The Kindling Of An Inferno
It’s impossible to deny the fact that if the Regime isn’t deliberately stoking racial conflict, they’re most certainly doing so as a consequence of their actions.
This hasn’t been a good time for the cause of gun rights or self-defense lately, has it?
The big case making headlines comes from Kansas City, Missouri, where an 84-year-old man shot a 16-year-old boy who apparently showed up at the wrong house trying to pick up family members. As is the case with these incidents, there’s a lot of noise, but not enough fact. I wanted to wait to learn more about the case before casting judgments and while there are still many unanswered questions, I think we know enough to make some initial observations.
Here’s a rundown on what happened published in Vox:
The shooting took place last Thursday [April 13, 2023] in Kansas City’s Northland neighborhood. {Ralph] Yarl was asked to pick up his twin brothers from a friend’s house, but accidentally went to 115th Street instead of 115th Terrace, which was just a block away.
According to Spoonmore’s post, the homeowner opened the door after Yarl rang the doorbell and then shot him in the head. After Yarl fell to the ground, the homeowner shot him again. Early evidence indicates that [Andrew] Lester shot Yarl through a glass door, with a handgun, Thompson said. Lester’s home has two doors, including an interior main door and a glass exterior storm door. In the probable cause statement, Lester said he brought his handgun with him when he went to answer the doorbell and open the main door. After opening the main door, Lester claimed he saw the teen put his hand on the exterior door handle and said he believed Yarl was trying to break in. Yarl said in his statement to police that he did not pull on the door.
Lester claimed that he was “scared to death” given Yarl’s size, and shot him to protect himself from a physical confrontation. Merritt, Yarl’s attorney, noted at a rally this week that the teen isn’t extraordinarily tall: “The question is, at 5-8 and 140 pounds, what did Andrew Lester look out and see?” Merritt asked. “And the answer is he saw a Black person. And for him, that was enough justification.”
Thompson noted that Yarl did not cross the threshold of the front door prior to the shooting. After he was shot, Spoonmore says Yarl sought help from neighboring houses and had to go to three places before finding someone who came to his aid.
Police said they responded to a call about Yarl’s injuries around 10 pm local time on Thursday. They said then that Yarl experienced a life-threatening injury but was in stable condition. Sunday, Yarl left the hospital and is set to continue his recovery at home.
Before going any further, this is as good a time as any to remind everyone: if you’re a gun owner, consider legal coverage at minimum, or a lawyer on retainer, if you can afford it! Don’t, under any circumstances, think you won’t have to defend yourself in court after a situation where you used deadly force. Self-defense is an “affirmative” defense, meaning you’re confessing to doing something that’d otherwise be regarded as a crime (homicide). Firms like Firearms Legal Protection or U.S. LawShield offer a coverage plan for a few hundred dollars yearly that provides all sorts of services in the event of a use-of-force incident. Don’t tell yourself it’s too expensive - guns and ammo are too expensive. If you think you can shoot someone, claim self-defense, and move on with your life, you’re in for a rude awakening.
Also, thank goodness 16-year-old Ralph Yarl survived! Had he succumbed to his injuries, this case would have a much different complexion and the shooter, Andrew Lester, would be charged with murder.
Here’s some background on the shooter. It doesn’t paint a flattering picture:
The ex-wife of the octogenarian charged with shooting Ralph Yarl said he was prone to violence during their troubled 14-year marriage — and that it “doesn’t surprise” her that he pulled a gun on the teenage boy when the child mistakenly showed up at his address.
Mary Clayton, 81, who was married to Andrew Lester when she was young, has not spoken to him in decades and didn’t even recognize him when he appeared in the news for allegedly shooting Yarl, who had shown up at his address instead of one a block over to pick up his siblings, the New York Times reported.
Clayton, who had three children with Lester, said one of her daughters called her in California on Tuesday in shock at the shooting.
“I was always scared of him. It doesn’t surprise me what happened,” Clayton told the newspaper.
