A Citizen's Arrest Gone Wrong - or a Lynching?

On February 23rd, Travis McMichael shot and killed Ahmaud Arbery in a neighborhood in Santilla Shores, a seaside community in the southeastern corner of Georgia outside of Brunswick. The police questioned Travis, his father Greg (who was present when the shooting occurred), and other witnesses on the scene and at the station, but did not make any arrests until 3 different prosecutors and 74 days after the shooting. A picture of Ahmaud which went viral on social media included the following caption: “I was murdered by an armed father and son who hunted me down and shot me as I jogged in a Georgia neighborhood. Neither of my killers have been charged. My name is Ahmaud Arbery.” Another picture of the McMichaels read, “The two thugs that murdered Ahmaud Arbery.” The NAACP issued an action alert announcing, “Ahmaud Arbery was running in his neighborhood when he was chased and murdered by two white supremacists.”
 
At least, that is how the media class has been breathlessly reporting the news. “Who Gets to be Afraid in America?” asked Ibram X. Kendi (Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University) in The Atlantic. “Americans don’t see me, or Ahmaud Arbery, running down the road – they see their fear.” Adam Serwer, a staff writer for The Atlantic, claimed that “America’s Racial Contract is Showing.” According to Mr. Serwer, “If the social contract is the implicit agreement among members of a society to follow the rules – for example, acting lawfully, adhering to the results of elections, and contesting the agreed-upon rules by non-violent means – then the racial contract is a codicil rendered in invisible ink, one stating that the rules as written do not apply to non-white people in the same way.” In Charles M. Blow’s New York Times column, “The Killing of Ahmaud Arbery,” his summary of the case was simply “another black man falsely assumed to be a criminal is dead.” The media class used obviously prejudicial tactics of circulating professional photography of Ahmaud’s to represent him – his outdated prom/graduation photos instead of his most recent mug shot – while circulating the current mug shots of the McMichaels to represent them.
 
Not to be racist or anything…but this story has all the telltale signs of another “Black Lives Matter” narrative collapse. The NAACP, SPLC, and ACLU are even comparing Ahmaud to the narrative collapse that started them all, Trayvon Martin. “Ahmaud was killed three days before the anniversary of the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin,” according to a statement by the executive director of the ACLU in Georgia. “Both incidents are a reminder that white supremacy has been a foundation for our country and leads repeatedly to the targeting and harming of people of color, particularly African-Americans.” They are right but for the wrong reason: Trayvon was assumed by the media class to have been an innocent black boy who was racially profiled, hunted down, and shot to death by a white man simply for walking through a neighborhood at night, but when the facts came out it turned out that he got himself killed because he attacked an armed Hispanic/Latino man.
 
On February 27th, four days after the shooting, Jackie Johnson (the District Attorney of the Brunswick Judicial Circuit) recused herself over a potential conflict of interest, as Greg had previously worked in her office as an investigator. The NAACP called on her to resign from her position for not charging the McMichaels anyway. Ms. Johnson was replaced by George Barnhill (District Attorney of the Waycross Judicial Circuit). After reviewing the evidence, Mr. Barnhill concluded that there was not sufficient probable cause to charge the McMichaels and that Ahmaud’s death was “justifiable homicide.” Ahmaud’s family, represented by professional Black Lives Matter activists Benjamin Crump and S. Lee Merritt, protested Mr. Barnhill’s involvement in the case, claiming that he had a conflict of interest because his son had worked in the same office as Greg (investigating Ahmaud for violating his parole, in fact). Mr. Barnhill recused himself as well, though he did not believe it was necessary. “A local ‘rabble rouser’ has taken up this cause and begun publishing wild and factually and legally incorrect accusations on Facebook and other social-media formats calling for marches and physical affronts to be made against the McMichaels at their homes, my son’s home in Brunswick, etc.,” Mr. Barnhill explained in his letter of recusal. “To date I have seen no direct connection between the rabble rouser and the family other than their increased calls for my office to be removed, that I must be biased.” The NAACP also called on Mr. Barnhill to resign from his position for not charging the McMichaels, as well as Glynn County Police Chief to resign for not arresting the McMichaels. “Justice for Ahmaud means more than just the arrests of his killers,” demanded the president of the Brunswick NAACP. “Justice is saying that we’ve got to clean up the house of Glynn County.”
 
On April 13th, Tom Durden (District Attorney of the Atlantic Judicial Circuit) took over the case. On May 5th, when cellphone footage of the shooting leaked on social media and went viral, Mr. Durden responded to the outrage by announcing that a grand jury would be convened in order to determine whether the McMichaels should be indicted. Days after Mr. Durden’s statement, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested the McMichaels for felony murder and aggravated assault in the shooting of Ahmaud. The grand jury will be convened when pandemic-related restrictions on the courts are lifted. Georgia’s Attorney General replaced Mr. Denton with Joyette M. Holmes (District Attorney of the Cobb Judicial Circuit and the first black woman to hold that office) and has requested that the U.S. Department of Justice investigate Glynn County’s conduct in the case. The DOJ is also considering “hate crime” charges against the McMichaels.
 
