How is it a man defending people in a restaurant is a “vigilante,” but thousands of people rioting, killing people and destroying property are “protesters?”
The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language.
George Bernard Shaw
The late Rush Limbaugh had a great quote, “Words mean things.” He had another one, a warning, “We’re losing the language.” Examples of that are “comprehensive immigration reform” (amnesty and open borders), “common sense gun laws” (regulation and confiscation), and “bond reform,” (releasing felons with no bond).
I was reminded of this in the last couple of weeks in Houston TX. On January 5th, a man walked into a restaurant, took out a gun and started to rob every person in the place. While he robbed the customers of the diners, another man got up and shot the robber, killing him. The shooter then retrieved the items the man stole, returned them to the owners, then drove off.
The shooter contacted the police later that week through his attorney and is pending a grand jury review. This is normal for anyone who uses deadly force. The grand jury needs to determine if this was legitimate use of deadly force, or should the man be indicted. Now a few points on this matter:
The usual suspects are screaming about “Stand your Ground” laws. That has nothing to do with this incident. The question is did the shooter, at the time he fired, believed he had legitimate fear for life or serious bodily injury of himself or a third person. Unquestionably, he did, in spite of the weapon actually being a realistic looking plastic gun.
In a recent interview with the robber’s mother, she asked why did the man shoot her son so many times. Ms. Goodman said Mr. Washington called her a few hours before the robbery, saying “he was trying to be the best person I can be.”
Not trying to rub salt into the wounds of Ms. Goodman (she is going through a parent’s worst nightmare) but once the threshold of justified deadly force is reached, you can use it until the perceived threat is gone, from the viewpoint of the shooter.
To be blunt, the deceased was not a cornerstone of the neighborhood. From the local Fox station:
Court records show that Washington and two others were arrested for an armed robbery in 2013 when a man was killed. Washington was convicted of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon in the case and received a sentence of 15 years in prison.
Washington served almost six years in prison before being released on parole in January 2021, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Last month, he was charged with assault of a family member, and accused of grabbing and scratching his girlfriend. At the time of the restaurant shooting, he had been released on bond.
Now as that as background, I draw your attention to these headlines, emphasis mine. First, the London Daily Mail:
Robber, 30, shot dead by vigilante in TX had long prior rap sheet
A Texas grand jury will decide whether or not criminal charges should be brought against a customer who shot and killed a robber in a Houston taqueria last week. Eric Eugene Washington (pictured left), 30, died after being shot nine times – with one bullet hitting him execution-style in the head – by a vigilante customer who was said to be ‘protecting everyone’ in the restaurant.
Now the UK Guardian:
Search for Texas vigilante who fatally shot robbery suspect carrying fake gun
Man fired nine shots and then helped diners recover the money at the Houston taqueria restaurant before disappearing
Texas police are searching for a vigilante diner who shot dead a suspected robber carrying a fake gun in a Houston taqueria, then helped diners recover the money and disappeared.
The incident, captured by surveillance video inside the Ranchito #4 Taqueria in south-west Houston, shows the man drawing a weapon and killing the robbery suspect by shooting him multiple times, including in the back and head.
The robber’s weapon was later revealed by police to be a “plastic gun”, either an air-soft or BB gun…
…During the incident, the vigilante diner was seen reaching for something, then drawing his weapon as the suspect walked by heading for the exit…
…He then collected and returned the stolen money to diners, leaving the scene before police arrived…
Vigilante? I find that word, in this use, very curious. Let’s start with a definition from the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language:
Vigilante:
a member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate.
Can the shooter be called a vigilante? I would say absolutely not. Did he take the law into his own hands because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate? No. He took direct action to counteract an immediate threat to himself and several other people.
So why does the 4th Estate want to make a fairly clear narrative and phrase it so it’s inaccurate. Not by mistake, but by deliberate action. Am I being cynical by calling this deliberate. I don’t think do.
A few years ago rioters took to multiple cities in the US and caused billions in damage and dozens of deaths. But the Guardian never called these rioters “vigilantes” or rioters, but
protesters, implying peaceful demonstrations. The Floyd riots were many things, but for the most part they were very violent in our major cities (New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis). A running joke was a reporter calling a riot in Kenosha WI “mostly peaceful” as there are building burning behind him.
The point of this? We cannot have a discussion when the facts are, to put it simply, lied about. You can have issues with the police action with George Floyd, peacefully protest, fine. But when the entity, the press, that’s constitutionally charged with providing truthful information is at best distorting, at worse lying about controversial events, we have a major problem. We cannot function without communications, and we cannot communicate without a common language. We need to get that back.
Michael A. Thiac is a retired Army intelligence officer, with over 23 years experience, including serving in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. He is also a retired police patrol sergeant, with over 22 years’ service, and over ten year’s experience in field training of newly assigned officers. He has been published at The American Thinker, PoliceOne.com, and on his personal blog, A Cop’s Watch.
Opinions expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of current or former employers
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You can’t have an equal or fair discourse with someone who has pre-empted fair discourse by an overwhelming ideological bent. That is the media. Their way of getting away with it is that they aren’t having anything, other than a one way conversation. All we can do is rebut it, but never to their faces, only when we write or talk about it to others.
In other words, I don’t see how they, who have that ideological interrupt can report anything, but propaganda, do you?
Rush also called them the “Drive By Media”, for the same reason.
“The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language.
George Bernard Shaw”
Typical nonsense said by an old communist. I’ll bet Shaw thought of himself as profound by saying that witty piece of tripe.