Institute editorial director of anti war calm, author of the book fool’s errand, time to end the war in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org dot org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed full archive is also available@youtube.com. Slash Scott Horton show. Aren’t you guys on the line? I’ve got Pete Jonas. And he is managing editor at the libertarian Institute and author of this brand new one. How members of gun culture view the amount Aubrey killing. Welcome back to the show. How you doing Pete?

Pete Quinones 0:56
Thanks for having me back, Scott.

Scott Horton 0:58
Hey man, real quick. Got a documentary coming out soon. Is that right?

Pete Quinones 1:03
Yeah, I do. It’s it’ll be released to the public on YouTube on the 31st. And then soon after, after we get some things squared away, get it up on Amazon and then down the line after it does well on Amazon then Netflix kind of thing so it doesn’t get banned. Yeah. Somebody doesn’t step in and say yeah, that’s, that’s too subversive for for public consumption or something like that.

Scott Horton 1:27
Yeah. Well, I hope you edited my piece as much as you possibly could in there, too. There, everybody there, eardrums

Pete Quinones 1:37
we edited exactly what you what you thought would be. We just put in there what you thought were the most important points. Okay. I think I think it will. I think it’ll work especially with some of the overlay that we have that your our buddy, Danny Sjursen, sir, supplied us. It’s going to be it’s going to be wonderful. It’s good. A good section and that is going to be anti war. And that was really important to us.

Scott Horton 2:01
Yeah. So I haven’t seen the whole thing, but I did kind of page through. And and notice what good company I’m in there. So thanks for having me in that thing. That’s really cool. Couldn’t have done it. Lots of bearings there.

Pete Quinones 2:13
Yeah, there’s no way we were gonna do that and not have you in it. So, huh.

Scott Horton 2:19
Wish I could have come up with something instructive for you, but instead you just got what you got. Anyway, hey, let’s talk about the Oh, wait, when is this thing coming out?

Pete Quinones 2:29
It’ll be on YouTube on the 31st of this month.

Scott Horton 2:33
YouTube on the 31st of May. Great. And that’s called the monopoly on violence, huh?

Pete Quinones 2:40
Yep. feature length. The about an hour and a half and all of our friends are going to be in it. Great.

Scott Horton 2:48
That’s great. Good for you, dude. Thanks, man.

Pete Quinones 2:51
Yeah, man. All right. So two years in the making. Yeah,

Scott Horton 2:55
well, better be good then. Or as I put it, when I was writing my book, People better like this thing. So, yeah. labor theory of value there, man. You know, it’s hard to not believe in it when you’re the one doing the hard work, but yeah. All right. Now, let’s, let’s talk about this important subject. Tell me some things about, first of all, the Ahmad armory killing. And then secondly towards your headline here about the reaction of gun culture to what they’ve seen in the video here.

Pete Quinones 3:32
Well, let me just do a quick timeline of what happened with the shooting and mod armory. 25 year old man shot to death on February 23. in Brunswick, Georgia, Brunswick is like if anybody knows Jekyll Island. It’s right outside of Jekyll Island. So it’s over on the coast. Land of the central banks there. Yeah. And he was shot after being followed by Gregory McMichael six Four years old and Travis McMichael. 34 years old his son. They were in a pickup truck. Arbor his family says he was out jogging while the mcmichaels have said they thought he was a burglar. And this is according to the police report. Gregory McMichael armed himself with a 357 Magnum and his son grabbed the shotgun. And this is this will be the just them doing that right there will be the Kruk was the crux of my article. So Well, let me just go on a little bit here. So I grabbed the shot gun after Gregory McMichael saw our brewery hauling ass down the street. The police report said according to the report, a third man later identified as a neighbor, William Bryan tried to block our breed during the pursuit now a lot of people are saying William Brian is actually a homeowner of a property that’s under construction that are burry. Allegedly went in and was looking around. And but that’s it’s come to light that that’s not true. He was not he is not the homeowner. I’m going to get to that in a second. So Greg McMichael told police that he thought armory was a burglar who had recently been targeting the neighborhood. The mcmichaels told police that they caught up with armory. He attacked Travis McMichael, who fired his weapon and self defense. And the Brunswick news citing documents that were in public record reported that there had been just one confirmed burglary in the neighborhood from January 1 to February 23. It was the theft of a handgun from an unlock truck parked outside Travis Travis mcmichaels house on the first of the year. Go forward a couple days the first prosecutor recused herself. The Brunswick area district attorney Jackie Johnson recused herself from the case noting that Gregory McMichael, a former Glynn county police officer had been an investigator in her office for more than 30 years before he retired in May of 2019. Go now we’re going to jump forward to that was February 27. We’re going to jump forward to April 2. Brunswick news publishes details of the police investigation. They published an online article with details from the Glen police report. Gregory Michael said that after the pursuit Arbor he began to violently attack Travis McMichael and that the two started fighting over the shotgun, at which point Travis fired a shot and then a second later, there was a second shot. Gregory McMichael said our brief fell face down on the pavement with his hand under his body. He told police he then searched armory for a gun. The report said the report ends without stating whether armory had a gun. arbors family says he was unarmed and nobody to this day is claiming that he was armed. Next day April 3, a second prosecutor refuses after finding no reason to charge the mcmichaels George Barnhill one of the prosecutors who first handled the case defended the actions of the mcmichaels and Brian who recorded a video of the shooting. In a letter recusing himself address to a Glynn police, Captain Barnhill said the three had solid firsthand probable cause to pursue arbitrary quote unquote burglary suspect and stop him. And the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that reported this, it appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement alive arrived he rose Barnhill who said he watched the video said Travis Michael. Travis McMichael was allowed to use deadly force to protect themselves under state law because our brewery had initiated the fight and grabbed the shotgun. Going to jump forward about 10 days. A third prosecutor takes over the case. The case was transferred to Thomas Durden not Tyler Durden. But Thomas Durden, the agent district attorney for Georgia’s Atlanta Atlantic Judicial Circuit honor about April 13. According to a letter Durden released May 5, he announced his intention to present the case to the next available Glynn county grand jury for consideration of criminal charges against those involved in the death of Mr. armory.