A local criminal-defense attorney released the cellphone footage of the shooting to a local radio station, WGIG, which posted it on its website. “There had been very little information provided by the police department or the district attorney’s office, but there was entirely too much speculation, rumor, false narratives, and outright lies surrounding this event,” Mr. Tucker told Georgia Public Radio. “My sole purpose in releasing this video was absolute transparency because my community was being ripped apart by erroneous accusations and assumptions.” Although the video was removed from WGIG’s website for its graphic content, Ahmaud’s family’s attorneys began circulating it online. “The series of events captured in this video confirm what all the evidence indicated prior to its release,” they stated. “Mr. Arbery was pursued by three white men that targeted him solely because of his race and murdered him without justification.” Despite Mr. Tucker’s good intentions – “I didn’t want the neighborhood to become a Ferguson” – his actions had the opposite effect and have turned a local crime into another black-and-white battle of good and evil between blacks and whites.
 
On May 5th, when the footage of the shooting was leaked, a “Justice for Ahmaud” protest marched to the Glynn County Courthouse. “I didn’t need the video to know that Ahmaud was brutally murdered and shot down and gunned like a dog,” claimed the state president of the NAACP, James Major Woodall, “but the video showed the world what we already knew – that black life still needs to be valued and protected.” Mr. Woodall called the shooting “white supremacy full on” and warned that “until this country can truly acknowledge the ills of its system, we will continue to see black blood drain our streets.”
 
On May 8th, which would have been Ahmaud’s birthday, another “Justice for Ahmaud” protest marched to the county courthouse. “We are here today for one reason and one reason only: Ahmaud Arbery was killed in cold blood,” announced Major Woodall. “Because of that, we are standing together with this community, with this family, to demand not only justice be served, but his life be honored.” Another “Justice for Ahmaud” protest marched to the Duvall County Courthouse, which is just across state lines in Jacksonville, Florida.  Around the country, protestors jogged 2.23 miles – the date of Ahmaud’s death, February 23rd – and proclaimed “I Run With Maud.” In an article for Outside, “Ahmaud Arbery and Whiteness in the Running World,” Alison Mariella Désir argued, “The response to Arbery’s murder highlighted what I already knew: The running world is deeply divided by race, and we must address it.” According to Ms. Désir, runners are too white and thus have created a white-supremacist community which must be “dismantled,” along with the white-supremacist country that is the U.S.A. “‘Why is This Black Guy Running?’” Eric Ortiz reported for NBC News. “After Ahmaud Arbery’s Killing, African-Americans Reconsider Fitness Routines.” A man in Vero Beach, Florida, live-streamed himself jogging through his neighborhood carrying a television set in order to demonstrate his “white privilege.”
 
“Lynching” has become the watchword of what happened to Ahmaud. “My son was lynched, lynched by a racist mob,” cried Ahmaud’s father, Marcus. “These men were vigilantes,” Ahmaud’s family’s attorney, S. Lee Merritt, stated. “They were a posse and they performed a modern lynching in the middle of the day.” Major Woodall warned that “the modern-day lynching of Mr. Arbery is yet another reminder of the vile and wicked racism that persists in parts of our country” and condemned “the blatant white racial privileges that permeates throughout our country and our institutions.” In an interview on CNN, Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, when asked about the footage of the shooting, answered, “It’s heartbreaking that it’s 2020 and this was a lynching of an African-American man.” A local reverend, Mack Knight, compared Ahmaud to Emmett Till (a black man who was lynched in 1955 for whistling at a white woman) since he “died because he was black like the rest of them did, for no reason.” Rev. Knight declares, “I came to tell America that Ahmaud’s blood cries…Emmett Till’s blood cries.”
 
Just as, for many Jewish neo-conservatives, any concession to Israel’s enemies is tantamount to the infamous appeasement of Nazi Germany all over again, so for the Black Lives Matter movement, any incident of white-on-black crime is tantamount to the infamous lynching of Emmett Till all over again – what Steve Sailer terms “the Emmett Till Effect.” (And not unlike the Nazis, appeasing the Black Lives Matter movement only appears to make it more aggressive.)
 
