Here's the Real Tragedy of the Breonna Taylor Shooting
On March 13, 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was shot by police during a narcotics raid in Louisville, Kentucky. Officers found no drugs or cash that would indicate illegal activity.
In nationwide marches and demonstrations over the six months since the shooting, Taylor’s name has appeared alongside those of other black people killed by police officers. Peaceful protests soon gave way to chaos as rioters spread havoc under the rallying cries of racial and social justice.
Violence only surged after the announcement Wednesday that a grand jury had decided not to indict any of the officers involved in Taylor’s death on murder charges. Riots swept through the city all night and into Thursday morning, leaving two police officers shot and hundreds of agitators behind bars.
There’s no doubt that the death of Taylor, who was unarmed, was a tragedy.
Far from the left’s characterization of her shooting as an execution-by-cop, however, the hail of gunfire that hit Taylor was actually return fire, given after Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot at officers entering the apartment.
Walker maintains that officers knocked without identifying themselves and his initial shot was in fear of an active home invasion. Police say they both knocked and identified themselves, and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said Wednesday that was corroborated by an “independent witness.”
Since the warrant was for a no-knock raid, officers were empowered to enter without announcing. Whether they announced themselves that early March morning doesn’t seem to matter much, because the core problem still remains:
Walker, who was not a subject of the investigation, reacted how any legal gun owner would if a door were kicked in by an unidentified person.
And the officers, in the middle of an active raid, reacted how any cops would after being shot at and promptly returned fire.
Taylor was standing near Walker in the apartment hallway, a decision that quickly turned fatal as gunfire erupted. The only other injured person was an officer who is thought to have been struck by Walker’s shot.
Despite protesters’ demands of murder indictments for the involved officers, the grand jury ultimately cleared all but a single now-canned officer who was said to have “wantonly and blindly” fired into Taylor’s apartment. Rounds fired by the former officer, Brett Hankison, are not believed to have hit Taylor.
This shooting clearly wasn’t a product of racism — Walker, an armed black man, is still alive despite allegedly shooting a cop, after all — but rather a saddening result of Americans’ right to bear arms existing alongside no-knock warrants.
Instead of dealing with the complicated conflict of rights and security at the root of Taylor’s death, Democrats and the left began to spin a narrative and outright lie about the shooting.
The Democratic Party still maintains a claim that police did not have a warrant, and even fundraised off the lie. Many others have spread this claim and other disinformation about the shooting.
The narrative spinning put on by the left and its mainstream media cronies only helped fuel the destruction that is still terrorizing American cities.
Six months after the killing of Taylor, shattered lives are plentiful but meaningful change is noticeably absent.
A bill introduced by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act, sits ignored in the Senate.
The act would bar the use of no-knock warrants and pull crucial federal funding from departments that refuse to comply. Paul, seemingly the only lawmaker to push for simple and effective change, remains a target of the same racial justice mob operating to ensure “justice” for Taylor.
WATCH: Protesters confronted Kentucky Senator Rand Paul after attending the RNC at the White House, shouting at the lawmaker to acknowledge the shooting of Breonna Taylor https://t.co/JmxvZJy29u pic.twitter.com/tTONwewPcR
— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 28, 2020
Taylor’s death was tragic, but an even greater tragedy is unfolding as activists and agitators turn an opportunity for unity and positive change into racial and social division.
Fueled by a constant stream of disinformation from a broad range of leftist groups, you can expect the ongoing civil unrest to only increase in the weeks leading up to and after the hotly contested 2020 election.
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