That was April 13, jump all the way forward to may 5. So that’s 10 days ago, as of recording, this video of shooting emerges online. Apparently, this is just a side note. The person who took the video thought by releasing the video it was actually going to help the mcmichaels case that didn’t turn out to be what happened. So the video was released into public domain or it to the public, and the Arby’s Family Lawyer got ahold of it and that’s how they were releasing. They’re releasing it because as soon as it was released to the police, then it became open. So it appears to show the fatal shooting and an altercation in the mall. Before in the video posted by Aubrey family Attorney Lee Merritt Aubrey has seen jogging down a road as a white pickup truck is stopped in front of him. armory runs around the vehicle and a shot is fired. The video then shows our brand another man appearing to tussle as two more shots are fired. NBC News they’re saying NBC News who’s reporting on all this doesn’t know what happened before the events in the video. The same day. The outside prosecutor Durden said he wanted to send the case to the grand jury to decide whether to bring charges. Lawyers for the armory family said authorities did not need to wait for a grand jury to make arrests. And the lawyer said there are a number of agencies that can go out and make these arrests today. That is our demand. The man who murdered our breach should be prosecuted. The lawyer called underdone to issue an arrest warrant and to indict Gregory and Travis McMichael. GBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigations announced that it would be taking over the case at Durbin’s request so the DA there said this is a hospital Fado, give it to GBI. So it goes public. May 7, Gregory and Travis Michael are arrested, GBI announced that mcmichaels had been arrested on charges of murder and aggravated assault. And I will tell you, I’ll explain the aggravated assault charge where I think it’s coming from and it’s the only way it makes sense in in this. When we start talking about the article that I wrote in the points I made in there. The big Michaels could not be reached for comment. It was unclear whether they had obtained attorneys. So March 8, a neighbor who recorded video is also being investigated a day after the mcmichaels were arrested the head of the GBI said William Roddy, Brian, the neighborhood recorded the video was also being investigated. We’re going to go wherever the evidence takes us. GBI Vic Reynolds says a news conference let’s say hypothetically if we believe tomorrow or in a week or three There’s probable cause for an arrest, then we’ll do it. If we don’t believe there is and we won’t. Brian’s not been charged asked about the possibility that the mcmichaels could be prosecuted for a hate crime. Reynolds noted that Georgia is one of the few states without a hate crime law. Sort of good. May 9, video appears to show our burry entering a construction site just before he was killed. And just to mention some people have said it’s not him some people have said it’s him. This is everybody’s fighting over this I mean, it’s it’s ridiculous at this point. video from the day of armories death obtained by Atlanta Journal Constitution shows a purchase person matching our brief description, walking up to a house under construction, entering and then leaving shortly after attorneys for our breeze parents said the video is consistent with the evidence already known to us. The lawyer said the person in the video remain on the property for under three minutes before continuing to jog down the road. Mud did not take anything from the construction site. The family’s lawyer said he did not cause any damage to the property. He remained for a brief period of time and was not instructed by anyone to leave, but rather left on his own accord to continue his job. moods actions at this empty home under construction were in no way a felony under Georgia law. GBI confirmed that it was reviewing the video but added it had it had seen it before arresting and charging the McMichael so GBI arrested them even after seeing this and this quote unquote, new evidence, right.

