Tucker Carlson: Self defense is becoming illegal
WARNING: Graphic footage—Fox News host Tucker Carlson voices his concerns over rising crime on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
It used to be before liberals embraced authoritarianism that they would talk a lot about rights. You're right. My right. Everything was a right, a right to health care, Miranda rights. You couldn’t debate whether those rights or not.
But if you're talking about rights, you at some point want to identify the most basic human right of all. What is that? Well, of course, it's the right of self-defense. That's the essential right upon which all other rights depend. If you can't defend yourself, you can't defend your family and your property, you don't have any rights at all. You're a slave by definition.
So, you may be wondering in this moment of creeping authoritarianism, how is the right to self-defense doing in our country? We could give some kind of long lecture, but instead, how about some examples? Consider two shootings that took place at gas stations in the past year in the United States. The first shooting occurred around 2 p.m. on October 6 in the state of Missouri. A 23-year-old felon called Ja'Von Taylor, who had a long criminal record of convictions for armed robbery, for example, began threatening a female clerk, apparently because the gas station didn't carry the kind of cigars that he wanted.
That's when an off-duty fireman called Anthony Santi, who was inside, decided to step in. He told Ja'Von Taylor to leave the store. Well, in response to that, Taylor began threatening him and then ran toward his SUV outside. Santi followed him outside because he suspected that Ja'Von Taylor would retrieve a gun from the car and that's exactly what he did. Javon Taylor pulled an illegal handgun with an extended magazine from his SUV.
Santi, not wanting to get shot, put Taylor in a headlock and that's when Ja'Von Taylor handed the gun to his girlfriend and his girlfriend shot the unarmed fireman in the back, killing him. It was an execution. It's not a close call. The footage is online. We're not going to show it to you because it's awful. But if you have any doubt, you can watch it.
So, there's no debate about what happened here. And yet the local social justice D.A., Jean Peters Baker, refused to press charges against the person who killed the firefighter. Now, why? Well, there may have been a political component and we know that because online BLM activists immediately celebrated the killing on racial grounds. Ja'Von Taylor is Black, Anthony Santi was White. That was enough for them. They're glad he's dead.
Now consider the second gas station shooting. This one happened just before midnight, less than a month ago in Austin, Texas. An armed man with a long criminal record called Marquis Demps walked into a Shell station and became violent. Here's a report from the local Fox station describing what happened next.
REPORTER: Customers who frequent the family-owned Shell gas station on East MLK and Springdale can't say enough good things about 25-year-old employee Yaseen Naz. They're stunned to hear Naz is charged with first degree murder after police say he shot and killed 42-year-old Marquis Demps outside the store late Saturday night. According to court documents, Demps came into the store and caused a verbal disturbance that turned physical.
COP: There was some type of altercation happening inside the store, and that's what started everything.
REPORTER: Demps, waving a knife at the workers, so Naz grabbed a gun telling him to leave. Instead, Demps began trashing the store. Naz's father, showing us the damaged merchandise in display cases, the credit card machine ripped out of the counter. As Demps left, Naz followed him into the parking lot and shot him multiple times through his car window.
So, a guy with a criminal record and a knife in his hand starts trashing your store and then runs outside to his car. You see, Naz told police later that he shot Marquis Demps because he feared for his life. He thought the guy was going to get a gun and come back and kill him. And that's a reasonable fear, of course. The Anthony Santi murder demonstrates that it is, But in this case, the D.A., a Soros-funded anti-police political activist called Jose Garza, is pressing charges against the clerk. He wants you to see Naz – a man who's widely respected in his community and who actually contributes to our society, as you just heard – he's trying to send that man to prison for the rest of his life.
So, put these two cases together, consider them in tandem. What's the message? Well, the message is if a violent felon starts terrorizing people in your store, ripping your store apart on which you rely for your livelihood, you can't do anything. If he goes back to his car to get a gun, you have to let it happen. So, get shot or go to jail for the rest of your life. Those are your choices, which of course, are not really choices at all. And these are not isolated cases that we cherry pick to make some polemical point. It's happening everywhere.
