And the restoration of firearm rights
Daniel Perry, a former US Army sergeant who was convicted of murdering a protester at a Black Lives Matter rally in 2020, was released from prison Thursday after he was pardoned by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Abbott’s decision comes after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously Thursday to recommend a full pardon and the restoration of firearm rights for Perry, who was sentenced last year to 25 years in prison. Shortly after he was pardoned, Perry was released from Texas Department of Criminal Justice custody, a spokesperson for the agency told CNN.
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Perry faced between five and 99 years in prison for fatally shooting 28-year-old Air Force veteran Garrett Foster at an Austin, Texas, racial justice rally two months after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
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“Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney. I thank the Board for its thorough investigation, and I approve their pardon recommendation,” Abbott said.
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Prosecutors said Perry, who was stationed at Fort Hood, initiated the fatal encounter when he ran a red light and drove his vehicle into a crowd gathered at the protest. Foster was openly carrying an assault-style rifle – legal in Texas – and approached Perry’s car and motioned for him to lower his window, at which point Perry fatally shot him with a handgun, prosecutors said.
“Today, a convicted murderer will walk the streets of Texas. Texas Republicans have once again proven that they cannot keep the public safe, they are not the party of ‘tough on crime,’ and they are not the party of ‘law and order,’” Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement responding to the pardon.
He added: “Make no mistake: Daniel Perry is a murderer who was on a mission to commit violence against Texans, and today our justice system was hijacked for political gain.”
In a statement on Thursday, Foster’s former fiancée, Whitney Mitchell, said she is “heartbroken by this lawlessness,” adding Abbott has shown that “only certain lives matter.”
“He has made us all less safe. Daniel Perry texted his friends about plans to murder a protestor he disagreed with,” she said. “After a lengthy trial, with an abundance of evidence, 12 impartial Texans determined he that he carried out that plan, and murdered the love of my life.”
“With this pardon, the Governor has desecrated the life of a murdered Texan, impugned that jury’s just verdict, and declared that citizens can be killed with impunity as long as they hold political views that are different from those in power,” Mitchell said.
Do we think Abbott would have done this if the races had been reversed? If Foster had shot Perry instead of the other way around?
No we do not.
The current Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles is not fit for purpose. Its members should be dismissed, and then replaced by people who are not evil fuckers.
He says this as if it’s a good thing. To me “stand your ground” is a smaller scale version of the Bush doctrine of “premptive war.” Part of George W. Bush’s rationale for going to war against Iraq was because Iraq was (supposedly) going to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States. By this same reasoning. Hussein would have been justified in attacking the US because it was preparing to attack him. You quickly get an infinite regress of immanent attack, fully justified by the correspondingly justified premptive plans of the other partner in this spiralling dance of death. The combination of a little theory of mind, a heaping teaspoon of paranoia, self-righteousness, and a portable, personal armoury just an itchy trigger finger away can launch exactly the same sort of chain of violence on the individual level.
Wait. At this point of the story, would not Foster be considered, in the orthodox, NRA approved reading of this narrative, “A good guy with a gun”? Would not Foster have been justified in shooting Perry to protect bystanders? Isn’t Foster allowed to stand his ground against someone using their vehicle as a weapon?
Yes, what of the overturning of the jury’s verdict? Doesn’t this go against the Republican stance against government interference of this kind?
That explains everything. It shouldn’t, but it does.
He’d 100% pardon a black MAGAtard for shooting a member of the enemy team. Race is less salient than tribal affiliation.
It’s not really unreasonable to murder someone carrying an assault rifle for that matter. The issue is both having access to the weapons in the first place. The message here is clear: if you’re further left than J. D. Vance your murder will be tolerated.
BKiSA, Texas has laws permitting open carry. If you murder everyone who is carrying a gun in your vicinity, pretty soon there won’t be anyone left in the state. Which might just be a dramatic version of the Darwin awards.
When a white guy carries a gun, everyone (well, everyone who is rightminded enough to support the NRA) says it’s his right under the second amendment. (Using he is just standard format; Lauren Boehbert has plenty of guns, and proudly sends Christmas cards demonstrating that). When a black guy carries a gun, why, it’s okay to murder him! One black guy shot by police had a gun in his car, and cue everyone coming out and saying the cop was just shooting in self-defense. He had a gun! Why, the man was practically begging to be shot!
All the “good guys with a gun” shoot all the other “good guys with a gun”, then all we have left are bad guys with guns and the rest of us.