Where I live in Florida, there was an actual lynching 106 years ago. A real-estate developer had his head blown off by a shotgun while he was asleep and his wife, who was beaten and raped when she responded to the gunshot, identified two black men as the perpetrators. The authorities tried to keep the crime from the public in order to prevent vigilantism, but the public heard the news and posses began terrorizing the local black population. A mob of 1,500 men, women, and children (half of the city’s population) broke into the jail and lynched one of the suspects, a black man named John Evans who was new to the area. He was dragged through the street, hanged from a light post, and riddled with bullets. His body was left hanging from the light post for days afterward as a warning to the black community. The lynch mob threatened to raze the black part of town and many black people fled as refugees. This November, on the 106th anniversary of the lynching, the Community Remembrance Project Coalition hopes to place a memorial at the site of the lynching – now the intersection of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and 2nd Avenue South. Labeling any white-on-black crime as a “lynching” –a horrific atrocity which claimed the lives of 3,446 black people – is unbelievably ignorant and irreverent. “Ahmaud Arbery was killed in the street by white men,” Sean Collins pontificated at Vox. “That’s how lynchings work.” No, that is not how lynchings work, and while exploiting the horror of lynching may be effective at influencing public opinion in the short run, in the long run it will cheapen the horror of lynching.
 
Shaun King, a professional Black Lives Matter activist who leaked the cellphone footage on social media, called the shooting “a modern-day lynching” and “one of the worst things I’ve seen in my entire life,” adding that “I’m seething in anger…I’m trembling with anger.” Michelle Malkin has theorized that S. Lee Merritt (a Black Lives Matter activist and one of the attorneys for Ahmaud’s parents) colluded with Mr. King to circulate the footage. Mr. Merritt and Mr. King, who are not only colleagues but also friends from college, have colluded together on “hate hoaxes” involving Sherita Dixon-Cole, Jazmine Barnes, and Atatiana Jefferson. Shortly before the McMichaels were arrested, Mr. King publicly threatened them with vigilante justice of his own. “I need you to know that I know where you live and where you are hiding out,” he warned. “Right now I’m the only thing keeping about 150 different people from killing you.” Then Mr. King threatened the state with his vigilante justice. “Hold these men accountable for the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery,” he warned. “I assure you it’s in your best interest.”
 
Another attorney representing Ahmaud’s parents is Benjamin Crump, who also represented the families of Black Lives Matter cause célébres Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice. In an op-ed in USA Today, Mr. Crump accused the McMichaels of appointing themselves “judge, jury, and executioner” of Ahmaud and argued that their motives were “so reminiscent of the motives for lynchings.” In an interview on NPR, Mr. Crump declared that Ahmaud was “executed in broad daylight” and called his death a “modern-day lynching.”
 
Democrats were eager to play the parts of judge, jury, and executioner themselves. Joe Biden, Democratic presidential nominee, declared “The video is clear: Ahmaud was killed in cold blood.” Two of Mr. Biden’s potential vice-presidential nominees, the Georgian gubernatorial candidate from 2018 Stacey Abrams and Sen. Kamala Harris of California, stated that “it was murder” and said that “exercising while black shouldn’t be a death sentence,” respectively. “The men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery must be held accountable and there must be justice for Ahmaud’s family,” demanded Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “There is no doubt in my mind that Ahmaud would be alive today if he were white.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York (a Puerto-Rican version of “Britta Perry”) called the shooting a “lynching” and added that Ahmaud was “murdered for being black.” Rep. Ilhan Omar (a Somalian refugee who has made headlines for her hatred of her family’s host country) declared that Ahmaud was “lynched…killed in cold blood simply for being a black man in America.” Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts (the first black woman elected to represent her state), claimed that “lynching” was the punishment for being “black while walking, black while eating, black while jogging.” Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan (a second-generation Palestinian immigrant who has also made headlines for her hatred of her family’s host country), claimed that Ahmaud was “shot down, murdered, just because he was a black man jogging.” According to Rep. Tlaib, “The fact that we are still trying to make lynching illegal at the federal law is telling of where we are in our country.” Former U.S. President Barack Obama, in a Covid-era virtual commencement for black graduates, referred to the “underlying inequities and extra burdens” that they face. “We see it when a black man goes for a jog and some folks feel like they can stop and question and shoot him if he doesn’t submit to their questioning.”
 
