The NRA’s lead spouter of noxious gas, Dana Loesch, is back at it again, doing everything to protect gun rights while not giving two thoughts about black lives.
On Monday, Loesch appeared on the NRATV show Relentless to actually fix her mouth to suggest that if Botham Shem Jean, the Dallas man who was killed in his own apartment by police officer Amber Guyger, may still be alive today if he had owned a gun, according to the New York Daily News.
“You know, this could have been very different if Botham Jean had been, say, he was a law-abiding gun owner and he saw somebody coming into his apartment,” Loesch said.
“I mean, if I see somebody coming into my house, and I’m not expecting them, and they’re walking in like they own the place, I mean—I would, I would act to defend myself. And this could have [gone] very differently had he actually had a firearm on him,” she added.
Valerie Castile, the mother of Philando Castile, the black man who was killed by a police officer while he had his legal firearm on him, took some time out of her day to drag Loesch for her asinine comments.
“My son was a licensed gun owner and it didn’t help him. He’s dead because he gave that information to an officer,” Castile told the Daily News on Wednesday, slamming Loesch for her “reckless” and “one-sided” narrative to further the NRA’s agenda.
“[Jean] was in his own home. Inside a nice building with security. He had a right to feel safe in his own home. He wasn’t expecting someone to come in uninvited. He shouldn’t have to always keep a gun on his hip. That’s asinine,” Castile added. “That officer was dead wrong. Just hold her accountable. Don’t try to spin the story. My son was a good guy, and [the NRA] tried to spin it. The truth is, he’s dead for being honest and telling the truth.”
Castile knows plenty about the NRA and their spinning of stories, something Loesch attempted to do on Tuesday when she doubled down on her comments.
Loesch claimed that video showed Castile reaching for his waistband “10 times,” a take that can only be described as a lie.
The only video provided of Philando Castile’s deadly encounter with St. Anthony Police officer Jeronimo Yanez showed Philando politely making the officer aware that he had his gun on him.
Yanez told Castile, “Don’t pull it out,” at which point Philando assures him that he has no intention of doing so. That did not settle Yanez, who became increasingly agitated and started firing his weapon seconds later, killing Philando.
Yanez was charged with manslaughter, but was sadly, predictably acquitted at trial. However, he did lose his job with the police department and the city settled with the Castile family for $3 million.
As for Jean’s case, well Valerie Castile says the story doesn’t make any sense to her (and it makes sense to no one with any brain cells firing off), and that a gun would probably not have kept Jean safe anyway, as she knows too well.
“If he was telling her he had a weapon, it would have been a shootout. He would have been a black man with a gun. You can’t use those three words in one sentence,” she said. “There’s a mentality with some police that a black man with a gun is deemed a threat no matter what.”