Then the next day, may 10th. So we’re talking five days from from where when we’re recording. Georgia Attorney General asked for federal investigation. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr asked the Justice Department investigate the handling of the killing so they’re, they’re investigating the DA is how know how they weren’t how these guys weren’t arrested right away. That’s basically what they’re looking at. Attorneys for RV parents have plotted it. And so the next May 11, arbitrary killing switch to a fourth prosecutor. The state’s top prosecutor appointed another district attorney to take over the case joy at homes of the Cobb County Judicial Circuit became the fourth prosecutor to oversee it. Cobb County is about 10 minutes from me. So we’re talking about three hours away. So they I mean, they went through, they went, you know, a couple hundred miles away, or more than a couple hundred miles away to find someone to prosecute this. And they say, she’s a respected attorney with experience both as a lawyer and a judge and the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office has the resources, personnel and experience to lead this prosecution, yada

Scott Horton 13:40
yada, yada, yada. seems will have the same conflict of interest as the rest of them, but go ahead.

Pete Quinones 13:45
So three days ago, GBI receives requests from the State Attorney General to investigate handling of case Georgia’s attorney general has asked state law of law officers to investigate allegations of misconduct by local practices. theatres in the death of armory, the GBI announced Tuesday, GBI said Attorney General Chris Carr requested for the investigation of how the district attorney’s office in Brunswick and waycross handled the February 23 fatal shooting. Then we had this incident just a couple days ago, this was May 11. So this is how we find out that the home the under construction home that Arbor is allegedly seen in isn’t owned by Mr. Brian, one of the people in the pickup truck which is something that people who’ve been defending the mcmichaels on, on social media have been saying. So Mr. English, the actual homeowner released this statement he said Mr. English wants to correct the mistaken impression that he had shared this video or any other information with the mcmichaels. Prior to them Michaels decision to chase Mr. Barbary people were saying that he had They had seen video of him in the house and I’m going, how do they see video of him in the house? Was it being live streamed into their home or something? And I was at you would ask these questions and people be like, well, I don’t know. This is what I know. So the homeowners had not even seen the February 23 video before Travis McMichael shot Mr. Barbary so they didn’t even see the video from that day. When homeowner Larry English saw the photos of Mr. Barbary that were later broadcasts as a first impression was it Mr. rb was not the man captured on video inside the house on February 23. And he had actually said that to a neighbor at the time, and this guy was the homeowner was two hours away. So just little, little more information there. And then today, it comes out that McMichael, who used to be a cop used to be an investigator who was charged in armory, his death lost power to make arrests after skipping use of force training last year. So he lost, he lost his ability to make arrest and he also lost his ability to carry a service firearm. So that’s, that’s where we’re at right now. And anybody who’s seen people have been making videos about this. I’ve seen cops make ex cops make videos about this all over the world. I mean, it this is one of the most convoluted he said, she said, I think I know what I’m talking about. That person thinks he knows what he’s talking about. I decided to take my article in a totally different direction of something that I actually know I’m talking about trying to use this case to help explain to people why what they did is culture in Georgia, where I’ve lived for 15 years is culturally unacceptable to gun owners. So

Scott Horton 16:50
well, so I mean, that’s the point, right, is that gun owners would be, according to, I don’t know, liberal Twitter, they would be out The front of the mob, justifying these guys and accusing the black guy must have been stealing something or something, right?

Pete Quinones 17:09
That is the that that is the stereotype of, you know, even a Puerto Rican, half Puerto Rican New Yorker like myself, when I moved to the south, and I live in Georgia for 15 years. And I adopt the culture of gun ownership and, you know, being a gun fanatic. I get called the same thing. So,

Scott Horton 17:30
yeah. But then, so what is their point? Then they’re rallying behind the boys in the pickup truck or not?