She said her ex-husband had a tendency to erupt in anger and would smash items in their home during his fits of fury — adding that cops told her he could do whatever he wanted in his own home.
Actions taken by law enforcement, or lack thereof, appears to be a big part of the story. Initially, police didn’t charge Lester, leading to public complaints and protest, though it must be understood the incident occurred barely a week ago once he was finally arrested. Self-defense cases often take time to investigate, especially when there aren’t any witnesses to the immediate moment of violence itself, as was the case here.
Here’s what other family members, including his grandson, Klint Ludwig, had to say about Lester. Ludwig’s take is an important part of the story, as we’ll see later:
When asked if he considers Lester to be racist, Ludwig said: “I believe that there have been some positions that he’s held that have been bigoted or sort of disparaging.”
He attributed Lester’s views to his staunch conservative views.
“It’s ‘Anybody who gets an abortion is a murderer’ and ‘Fatherless black families are the reason why crime exists in this country.’ It’s stuff everybody’s heard at the Thanksgiving table every year,” Ludwig said.
Two other relatives told the Star they didn’t believe Lester was a racist and thought he likely fired at Yarl out of fear.
Ludwig said his grandfather’s paranoia escalated in the last two years.
“I hesitate to say he got more extreme, because all this stuff has been extreme,” he told the Star, “and it’s been the same story for decades and decades, and generation to generation of people believing the same things. It’s just nowadays people are acting on it a little bit more.”
He said Lester, a military veteran, was an avid hunter and longtime gun owner.
“Back in his younger days, he would be involved in shooting sports, and I don’t necessarily have a problem with using guns and having guns,” Ludwig said.
“It’s the paranoia that I think is a real issue,” he told the paper.
There’s a lot to unpack. Let’s begin with the self-defense angle. Assuming the information in the Vox story is accurate, it appears Lester made two critical errors. First, he opened the interior main door. Even with an exterior door, opening any door to a stranger at 10 pm is a major risk. He immediately put himself in a vulnerable position, whether he had a gun or not. There’s no reason he couldn’t have attempted to communicate with Yarl from behind a closed door. Opening the door when you’re in fear for your safety is about the dumbest thing a person can do.
Second, it seems Lester hardly assessed the situation prior to pulling the trigger. According to the statement he gave police, he fired within seconds of opening the door. This is consistent with Yarl’s own account of the incident, so there isn’t any question Lester opened fire almost immediately. Consider the threat triangle - means, motive, opportunity. Did Lester see a means of violence Yarl could’ve wielded against him? Unless being 6-feet tall (Yarl is actually 5’8”) is a threat in it of itself, I don’t see a means of violence here. What was the motive? If there was, we don’t know, since Lester seemingly didn’t even attempt to communicate with Yarl and opened fire instantly. As for opportunity, unless Yarl had actually breached the doors, there was still a barrier between him and his shooter. Lester claims Yarl had his hand on the doorknob, while Yarl denies it. But even if Yarl did, the lack of either a means or motive undermines Lester’s case that a threat existed, especially given he opened the inner door himself!
This is a bad shoot. Hands-down. Seeing a stranger at your front door alone is never justification for opening fire. The act of showing up to the wrong house isn’t a crime and, given the similarity in addresses, it’s a totally reasonable mistake on Yarl’s part. Really, if getting shot for showing up at the wrong residence merits a deadly force response, we’re going to have lots of innocent people getting killed in this country and I think we have enough of that already, don’t you think?
Many have noted the Castle Doctrine (or “Stand-Your-Ground”) applies in Missouri. However, the statute presumes reasonable action taken on the part of the defender and the presence of an actual threat at the time the shots were fired. Because Lester has already confessed to shooting at Yarl almost immediately after the door was opened and because there’s no other evidence beyond the two principals involved, his fate will come down to his ability to convince a grand jury and, possibly, a trial jury, a perceptible threat existed.
