Lady Killers – OpEd

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As the great state of Minnesota recently confirmed, a police officer of Somali extraction can gun down an unarmed woman who called 911 to report a crime, get his murder conviction tossed, and gain release after serving only 57 months. That works out to less than five years for Mohamed Noor, who will walk free in the new year.

As the U.S. Congress and Department of Justice have confirmed, a Capitol Police officer can gun down an unarmed woman and face no criminal charges at all. The lucky shooter is Lt. Michael Byrd, the officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt on January 6. The Capitol Police claimed that officer Byrd “acted lawfully and in line with police department policy.” Back on April 15, the Justice Department said it “will not pursue criminal charges against the officer involved in the fatal shooting of Babbitt, a veteran of the Air Force.

As the FBI, Justice Department, and former Attorney General William Barr have confirmed, an FBI sniper can gun down an unarmed, innocent woman holding her infant child and suffer no criminal penalty. That case, from 1992, foreshadowed the killing of Ashli Babbitt.

Julie Kelly took the trouble to call Ashli’s mother, Michie Witthoeft. Witthoeft had called her state’s senior senator, San Francisco Democrat Dianne Feinstein. Perhaps she thought that Feinstein, mother of former Superior Court Judge Katherine Feinstein, would understand the loss of a daughter. Babbitt’s mother was wrong.

“Dianne Feinstein will never have two minutes for you,” snapped an angry staffer. “If your daughter hadn’t stormed the Capitol, she wouldn’t have been shot.” That recalls Feinstein’s response to the 1992 Ruby Ridge incident, when an FBI sniper killed the unarmed Vicki Weaver.

The Weaver family moved to rural Idaho, seeking a safe place in dangerous times. Husband Randy was branded a “white separatist” and the ATF tried to entrap him on a gun charge. An exchange of fire claimed the lives of U.S. Marshal William Degan and Weaver’s 14-year-old son, Samuel.

That brought in the FBI, which called in 400 heavily armed agents, with helicopters, armored personnel carriers, and trained snipers, all deployed against a single family. The FBI’s rules of engagement allowed agents to shoot on sight. FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot Randy’s wife Vicki in the head as she held her infant daughter. Horiuchi was a West Point grad who served in the U.S. Army. Military snipers are trained carefully to “acquire” their targets, so there is little chance the killing was accidental.

In September 1995, Randy Weaver testified:

On August 22, 1992, completely without warning of any kind, an FBI sniper shot and killed my wife, Vicki. He was using a .308 caliber sniper rifle with a specially weighted barrel and a 10-power scope. He was using match grade ammunition. He had years of training to kill. I heard him testify at the trial that he wanted to kill. He shot my wife in the head and killed her. She was not wanted for any crime. There were no warrants for her arrest. At the time she was gunned down, she was helpless. She was standing in the doorway of her home. She was holding the door open for me and Sara and for Kevin Harris. She was holding Elisheba, our 10-month-old baby girl, in her arms. As the bullet crashed through her head, she slumped to her knees, holding Elisheba tightly so she would not drop her. We took the baby from her as she lay dead and bleeding on our kitchen floor.

Democratic Senators Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) sympathized with the Weaver family, but none of that sympathy came from Feinstein, who asked Weaver, “Did your children actually wear Nazi armbands and shout Nazi slogans at neighbors?” For the San Francisco Democrat, the Weavers were Nazis, and by implication Vicki Weaver got what she deserved.

Louis Freeh, the Clinton pick for FBI boss, expressed “regret and sorrow for Mrs. Weaver’s death,” which was “tragic but accidental.” Contrary to what Freeh claimed, the FBI believed Vicki was the ringleader, and therefore a prime target. As Horiuchi testified, the FBI sniper could see through the cabin door window. For Freeh, a former federal judge, the sniper’s second shot was “constitutional,” which is not a conclusion from evidence.

Freeh referred to the “murder” of U.S. Marshal Degan, which was inaccurate given the 1993 trial that acquitted Weaver and Harris on that charge. “Serious mistakes occurred with regard to the Ruby Ridge incident,” said Freeh, who promoted Larry Potts, the agent in charge, to deputy director of the FBI, only to demote him when controversy ensued.

Attorney General William Barr spent two weeks organizing former attorney generals to defend Lon Horiuchi, the sniper whose kill-shot on Vicki Weaver was “constitutional” and also an accident, one of the many “mistakes” that could have been avoided but weren’t. In 1997, Horiuchi was charged with involuntary manslaughter but the charge was dismissed a year later.

For current FBI boss Christopher Wray, the January 6 trespassers are “domestic terrorists”—code for anyone less than worshipful of the Biden junta. In similar style, the National School Boards Association branded as “domestic terrorists” those parents protesting racist indoctrination in public schools (until intense pressure forced them to recant). Current Attorney General Merrick Garland has threatened to deploy the FBI against these protesting parents.

Across the country, embattled Americans protest the steady demolition of their rights, freedoms, and prosperity. By the 30th anniversary of Ruby Ridge next August, those protests will surely be surging. As in 2020, the Democrats’ Black Lives Matter and Antifa militias—“mostly peaceful protesters” to Democrats—will be out in force hoping to confront these Americans.

The FBI, which did nothing about deadly BLM and Antifa riots in 2020, now regards anti-Biden protesters as terrorists. The FBI knows it can kill Americans with impunity, even if the targets are unarmed females not charged with any crime and holding an infant daughter.

The Capitol Police know they can kill unarmed women with impunity, and cops in Minneapolis know they can murder an unarmed 911 caller and get off lightly. All over America, things could soon get very . . . exciting. As inspector Claude Lebel told Madame de Montpellier in “The Day of the Jackal,” be in no doubt as to the seriousness of your position.

This article was also published in American Greatness

K. Lloyd Billingsley

K. Lloyd Billingsley is a Policy Fellow at the Independent Institute and a columnist at The Daily Caller.

One thought on “Lady Killers – OpEd

  • October 31, 2021 at 2:07 am
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    Ashli Babbitt was part of a mob that attacked the Capital and unmercifully beat police officers. She was trying to get at the Vice President of United States. What do you think would’ve happened if they climbed the fence at the White House and tried storming the doors. Sir you know better!!!

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