Pete Quinones 17:37
Well, I’ve been going. First thing I did was I wanted to see what my friends were saying. So there’s a forum here in Georgia, huge gun forum. A couple years ago, there was 40,000 members. It’s got to be more now. And I knew that if I was going to I looked at it. I judged what they did. I had my perspective. And I wanted to see if people who are trained in firearms like myself had the same perspective in Georgia that I did. And, you know, I’m a libertarian, I’m an anarchist, and I don’t, I think all these laws are ridiculous, but I also live in the real world. And these people that I’m looking at here, for the most part, conservatives, I mean, we’re talking Trump supporting conservatives, but very pro gun, very anti red flag law. To give just to give an example, this forum that I was on at the time of the Trayvon Martin, shooting by george Zimmerman, they to a man took george Zimmerman side, mostly it was overwhelmingly George, on the side of george Zimmerman. And so yeah, these aren’t, these aren’t liberal hysteric the the who happens to light guns. I mean, these are guys who are come from the right side and a lot the far right side of the aisle. But they also have a subculture that has some unwritten rules and it looks like the as far as I’ve seen, they consider the mcmichaels to have broken those rules and thereby forfeited their freedom.

Scott Horton 19:20
Okay, so I’m not talking about that. I mean, I think even you know, any reasonable person even if they’re not going owners if they’re not a liberal hysteric just a normal person understands that. Gun Owners usually are extra responsible, because they recognize the power of that machine that they have there to do very dirty work in very short time with very little effort. I mean, that’s kind of the whole point. And so usually give somebody a gun you watch them grow up by two years right in front of your eyes, you know, but So, go ahead and I mean, Talk a little bit about that, that gun culture and the culture of responsibility that comes with owning guns here.

Pete Quinones 20:06
But just to give a really good example because it It wasn’t funny when it happened. But it turned out to be funny because it just became a meme on the web on on this forum was a guy came on there five or six years ago, and he started bragging about how he was walking in downtown Atlanta, a homeless person came up and asked for change. And he pulled his gun and just waved at the guy and the guy ran away from him. I assume he came on the website. Now I don’t know if the guy’s telling the truth or not. He could just be you know, one of those people who just make stuff up. But I he came on the website on the forum thinking that he was like a hero and he was going to be hailed as a hero. That was the exact opposite of what happened. People explained to him, you don’t pull that thing out unless you have justified, reasonable, you have an idea that your life is in danger. In other words, you don’t pull that out. unless you absolutely feel like you have to pull the trigger. Like your life is in such danger or somebody else’s life is in such danger that you have to pull the trigger. And as I explained in the article, that doesn’t mean that you pull it. And you see that the person, you know, is responding in a way where they’re going to, they’re going to go into flight, and you decide not to pull the trigger, that’s fine. But the fact that you pull it, you better have every excuse in the world for pulling that trigger. And that is just an unwritten rule that is lived by in gun culture. And I put this article out, I’ve had a couple people come after me, and it’s never about gun, the gun culture and what we think it’s always about, well, it was a black guy and you And I mean, that’s pretty. And I’ve been trying to keep race out of this. See, I read

Scott Horton 22:05
people to the right of your gun forum group a day, this is great. But at the over at the gun forum, this is their point of view same as the story about the bum being scared off. They, it sounds like you’re your take is everyone over there agrees that these guys had no business acting the way that they acted here.

Pete Quinones 22:29
Now, you’re not going to get everyone to agree on, on on any forum because you’re always gonna have some people that have to be contrarian on everything. And you’re gonna have some jerks and racist. I mean, it’s just, it just happens. But I mean, overwhelmingly, I mean, just some of the comments.

Scott Horton 22:45
The consensus in other words, oh, yeah, the only question here.

Pete Quinones 22:49
Yeah, the former copy says, if there’s no more to the story than the two should be prosecuted and jailed for life, the guy was clearly not trying to confront them. He runs miles and miles every day and live nearby. However, one thing gives me pause is that even the New York Times is hedging. Somewhat they stated that the man was seen running from inside a home under partial construction and the homeowner called 911. Well that’s not true the homeowner was two hours away but that’s what was being reported at the time. All this information is being reported and he writes but even that wouldn’t constitute the use of deadly force in this case. Another one said the kid wasn’t carrying anything those two confronted and went looking for a fight definitely not justified in my meaningless opinion real sad. Based on that video the shooters ought to stand not stand in the sunshine anytime soon, but we know what should happen and what does happen aren’t always related. Maybe he was this one guy says maybe was taking the lead I don’t know but this did this debug p i want to be and his kid sounds like some straight up cowboys to me citizens arrest and arm pursuit lol. I wouldn’t have stopped for them either. And then another one I saw You’re a justification for your use of force in that situation regardless of the joggers previous actions. This looks like some straight up redneck justice profile and Bs. One has to wonder if they just shot him in the back if he tried to keep running another one, I’ll give a damn what their circumstance was based on the video those scumbags murdered that young man. Then the last guy says, and you know he a little bit of pontificating here, but he gets to the point. I prefer to let relevant and current facts determine the circumstances rather than shaking up old articles to try and sling mud to make my predilections justified. The fact he was a high school athlete or attended college or what his specific career aspirations was irrelevant to the fact he was unarmed, shot dead by two redneck wannabe Cowboys, who thought they had an in on the cover up with one of their former bosses to da their plants. Now they get to win stupid prizes won’t bring him back, but he died pretty quickly. They get to sleep with one eye open for a long, long time. I’m sure they’ll be well received in a South Georgia prison.

