Let's get straight right off the bat, I have no knowledge of this incident beyond what has been reported on the news the last couple of days. I wasn't privy to the grand jury transcripts, I haven't heard any testimony. I did hear the edited 911 tape that has been making the rounds but there is not enough there to make any kind of determination. If I heard the reporter correctly, there was a police officer who witnessed the incident and apparently supported the shooter's version of events. Having said all that, here is what I understand to have happened.
The shooter gentleman called 911 and reported two burglars breaking into his neighbor's house. He had a shotgun and said he was going outside to stop them. The 911 operator told him to stay indoors and stay on the phone. He went out, a garbled exchange took place and they you can clearly hear the shooter yelling "Yer dead!" then there are three shotgun blasts on the tape. He comes back into the house, picks up the phone and tells the operator to get police there right away, one of the burglars is down on the lawn and the other is running away. Both burglars died. The shooter also told the operator that he had no choice, they came at him onto his yard.
The grand jury apparently found the shooter to be within his protection rights under Texas law and decided not to indict. The end. But not quite. A congresswoman from Texas wants Congress to investigate because she knows that there are a bunch of racists in law enforcement in Harris County and she thinks there has been a miscarriage of justice here. Can you guess the races involved? Which was which? And would there be any outcry from Congress if the races were reversed?
Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. What I am concerned about here is the fact that federal elected officials feel it is in their pervue to second guess law enforcement. Just cause they can write, debate, and enact law doesn't give them any authority to enforce law. And interfering with local law enforcement is way out of the scope of their office. The Congresswoman stood on camera this morning claiming that she knew that the local DA had written racially biased emails and that the police had racial comments in emails and she wanted to get to the bottom of this and find out the true story about what happened to these VICTIMS.
I lived in Texas a few years ago and I know there are people there who are as bigoted as the day is long. And on the surface of it, it is a white guy shooting two black guys. Maybe he is a bigot...a racist with a real hatred for black people. That would make him a bad man, but would it make him a murderer? The problem with trying to figure it out from that angle is that you lose the perspective on what happened while dinking around with why it happened. The fact is that two criminals were caught in the act of committing a crime. They chose to come after the man who caught them, coming onto his property and threatening him to the point where he feared for his life. He shot them. We will never get to hear that so plainly again. Washington lawyers will muddy the waters to the point we will forget the facts of the case while we struggle to know what the shooter was thinking. The burglars will be victims, the shooter will be a bigot, Texas law will be smeared, again. Thought Police, here we come.
Every thing has to be racial. That is the capital of the Democrat Party. The minorities are victims. They need the Democrats to protect them from the white, conservative, gun-toting, racists. But you know what? It isn't illegal to be a white, conservative, gun-toting, racist...it is stupid, unwise and low...but not illegal. What shooter did was within the law in Texas and if the folks IN TEXAS feel that it needs to be changed, they have a means to do that IN TEXAS. U S Congress should not be involved.
Having said all this, am I now a bigot? Have I crossed some invisible race line and become politically incorrect? Am I now guilty of a "hate crime"? I don't think so, do you? Some times it isn't about race, it is just about what happened.