Misleading Media Happens On Both Ends Of The Political Spectrum

The mainstream media does not have a monopoly on biased news. Many Americans, myself included, have reached the point where if we didn’t see it with our own eyes, we are not convinced in happened. Unfortunately, the bias can go both ways. Right now we see the political left working to undermine the Second Amendment. Unfortunately they have some serious ammunition–some deeply troubled people with guns have behaved very badly lately. However, that is no excuse to take guns away from honest, hard-working people who own them for self-defense.

Recently there was a case in Texas where Daniel Perry was found guilty of murder after Soros-backed District Attorney Jose Garza sought murder charges for an act of self defense during the 2020 George Floyd riots. The words underlined are from an article posted at The Gateway Pundit on April 10. Note that the article includes the fact that the District Attorney had a connection to George Soros and that the article states self-defense as a given.

The article reports:

This weekend the lead detective in the case, David Fugitt, filed an affidavit following the shocking verdict in the case.

According to Fugitt, District Attorney Joze Garza and his office had him remove 100 pages of exculpatory evidence in the case. The DA’s office had him shorten his presentation from 158 slides to 56 slides.

Fugitt added that this was likely criminal behavior.

On April 9, Legal Insurrection posted an article about the same murder and verdict.

Legal Insurrection reports:

This past Friday, April 7, 2023, Daniel Perry was found guilty in the 2020 murder of Garret Foster during a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin.

The confrontation between the two men occurred as Perry was driving his Uber vehicle amongst a crowd of protestors in the street, and while Foster was among the protestors carrying an AK-47 on a sling. The rifle-armed Foster approached the driver’s side door of Perry’s car, Perry rolled down his window, and shot at Foster five times with a pistol, striking him with three rounds, effectively killing Foster instantly.

…From the start Perry would be arguing that he shot Foster in self-defense, and only after Foster had pointed his rifle at Perry.

And right there we have the key issue in this murder trial. Certainly, if the jury believed that Perry fired only after Foster pointed his rifle at him, there could hardly be a clearer case of self-defense. Indeed, as someone who personally carries a firearm for self-defense on a regular basis, anyone who unlawfully points a rifle at me ought to have a high expectation of getting shot in self-defense.

Social media was outraged at the conviction of Daniel Perry. However, there is more to the story:

The problem with this outrage, however, is that it presumes as an indisputable fact that Foster initiated the deadly force confrontation by pointing his rifle at Perry.

That “fact,” however, is not indisputable. Indeed, that fact was aggressively disputed by the prosecution, which argued to the jury that Foster never pointed his rifle at Perry, and so Perry’s claimed legal grounds for shooting Foster in self-defense simply doesn’t exist.

In support of this narrative of guilt the prosecution presented the testimony of multiple witnesses who told the jury that Foster never pointed his rifle at Perry. The confrontation itself was captured on poor quality video, from which screen captures were secured, and neither video nor stills ever show Foster pointing his gun at Perry.

My point is this. If we are going to argue for the Second Amendment and the idea that a man has a right to defend himself, we should be careful to check our facts. Both sides of the argument are very capable of stretching the truth to achieve a goal.