Scott Horton 25:00
Yeah. See, that’s the part that remains to be seen with this guy’s at least pale blue privilege if you know he wasn’t on the clock as a cop at the time and yet, that’s the other huge part of this story is the delay in the arrest here and I don’t know this wasn’t on your Fact Sheet there. But I had seen a story where the cops who showed up at the scene were ready to arrest them both. If they called the DEA and the DEA told them not to. They were ready to put them in handcuffs right there on the spot before she intervened to stop it actively.

Pete Quinones 25:35
So you want to you want to know one of the main reasons why and I’ll come back and I’m going to go back to something that I said in my notes they were arrested for. Let me get this again. One of them. One of it was the second thing was aggravated assault. So I think it’s a murder and aggravated assault. Why is aggravated assault in there? Well, like it or not, there’s a law in Georgia. That is If you pull a gun on somebody who’s not threatening you, that’s considered aggravated assault and you’re looking at 20 years. So like that guy who flashed his gun at a bum, you know, it’s some homeless person. If a cop would have seen him do that, that would have been, he was looking at 20 years in prison. They don’t take that lightly. Even now, there’s actually a bill in the House in Georgia trying to change that. But that’s neither here nor there. And whether that’s a fair law or not, oh, well, but what I’ve seen is I’ve seen people try to argue that jumping out of the truck with a shotgun, while that’s just open, carry and open carry is legal. Well, technically, yes. Okay. In Georgia, you can throw a rifle over your your shoulder and walk down the street. You can carry a shotgun in your hand and walk down the street but Not when you’ve blocked off the street from somebody, you have another person jumped up in the bed of the pickup truck screaming at them. Yeah, you know, clearly the gun in his head. I mean,

Scott Horton 27:10
they’re displaying deadly force in order to try to make him stop. Yeah. That’s not open carry.

Pete Quinones 27:19
But I’m so but I mean, I see people trying to use that argument I’m like, that’s just not how this works, you know, and it’s like I actually had one person say, I literally would say if I said to you who said this, you know exactly who it was. They said, So, you think it’s okay for somebody who’s running down the street to try and grab a gun at trying to grab a gun of somebody who’s open carrying no gun. I’m like, wait, man, what are you leaving? What are you leaving out here?

Scott Horton 27:48
This is such a stupid era, isn’t it? It really is. It’s time of stupidity.

Pete Quinones 27:56
And a lot of people will say some of that stupid most of that stupidity is on The left look at the way they treat Trump. Look at this, look at that. This is just equal stupidity. Yeah, it’s so everything Oh, we gotta, we gotta stay with my team so that we can fight the other team and be at war the whole time. And I’m just like, you know, when you do that, and you’re while you guys are fighting over there, you know, sometimes that war has collateral damage on the rest of us and we tend those of us who want individual freedom, tend to lose it because you people are being idiots over here.

Scott Horton 28:28
And you know, it is important what you say to about where the vast majority of the right they’re not looking at this and you know of gun owners, particularly very Tea Party, Republican voter type guys, that they’re not looking at this as a racial issue. They’re looking at it as an issue of one man killing another. And and, and blue privilege. And yeah, and so the point is that Yeah, there there are right wingers who do care a lot about the racial stuff, but not anywhere near the majority. It should be instructive to people who come from the left to recognize that despite all the smears that most right wingers are not racialist in any way really at all. And certainly not to the degree that they’re going to side with a murderer over an unarmed victim, just because of what skin color team they’re on. I mean, that’s crazy. So yes, people will pick and choose their facts to justify certain things. But mostly, that’s still marginal, as stupid as this era is, at least in this case, it seems like reason has the center, you know,

Pete Quinones 29:35
and you also have to take into consideration when you look at this, this whole situation and when I say situation, I’m talking about guys running down the street. I don’t care if he’s running from some if he’s just out for a jog, or if he’s running from something. You have a pickup truck that cuts off the road with our people get out and they’re armed brandishing weapons and you have somebody in the back of them. cutting them off so that they’re trapped. When was how often do you see this happen? This doesn’t happen. When was the last time you saw the shop in the 50s?