Those who identify more with Lester seem to believe, erroneously, that being in one’s home and merely feeling threatened absolves them of any responsibility and that a miscarriage of justice has occurred in Lester’s arrest and prosecution, but this is false. Self-defense excepted, homicide is almost always illegal and self-defense claims constitute an “affirmative” defense, meaning you are conceding to what’s otherwise a crime in order to claim the exception. Lester isn’t claiming he never shot Yarl, he’s claiming he shot him out of necessity.
But the real reason this case has drawn so much attention isn’t because it’s sparked a debate over self-defense rights (arguably the most important aspect of this case). Instead, it’s the racial aspect that’s made this a national headline. In case you missed it, Andrew Lester is White, Ralph Yarl Black. The Left, the media, and other Regime-aligned forces pounced instantly, citing this as a clear case of racial bigotry and White supremacy in practice, as if there’s no other reason, lawful or not, a White person could ever shoot a Black person.
Going back to the description of Lester, so much of his purported racism comes down to three things - his race, his political views, and his age. Maybe Lester held racist views that played a role in this shooting. I haven’t seen anything definitive. I’ve known people like Lester - isolated and hostile to a world they feel is hostile to them - and, like any of us, they harbor prejudices. But again, there are plenty of reasons beyond race for a person to feel like they needed to shoot someone at their front door. If someone really was trying to break into his home, would he not have had a justifiable reason to shoot the intruder, regardless of whether he was a racist or not?
Rod Dreher, in his own write-up on the incident, explains:
When I lived in Baton Rouge, for example, my neighborhood was mixed race, though predominantly white. Black neighbors and white neighbors got along well enough. That’s not news. What was news (though I don’t think it ever made it into the papers or on TV) was the crime wave when young black males — always young black males — would be filmed by people’s home security cameras stealing from cars in driveways, and from carports. If you were a homeowner there, and you saw young black men walking the streets, it was reasonable to be on guard, given the property crime problem, and the indisputable evidence (from cameras) that the thieves were always young black males. It was reasonable to be on guard even if you were a black homeowner. If somebody was going to break into your car at night in your driveway, it wasn’t going to be a white person.
Take a look at this incident. No, showing up at the wrong door doesn’t merit a death sentence, nor is everyone out there in the world a threat to your life. But it sure is a dangerous world, isn’t it (yes, that’s a gun in his hand)?
https://twitter.com/WMCActionNews5/status/1649415012077772817
I think the operative question is this: Would Lester have shot Yarl had he been White? Those of us who know how this stuff works understand that if you feel threatened, your fight-or-flight response overwhelms everything, including your prejudices. There’s no evidence Lester knew Yarl was Black until he opened that door, meaning the decision to shoot was made in just a few short seconds. If a White person had been at the door and was doing something that made Lester feel threatened and he’s that paranoid of a man, I think he makes the same choice.
Let’s consider Lester’s age for a moment. Having two aging parents of my own, I’ve grown to better understand that the older you get, the more vulnerable you feel. This is obviously due to the aging process and the fact that your mortality becomes impossible to deny as the years go by. Younger folks feel, if not invincible, certainly more capable of handling whatever life throws their way. Older folks, on the other hand, don’t have a choice because biology imposes limits which cannot easily be overcome through willpower alone. Certainly, this isn’t an excuse for imprudent behavior and I believe, based on the available facts, Lester acted imprudently. However, I don’t believe his age to be any kind of strike against him. If anything, his age may end up helping his cause in court, even as I believe he’s destined for conviction.
Where all this ties into is what Lester’s grandson, Klint Ludwig, said about his grandfather. We already know he attributes Lester’s supposed paranoia to his “staunch conservative” political views and while there might be something to that, I’m not sure this is something Ludwig says in good faith. Listen to what he had to say in an interview on CNN:
https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1649097481869836317
He’s just a stock American Christian male, older… that’s just how they are. It’s here we understand this isn’t about getting justice for Ralph Yarl, but about waging conflict. The people up in arms about this incident care less about Yarl’s well-being or Lester’s misuse of his right to self-defense and more about the fact Lester is an old White man with right-wing political views who committed an unforgivable sin - shoot a Black person. Lester could’ve had a legitimate reason for fear and it wouldn’t have mattered. We’ve seen far too many cases where, even when someone had a right to defend themselves, the racial, sexual, and political attributes of the people involved overrode all other considerations. It’s an ugly, grotesque phenomenon, but it’s been the status quo for a long time.
