Black assailants' lives matter, Black victims' lives don't

LeBron James apparently deleted a tweet in which he posted, "YOU'RE NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY" with a picture of police officer Nicholas Reardon, who shot Ma'Khia Bryant, who is on body cam video brandishing a knife within a foot of another Black person (the one in the pink outfit).

This underscores the accuracy of what the student who was forced out of "canceler" Hardin-Simmons University posted about Black Lives Matter.  If Bryant had succeeded in killing the other Black woman, the latter would be just one more anonymous crime victim as opposed to a useful martyr to the Cause.  If Hakim Littleton, who is on body cam video pointing a gun at a cop's head, had succeeded in killing the officer instead of being shot dead by the cop's partner, the officer would be just one more anonymous dead "pig" as opposed to a useful martyr to the Cause.

The body cam video of Reardon shows, meanwhile, that he probably saved the Black victim from death or serious injury by placing four shots into the body of her assailant, and nowhere else, even though Bryant was essentially on top of the victim. That might be easy enough to do on a firing range with inanimate shoot/don't shoot targets with enough practice, but it's a lot harder when you have to do it with an innocent person in your line of fire and perhaps less than a second to save her life.

Our country used to call police, firefighters, and paramedics who save the lives of innocent people "heroes" — and some of us still do.  Officer Reardon deserves a commendation, but the "woke" left prefers to call cops who take any Black life, even a perp threatening another Black life, racists, murderers, and white supremacists.  This includes Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, who libelously accused the officer who shot Michael Brown in self-defense of "murder."  Both are attorneys and should know full well that a false public accusation of murder is libel per se.

While not directly relevant to the death of Bryant, here is an outrageous statement from Nancy Pelosi about George Floyd that is well worth quoting to swing voters ahead of the 2022 election.  "Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice."  Let's see if we can help Nancy out here.  Civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered for trying to register Black people to vote in Mississippi, sacrificed their lives for justice.  Martin Luther King, who was murdered for his civil rights activities, sacrificed his life for justice.  George Floyd was a thug who did prison time for robbing a pregnant woman at gunpoint, and his sole claim to fame is that he later ran into another thug with a badge and a gun he should not have had.

James is not the only member of the "woke" left to use the occasion to attack police.  The Washington Post, which is hardly a right-wing source, reports that Kiara Yakita, the head of Black Liberation Movement Central Ohio, said, "Law enforcement and city officials are rushing to make excuses because she had a knife.  Those excuses are not valid to me."  Perhaps Ms. Yakita would be just fine with the police standing by and talking nicely to an assailant of any race brandishing a knife within a foot of her, as opposed to shooting the assailant.

Yakita, however, seems to have the support of the president of the United States, who said, "Instead of standing there and teaching a cop when there's an unarmed person coming at them with a knife or something, shoot them in the leg instead of in the heart ..."  Who needs stand-up comedians when the head of the Democrat party says, with a straight face, "unarmed with a knife"?  It is contrary to law enforcement doctrine to shoot to wound.  If your life or somebody else's is in danger, you can't use less than decisive force, and if nobody's life is in danger, it's probably illegal to aim a gun at somebody at all, let alone fire it.  Joe Biden is an attorney; he ought to know this, and he also ought to know that you cannot legally (in most jurisdictions) fire a gun into the air to scare off prowlers.

Think about it: the current occupant of the White House and head of the Democrat party has (1) tried to equate the Second Amendment with a right to hunt, which means firearm ownership can be limited to arms suitable for hunting; (2) depicted knife-wielding assailants as unarmed; (3) advocated shooting to wound in contravention of generally accepted law enforcement practices; and (4) encouraged the unlawful and possibly felonious reckless discharge of firearms.  His vice president is meanwhile an attorney who thinks it is OK to tweet false accusations of felonies against identifiable people.  One wonders why Twitter banned Donald Trump but not Kamala Harris.

The student who was forced out of Hardin-Simmons was 100 percent right.  Black Lives Matter and its associates do not care when a Black person kills another Black person, or a criminal of any race kills a cop of any race, as Hakim Littleton tried to do and Stephen Cannon allegedly did to David Dorn.  The bodycam video shows clearly that Ma'Khia Bryant was menacing another person with a knife and was close enough to use it.  The object looks like a knife to any reasonable person who watches the video and therefore looked like a knife to Officer Reardon, which is by itself the prerequisite for the use of deadly force.  In addition, the object was then discovered afterward to have in fact been a knife.  Had the woman in the pink outfit been killed or seriously harmed, it would not be convenient for BLM, LeBron James, and so on to say her name, but it is convenient for them to say Bryant's name.  This tells us everything we need to know about their credibility.

Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way.  The author is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to "cancel culture" for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.

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