Scott Horton 30:10
Yeah. And how was he supposed to react to this?

Pete Quinones 30:14
I know I would have reacted if I would have had a gun I would have shot everyone. And I would have been justified in doing it. They pulled guns out. They got out you block off the street from me and get out with it with a shotgun in your hand. I’m putting I’m starting to shoot right there. It’s insane for anybody for anybody and to bring up Oh, he may have just been burglarizing a house that’s completely beside the point. Once you get to the once you get down to the the situation in the street. Obviously he didn’t have anything in his hands. He’s running in shorts and a T shirt. If he was concealing a gun. He was doing a really good job of it. didn’t pull it out. In there’s no there’s no justification there. Now they’re bloopers The blue privilege of the dad may keep them at a jail. But I mean, the rightest of right wingers in Georgia in the gun culture, like Yeah, what they did was completely wrong. If we would have done it with no blue privilege, we would have been arrested that day and probably already played it out and gone to jail. Right. That’s what they’re saying. And I know that that’s what what happened to me. Yeah, if I if I did something that’s stupid. I it’s amazing to me how people are looking at this video and interpreting it just based on their own worldview.

Scott Horton 31:35
Yeah, yeah, there is a lot of that but um, you know, it, you know, I appreciate that. As you’re sitting here, it’s not a question of, you know, libertarian non aggression principle. It’s a question of gun owners non aggression principle. And when people especially, you know, people walk around armed you know, concealed or or, you know, open carrying or whatever it is, or they think a lot about, you know, and very carefully usually about, you know, when they might have to use that firearm, and when they absolutely may not, and and at what Line Is It crossed, where now it’s official, anyone, any reasonable juror would agree that you had no choice but to do it. And so in other words, they’re thinking of it very carefully, like a man with a hammer in his hand about just how to hit this nail right, rather than, you know, maybe coming at it from a more generalized point of view. They’re looking at it from as you just said, if they were the ones who had done it, not a former detective, but just Mr. ac repairman or whoever out there, that they know for sure that they are not allowed to do that, that that is absolutely crossing the line and that they will go to prison and so universal justice, it should apply the fact that this guy used To wear some shiny costume jewelry shouldn’t impress anyone at all.

Pete Quinones 33:05
But I think I would also add that even if what they did, and brandishing was legal, I think most gun owners would condemn it.

Scott Horton 33:15
Okay, that’s a good point, too. Yeah,

Pete Quinones 33:16
I don’t think they’re I don’t think they’re looking at the law and let and allowing the law to dictate what their morals are, as far as you know, carrying something that can end multiple lives in a matter of seconds. Right? It has to do with the fact that and a lot of it also has to do with optics. It’s like you don’t want to be every gun owner that I know who’s serious about their weapons, looks at that video and goes, you know, if it would have just been if he would, if it would have been them getting out holding guns in their hands and armory would have just ran by and just kept running. And you know, nothing would have happened. gun owners would still look at what they’re doing and go in your You’re spoiling for us.

Scott Horton 34:01
Right? You deserve another law against us.

Pete Quinones 34:05
Yeah. I mean, it like I said, I haven’t seen anyone commenting on this in, in a way of criticizing saying that it was a good shoot. That is in gun culture. As a matter of fact, ever since I put this article out, and ever since I did a podcast earlier this week, everyone who’s contacted me who said positive things about what I had to say, are in gun culture and southerners. They’re like, yeah, we know you’re not a southerner and everything but now you’re one of us, because you know, you have you have the same sensibilities.

Scott Horton 34:40
We’d like how you say to all the detractors are just completely irrational racists and don’t really have a point other than Whose side are you on?

Pete Quinones 34:49
So, I mean, I don’t I don’t know if they’re all racists or not. I mean, I would assume that that that does play into something.

Scott Horton 34:56
I thought you said that that was what they all immediately go to was Oh, you Yeah,

Pete Quinones 35:00
well, yeah. Well, a lot of it is, you know, it’s kind of hard to look at that video. And, and like I said, I’m not. I didn’t mention race once in the article, because that’s not really important to me. But it is really hard to look at that article and Naco what yours is?

Scott Horton 35:18
Yeah. Or the video? You mean? Yeah.