Here’s a similar incident that occurred in Upstate New York a few days after the Kansas City shooting:
How did this happen? Here’s a summary:
A 20-year-old woman was shot dead by an upstate New York homeowner Saturday night after the driver of the car she was riding in turned into the wrong driveway, authorities said.
Kaylin Gillis, from Saratoga County, was inside the vehicle with three pals when they made a wrong turn into a driveway while searching for a friend’s house in the town of Hebron, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office said.
As the driver of the car was leaving, Kevin Monahan, the owner of the home the group accidentally pulled up to, allegedly fired two shots from his patio at the vehicle, authorities said.
Gillis was struck by one of the bullets.
Monahan, 65, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, Sheriff Jeffrey Murphy said during a Monday press conference.
“This is a very sad case of some young adults who were looking for a friend’s house and ended up at this man’s house who decided to come out with a firearm and discharge it,” Murphy said.
As if we didn’t need another unnecessary death of a similar nature, here’s an incident from Texas:
https://twitter.com/crimewithbobby/status/1648865894494347266
Sigh. This amounts to a separate discussion altogether, but I’m not afraid to point out the obvious: guns are a little too easy to access and are too often in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. In neither of these three situations was opening fire justifiable and I think an alarming number of Americans are ignorant of what the law actually says they can or cannot do to protect themselves and their property. These are huge problems, one that proponents of gun ownership, which includes myself, don’t have an answer for. These are avoidable mistakes and I don’t want to hear anyone say that it’s the price of gun ownership.
But I digress. These three cases involve three different circumstances and three different people, so we shouldn’t assume one case necessarily has something to say about the others. Yet even if Andrew Lester shooting Ralph Yarl can be attributed to racism, the shootings of Kaylin Gillis (may she rest in peace) and Payton Washington clearly cannot, or at least the presumption isn’t being made. There’s another element to this - paranoia, which is leading to innocent people getting shot for making honest mistakes, you know, being human.
Yet when even the slightest specter of race is involves, it obliterates all other considerations. Of the three cases, I find Lester’s case for self-defense more compelling, even as I find it illegitimate. This is because, in the other two cases, the victims were attempting to leave when they got shot and there was no threat to life or property when the perpetrators opened fire. Lester was at least responding to someone on his doorstep. But again, none of it matters, because he’s just a “stock American Christian male, older.”
From the Vox article cited at the outset:
The shooting occurred as scrutiny of violence against Black Americans has grown following numerous killings and brutality toward Black people at the hands of police and other individuals.
Currently, a narrative is being pushed saying that Black Americans are uniquely at risk of victimization in the U.S. That’s true, but not for the reasons the media cites. No matter how hard they try, there’s just no truth to the pseudo-religious belief that Black lives are at risk because of Whites. Look at this fact-check attempt by USA Today from back in 2020:
Likewise, the post attempts to portray a gulf in the rate of Black-on-white and white-on-Black homicide — which it lists at 81% and 2%, respectively.
Statistics from the FBI in 2018 and 2017 contradict that claim.
In 2018, 16% of white victims were killed by Black offenders, while 8% of Black victims were killed by white offenders.
Similarly, in 2017, 16% of white victims were killed by Black offenders, while 9% of Black victims were killed by white offenders.
In both years, the numbers remained within eight percentage points, a much smaller gap than the 79% alleged in the viral post.
So what they’re saying is, “yes,” Whites are more likely to be killed by Blacks than the reverse. Also, the claim that eight percentage points is a small difference is disingenuous. It’s not the biggest disparity in the world, but it’s a decisive difference. If the numbers were reversed, would the Left be so nuanced? We all know the answer to that. No matter how they spin it, there’s no data supporting the belief that the biggest threat to Black life in America are Whites.
