Apparently, it’s open season on Black Lives Matter protesters in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott didn’t even bother waiting for the sentencing of a man convicted of shooting and killing a protester supporting the movement before announcing he plans to pardon the shooter. Never mind that a jury has unanimously determined that the shooting was not, as the man claims, in self-defense. The case confirms yet again that the GOP’s once-consistent stance for law and order is now politically situational. It also spotlights the dangerous environment red states have created with stand-your-ground laws and open-carry permissiveness on guns.
Most of the facts aren’t in dispute. During a July 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Austin over the killing of George Floyd that summer, Daniel Perry drove his car into the crowd. Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster approached the car. Both men were white military veterans and, under Texas’ wide-open gun laws, both were legally carrying firearms. Foster had an AK-47 rifle strapped to his chest and Perry had a handgun in his car.
Perry fired five shots at Foster, then sped off, then later turned himself in. He maintained at trial that Foster pointed the rifle at him. That assertion was disputed by witnesses and called into question by Perry’s own interview with police, in which he told them he fired because “I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me.” The fact that Perry had earlier posted social-media comments expressing his desire to shoot protesters didn’t bolster his claim of self-defense.