We saw it happen to Jose Alba last summer in New York. He's the bodega clerk the prosecutor sent to Rikers Island on a murder charge because he fought back when a thug and other convicted felon attacked him with his girlfriend in the store. Now, that charge was ultimately dropped after the public flipped out because it was so unfair, but Alba left this country for the Dominican Republic because he saw where things are going.
Self-defense, the cornerstone of all freedoms without which you cannot be free, you are owned, self-defense is becoming illegal, in effect, in a lot of places and not just in very liberal places like New York City, even in states where some of the strongest self-defense laws on the books.
Arizona, for example, allows residents to shoot trespassers on their property. So, 73-year-old George Alan Kelly lived right on the border. Now, you may have heard that Joe Biden opened the border to millions and millions of people from other countries whose identities we don't know to just walk in. So, if you live on the border, this has changed your life completely, and it scared you. George Alan Kelly was one of those people, lives on the border. He's seeing this firsthand. Now he is in jail tonight, charged with first degree murder, because he shot an illegal alien who trespassed onto his ranch in Kino Springs. That's less than two miles from the border. This happened January 30, just the other day.
Now, we don't know the details of the altercation between the man in prison and the man he killed. But the man in prison has no record of killing anyone else. He's not a convicted felon. He does not have a violent history. The man he killed was an illegal migrant called Gabriel Cuen-Butimea, and he was deported several times to the United States, but let back in. We're not attacking him, just noting him. That's true.
So, George Alan Kelly apparently felt threatened and shot that illegal migrant, but prosecutors did not give him the benefit of the doubt. They instantly charged him with first degree murder. So, here he is, George Alan Kelly, this is the guy who, according to Arizona authorities, is a dangerous risk to public safety, who must spend the rest of his life in prison. Assess: Does he seem dangerous to you?
PHILADELPHIA WOMAN CONVICTED AS TEEN OF KILLING WWII VET EXONERATED
GEORGE ALAN KELLY: I notice coming in, Your Honor, my wife is present in the court. May I ask her to make an appointment for audio/visual conference? And I've not been able to talk to her or anyone.
JUDGE: So, that's something that has to be discussed with the detention facility downstairs. So, that conversation would have to be had with them, sir. OK. So, if your wife wants to have communication with you, she can go to the sheriff's office and they can go ahead and make the proper accommodations that they need to make.
KELLY: Appreciate you giving that instruction.
This is an elderly man who can barely walk, who has never been convicted of a violent crime, and he's being treated like a child by some disembodied voice from some fascist. That's what you just saw.
Now, the judge in this case is called Emilio Velasquez. Now, who's Emilio Velasquez? He's a judge. He doesn't even have a law degree. He's not a lawyer and yet he's a judge. He's an elected politician and he is allowing the prosecution of an American citizen who exercised his rights under Arizona law and his most basic human right, which is if someone comes onto your property, and you feel threatened by it, you have a right to defend yourself by force. Period. But Velasquez does not acknowledge that right and so he set the bail for this elderly man whose wife is living alone in their home right near the border at $1,000,000.
NEVADA MAN CONVICTED OVER GUNFIGHT IN CROWDED MINNESOTA BAR
So, news of this case obviously traveled past Arizona, and people were justly outraged by what is being done to this man. So, people were trying to raise money to pay that bail on GoFundMe, but GoFundMe wouldn't allow that. This elderly man rotting in jail while wife lives alone on a border that the Democratic Party has kept open, you can't raise money for his bail. They shut down – GoFundMe shut down the effort to raise bail for this guy. Now, of course, you can raise money for BLM as they burn our country down to make sure Donald Trump is not re-elected, but you're not allowed to raise money for people being held on $1,000,000 bail on first degree murder charges for defending their own property along an open border. True insanity and a danger to all of us.