Pete Quinones 35:20
I mean, the video. Yeah, the video. Here is this. It was just when I first saw it, I was just like, wait a minute, he got out with a shotgun in his head. And he’s white dude. And there’s a black dude running down the street, and they’ve closed off the street from them. And they’ve closed off street behind him. And I knew there was going to be people defending this. And I was like, Why no, no gun owners gonna defend this. No serious gun owners gonna defend this because it’s just like, Well, what do you guys do in? Yeah, and most? A lot of those gun owners are law and order guys. So what would they do? they’d call the cops. They would call the cops and you know, and then people were saying, I heard people saying Oh, Well, you know, because he worked in the DHS office and Barbara had been arrested a couple times. He he knew him, he recognized them. I’m like, Well, if you recognize them, then he probably knows his name. can find out his address with a phone call. Right? So why not just give the cops? Why don’t just give the cops that. Oh, so now you’re on the cop side. You want the cops? I thought you were an anarchist. Yeah, I am. But I also live in a world where I know if I go do that,

Scott Horton 36:26
and they’re not anarchists, their former cop and his son. So what does that What does libertarianism have to do with the decisions that they made? It’s ridiculous. It’s just dancing. I mean, it’s just, it’s amazing. It adds just people are crazy. Hey, man, you guys are gonna love No dev no Ops, no it by Hussein badhak Gianni, it’s a fun and interesting read all about how to run your high tech company. Like a good libertarian should forget all the junk. Read no Dev, no ops. No It by Hussein bodek Chani find it in the margin at Scott horton.org. Hey y’all, here’s the thing, donate $100 to the Scott Horton show, and you can get a QR code commodity disc as my gift to you. It’s a one ounce silver disc with a QR code on the back you take a picture of with your phone, and it gives you the instant spot price. And lets you know what that silver that ounces silver is worth on the market and Federal Reserve Notes in real time. It’s the future of currency in the past to commodity discs.com or just go to Scott Horton. org slash donate. Hey guys, Scott Horton here for expand designs.com Harley Abbott and his crew do an outstanding job designing building and maintaining my sites and they’ll do great work for you need a new website, go to expand designs comm slash Scott and say 500 bucks. Let’s switch to a different crazy one. So this one’s in Kentucky. So this happened what like two months ago, the cops killed this lady briona Taylor, and it does matter that she’s a black woman. It is part of the story. And then this was just buried it finally came out I’m sure all the usual grifters, you know, help to promote it. Thank goodness in this case, but you know, and I know that you haven’t done as much work looking into this one as the previous case here. This is actual cops, not x and wannabe cops. Like down there. But this one in Kentucky is also really bad. Can you explain what you know about what happened here?

Pete Quinones 38:44
Apparently Briana Taylor, from what I understand she’s an EMT. Did you see that? Yeah, she’s an EMT. She was home at night. was studying to be a nurse they say? Yeah, studying to be a nurse home sleeping with her boyfriend. And from what I understand around 1230 in the morning, the police go and get a no knock warrant. I mean, isn’t that’s how all these stories start, you know, in the middle of the night, no knock warrant, you know, Duncan Lemp. And,

Scott Horton 39:16
sorry, I gotta say, when I was a kid in elementary school, the state of Texas mandate that they teach us anti communism. And when they did teach us anti communism, the way that they explained it to us was that in the Soviet Union, the cops come to your house and take you away in the middle of the night. They kick in your door, everybody else is asleep or is, you know, in no position to help resist and, you know, it’s and in fact, it’s the dreaded knock, they don’t even you know, Americans use a battering ram. The NKVD at least knocked on the door let you get your bathrobe before they disappeared. Yeah. But this was when I was a boy, which was not that long ago. If you asked me that night. 1980s and when I was in elementary school, you know, in the Ronald Reagan years, this was the definition of totalitarianism the enemy that America stands against. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Pete Quinones 40:13
Yeah, um, well, from what I understand they weren’t the wrong house to the person they were actually looking for was already in custody. And this is the Louisville police department and I wrote an article. I wrote an article about the Louisville Police Department four or five months ago from their sex abuse scandals of their their youth programs. Me Louisville Police Department has a long history of just problems. And so yeah, they get a no knock warrant. They go there because they owe somebody we believe, delivers drugs was seen coming out of that apartment. And a box went in with a box and came in came out and empty handed. Well they do the no knock raid. The boyfriend wakes up he has a gun. He starts shooting. So they just light the place up. As many as 20 rounds are shot. She shot in her sleep eight times and dies. The boyfriend has been arrested for attempted murder of a police officer.

Scott Horton 41:21
You know how many times he was shot?