Really, if they want to make this about race, we can all play that game. Bill Maher, who’s never been mistaken for a conservative, said the following on his show’s latest episode:
https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1649850699336019968
It’s more than a fair question. Here’s a great thread that focuses specifically on Kansas City:
https://twitter.com/FrankDeScushin/status/1649150597705134085
If you didn’t read the entire thread (I recommend you do), it can be summed up by the following:
Someone else commented:
The incident Wanjiru Njoya is referring to in the second tweet occurred on April 15 in Dadeville, Alabama at a Sweet 16 party. Four died, with 32 more injured, making it a large-scale mass shooting, and all the victims were Black. The suspects, who’ve since been arrested? Black also. It was a big story until it ceased to be for the reason Njoya laid out.
Last night, there was another mass shooting in Jasper, Texas, again involving youth. It’s not clear who the victims and perpetrators are, but Jasper is a majority-Black city. If at least the perpetrators are Black, you can put this down as another story that won’t receive any national coverage.
Finally, here’s an incident that happened a week after the shooting of Ralph Yarl. Did you hear about this?
A North Carolina 6-year-old and her parents were shot Tuesday night by an angry neighbor who fired at them after a basketball rolled into his yard, a report said.
Kinsley White was wounded along with her mother, Ashley Hilderbrand, and father, William White, when a gunman opened fire around 8 p.m. in Gaston County after he became enraged about the bouncing ball, according to WSOC-TV.
William White was critically injured attempting to protect his daughter.
Neighbors told the station a group of kids was playing basketball when the ball bounced into the alleged gunman’s yard.
Suspected shooter Robert Louis Singletary grew angry and ran down the street as he fired at a neighbor, they reportedly said.
Then he came back and began shooting at the family, including the young daughter, who needed stitches on her face from bullet fragments, WSOC-TV reported.
Her father was also hit, and was still in the hospital Wednesday, police said.
In this case of “Get off my property!”, the shooter was Black. The victims were White. Gratefully, nobody died, but even if someone did, as far as the Regime is concerned, this isn’t a big deal. Just another day in America and if there’s anything to blame, it’s the guns, as if anyone else who owns a gun has equal propensity for this level of savage violence. Meanwhile, Andrew Lester and all other “stock American Christian male, older” pose a unique threat to society without parallel.
It’s impossible to deny the fact that if the Regime isn’t deliberately stoking racial conflict, they’re most certainly doing so as a consequence of their actions. There’s no other reason for this behavior other than to generate racial animosity. Unfortunately, it might be working and it’s not because Whites are taking the bait. If anything, Whites have restrained themselves despite overwhelming pressure from the media, the state, and all other social institutions. This institutionally-sanctioned racial conflict is unidirectional and that’s just a fact.
Since the upheaval that was 2020, the landscape has been relatively tranquil. But with another presidential election revving up and an economic downturn looming on the horizon, it looks like the temperature may be due to rise once more. The trial of Andrew Lester may very well carry over into 2024 and could become an election issue candidates are expected to weigh in and take a stand on. The same way the death of George Floyd became an election-decider three years ago, the shooting of Ralph Yarl might play the same role. What then?
I don’t see a “race war” coming in the sense that we’re all going to be pitted against each other by the color of our skin, but there’s already a racial conflict that’s forcing us all to either choose one side or the other based on whether we buy the Regime’s narrative or not, with the only other option being to shut up and go along with it, if begrudgingly. The only question remaining is how hot this conflict will become and what sort of damage it’ll do to our already-battered society.
I’ve been going on for a while now, but like I said, there’s a lot to unpack. I’ll close by paraphrasing something Rod Dreher said recently, which is that I don’t know what scares me more: the possibility of there being a breaking point, or the possibility one will never come.
What are your thoughts? Is the Yarl shooting the new cause celebre for the Regime? What do you think will come of this?
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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