Even in Texas, which in some places is still a free state, self-defense is slowly becoming illegal. A few weeks ago, a thug walked into a taco shop holding what looked to be a gun, scared the hell out of everybody inside and stole their money. He pointed this gun, turned out to be fake, at several customers.
How would you feel if you were there in the restaurant and some lunatic with a gun starts shoving the barrel in people's faces and stealing their money? Well, one brave man stood up and eliminated the threat. Here it is.
REPORTER: A man wearing a mask and gloves inside the taqueria around 11:30 Thursday night, pointing what looks like a gun at customers while demanding money. As some hide and throw cash, this man takes action just as the robber heads to the door still with his gun drawn.
RESTAURANT OWNER: He picked up the money, turned around and left and that's when the customer got up and shot him.
REPORTER: The shooter, angry, realizing the robber's gun is plastic and returning the stolen money to customers, taking a sip of his drink and leaving before police arrive.
So, it would be interesting – and we should do this – play that video for the entire country and let's have a national referendum on what ought to happen to the man who shot the armed robber. You're eating with your family in a restaurant, some lunatic in a mask comes in and shoves a gun in your face, what you think is a gun, and steals your money, and somebody stands up and shoots him back. What percentage of Americans think that guys should go to jail? Right around zero, probably, but Houston police, along with the county district attorney, are putting that man in front of a grand jury to send him to prison. They're saying he shot the criminal one too many times.
Ok, it's not hard to see why people are making sure they're putting down violent thugs. If they don't, they'll get out of jail and start terrorizing more people. That is happening everywhere. Just happened in Tupelo, Mississippi, in September. Mississippi is the state controlled by Republicans. The politicians in Mississippi started letting felons out on parole, and that would include a man called Chris Copeland, who's 26. He had multiple convictions for burglary and auto theft. Copeland was out on probation, executed a clerk inside a Chevron after robbing him. He made that clerk, a man called Parmvir Singh, sit down and then shot him in the back of the head. This footage is awful, but it's real. Turn away if you don't want to see it.
Just executed him. So, politicians can feel like good and virtuous people by giving a second chance to felons. By the way, felons do deserve a second chance. Not everyone in prison deserves to be there, but when you let people out wholesale and they don't keep track of them, just expect the best, you're going to get psychopaths like Chris Copeland into the general population and they're going to execute store clerks who are the last people deserve to be executed. They're working for like eight bucks an hour to sell you lotto tickets.
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Patricia McCloskey and her husband Mark McCloskey draw their firearms on protestors as they enter their neighbourhood during a protest against St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson, in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. June 28, 2020. REUTERS/Lawrence Bryant/File Photo (REUTERS/Lawrence Bryant/File Photo)
Meanwhile, people who defend themselves against criminals get the maximum possible sentence. The government gets to defend itself with bodyguards. Politicians have tons of bodyguards you pay for.
Congress is so afraid of the people that govern, they built a wall around the Capitol this week, but you can't fight back. And we begin to see this accelerate in 2020 during the BLM riots. So, a BLM mob broke the gate into Mark and Patricia's McCloskey's property in St Louis. They were having dinner. All of a sudden the mob shows up and so in response, they did what you would do if you were awake, you grab your firearms. You don’t shoot anybody. Back off. Those firearms were lawfully owned. They were on their property, as was the mob.
Remember that? They were racist. Right. A group of highly entitled children of orthodontists showed up on their property to threaten them, and they said, back off. So, they're racist, said The Washington Post.
And then, of course, a Soros-backed prosecutor called Kim Gardner, charge them, charge the McCloskeys with crime, not the mob, the McCloskeys for daring to defend themselves. Their guns were seized. Now, the point of this, of course, is not to make anybody safer. Just the opposite and Saint Louis has not become safer, has become much more dangerous. Under Kim Gardner, the city has experienced its highest murder rate in decades.
So, public safety is not the point. The point is disarming you so you can't defend yourself against their plans for you.
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