Pete Quinones 41:23
I don’t think he was he. I don’t think he was Yeah,

Scott Horton 41:26
I don’t think so either. I from what I had read so what the hell kind of wild shootout is that? Speaking of your unwritten firearms rules? Aren’t you supposed to know what you’re killing they miss the guy who actually took a shot at them and instead they shot an innocent person eight times unarmed woman

Pete Quinones 41:47
and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. He ended up shooting a sergeant john Mattingly in the leg during the incident. So oscillation Yeah, but um Yeah, this is this is just one of those another one of those no knock warrant. Like you said Soviet style black bag kind of kind of attitude when you’re going Duncan left the whole Duncan lump thing in Maryland. Yeah 430 4:30am Yeah, why would they do this? Why don’t you just wait until the person leaves the house overtime rest? Arrest them. Yeah. So you get paid. Yeah. And Bogart says that

Scott Horton 42:27
Yeah. And the fun of dressing up like a paramilitary you know, Delta Force operative or whatever.

Pete Quinones 42:34
So, they, they were blindly firing. I mean, she got hit eight times, talking about total disregard for for human life and me shoot through the walls and hit other people. nothing illegal was found there. They had a drug warrant.

Scott Horton 42:52
Yeah, on that last point. I mean, they said that they’re the stray bullets went into multiple different apartment buildings or, you know, apartments in that building.

Pete Quinones 43:02
So, yeah, so the family’s suing, and there was another one of those cases where it’s like, No, you know, well, you’re gonna get put on the police we’re gonna get put on a miss administrate of leave until we can investigate. And we’re gonna we’ll investigate this and find out what they don’t investigate themselves find out they did nothing wrong.

Scott Horton 43:21
Yeah, well and you know they’re gonna make the mistake too is just talking about this with Mike Maharrey earlier today about you’re gonna call for a civil rights investigation and that’s going to kind of remove it from the local jurisdiction where they might have a prayer of accountability if they push hard enough. Instead they’re going to turn it over to the Justice Department. But that’s such a narrow mandate unless they were screaming the N word as they were pulling the trigger and essentially using their police power position as cover and operating under the color of law just so that they could do a kkk lynching or something like that unless they have A case like that it’s not a federal civil rights case. And it’s just, you know, the federal civil rights jurisdiction is not if there’s a bad shoot, it’s if you can ascribe these other racial ulterior motives to the police abuse that takes place. And so, in other words, DOJ investigations are were bad shoots go to die, you know, even if, in most cases, the local DEA is going to do what our friends down in Georgia did there for him. But still, at least you could have a chance with enough public pressure of getting an indictment on the local level, but the feds almost never they just essentially kill a case by touching it.

Pete Quinones 44:42
And we’ve talked about that before, too, that the only way quote unquote public servants ever get in trouble is if enough political pressure is put in and then they just sacrifice somebody.

Scott Horton 44:54
Yeah, I mean, think about the if this is one of your family members, and you find Down, not only were they at the wrong apartment, where the guy that they were after did not live, but that, in fact, the guy the search warrant was attached to an arrest warrant, and they had already arrested him somewhere else before this warrant was ever even issue. So, again, back to the question of how easy it would have been for them to just knock on the door and do this in the daylight without dressing up and playing Navy SEAL at all. You know, the guy the bad guy, supposedly, in other words, the drug businessman, allegedly was already in custody. And of course, they found out after they were done, removing her corpse that there were no drugs in the house whatsoever. And I don’t know if it was the wrong address or this guy used to live there five years ago or what their problem was, but the two victims here the deceased and the charged had nothing to do apparently with the guy that they were looking for. Is that right?

Pete Quinones 46:06
Yeah, they were standing up citizens as far as anyone can, you know, quote unquote, stand up citizen as far as anyone can tell. I mean, they’re, I mean, when I said this a long time ago, I said, police have to stop the no knock warrants because you get a home invasion. All somebody has to do is scream police. You know, some you have some crew of bad guys coming into your house, they scream police. I mean, I sleep with a gun next to the bed. If I hear police, it may make me hesitate in picking it up. But it could also be bad guys. So they knocked down a door in the middle of the night and he’s armed you know, in the guns by the side of the bed and he picks it up and start shooting. How can you blame him? How

[/showhide]

Scott Horton

Scott Horton

Scott Horton is director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles, California and podcasts the Scott Horton Show from ScottHorton.org. He is the author of four books. He has conducted more than 6,000 interviews since 2003. Scott lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Larisa Alexandrovna Horton.

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