“Conservatives” dishonored themselves – as usual – with emotional overreactions. Daily Wire staff writer Matt Walsh described the shooting as “outrageous” and called for the execution of the McMichaels. Mr. Walsh’s boss at The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, agreed with him, sharing three articles by other conservative pundits – David French, David Harsanyi, and “Allahpundit.” In Mr. French’s article for The Dispatch, “A Vigilante Killing in Georgia,” he argued that regardless of the McMichaels’ motives, “When white men grab guns and mount up to pursue and seize an unarmed black man in the street, they stand in the shoes of lynch mobs past.” In Mr. Harsanyi’s article for National Review, “The Murder of Ahmaud Arbery,” he described the video as a “gut-wrenching” depiction of “flat-out murder.” According to HotAir staff writer Allahpundit, “If they can get away with this, then the ‘citizen’s arrest’ statute is license for legalized vigilantism.” New York Post editor Sohrab Ahmari announced, “In Georgia, a blatant ‘citizen’s arrest’ homicide of Ahmaud Arberty.” According to Mr. Ahmari, the shooting “harks back to the some of America’s oldest and ugliest racial traditions” and “resembles a scene from the 19th century, when sadly, it’s 2020: a pair of white men on a white pickup truck harassing a black jogger on a deserted Georgia road.” In “Ahmaud Arbery, Just A Runner,” American Conservative editor Rod Dreher wailed, “This is insane, and unjust. But this is life for a lot of black people in America. We should not forget that.” Mr. Dreher added that he heard of “a middle-class, Christian African-American woman” who feared moving her family to the South after news of this shooting “because her husband and older sons might have to worry about being shot by angry white men.” Doug Stafford, Sen. Rand Paul’s chief strategist, shared Mr. Dreher’s article and commented that “it’s as bad as they’re saying…you’re looking at a lynching.” Saagar Enjeti, co-host of The Hill’s web show, “Rising,” concluded that the shooting was “a clear-cut case of murder in broad daylight.” Michael Brendan Dougherty, another National Review staff writer, agreed with Mr. Enjeti, “Yeah my stomach was turning all afternoon yesterday after watching this.” The Drudge Report’s headline read, “Father, Son Charged With Hunting Black Man in Georgia.” Why is it that conservatives such as these fools will fall all over themselves to condemn white-on-black crime (which always makes national news despite its under-representation in national crime), yet not one of them will ever utter a word against black-on-white crime (which never makes national news despite its over-representation in national crime)? How many of these cowardly conservatives are going to say anything about the murder of Paul and Lidia Marino, an octogenarian husband and wife who were, as they visited their son’s grave at a veteran’s cemetery, hunted and killed by a black man as racial revenge for Ahmaud’s death? Even if everything that the Black Lives Matter movement says about what happened to Ahmaud is true, what happened to the Marinos is still worse, so why is the former national news and the latter an easilyoverlooked local news story? (To be fair, Mr. Dreher did eventually say something about the Marinos, even if it was not nearly as strong of a statement as what he said about Ahmaud.)
 
Yet there are at least six lies that have been told about the context of Ahmaud Arbery’s death in order to force the incident to fit the Black Lives Matter movement’s origin story – and original sin. These repetitive pseudo-martyrdoms become downright ridiculous as the facts of the case are established in court – the Obama Administration’s own Justice Department had to admit that Michael Brown was killed in reasonable self-defense! – though not before inciting protests and even riots, irreversibly polarizing the country by race.
 
First, Ahmaud was not “out for a jog” when he was shot and killed, unless that includes “jogging” away from a crime scene. Security footage from across the street has been released which shows Ahmaud walking, not jogging, up to Larry English’s property and standing around outside before entering it illegally. Security footage from inside the English property has been released which shows Ahmaud walking around inside the property apparently doing nothing. A neighbor called 911 to report an unidentified black male youth inside the English property whom he claimed had “been caught on camera a bunch before tonight…kind of an ongoing thing out here.” At the same time, Greg (who was outside on his front lawn while the other neighbor called 911) saw Ahmaud as he fled the English property and thought that he matched the description of an unidentified black male whom he had seen from Mr. English’s security footage (which had been shared within the neighborhood).
 
In sum, the media class is omitting that Ahmaud was fleeing from a construction site where he had been seen trespassing, not “jogging through the neighborhood.”
 
Second, Greg and Travis McMichael did not pursue Ahmaud because they racially profiled him. They were not looking for just any black male youth who happened to be “jogging” through the neighborhood. The McMichaels had been directly pursuing Ahmaud because Greg saw him fleeing from the property of their neighbor, Larry English, which they knew had been broken into multiple times (Travis himself reported one such incident to the police two weeks earlier) and because Ahmaud matched the description of the unidentified black male youth who had been seen on the property (including the person whom Travis reported to the police). Ahmaud began “running down the street,” as another neighbor put it on a 911 call, when he saw that neighbor looking at him while on the phone. “He’s running right now,” the neighbor told the 911 dispatcher. “There he goes right now.”
 
In sum, the media class is omitting that the McMichaels did not “racially profile” Ahmaud, but pursued him because he was fleeing from the site of a trespass and matched the description of the trespass suspect.
 
Third, the English property on which Ahmaud trespassed (if he had entered with criminal intent, then it would be “burglary”) had been trespassed on so often that the absentee-owner, Mr. English, had installed motion-activated security cameras and asked Mr. Perez to notify him if they saw anyone there. Almost two months earlier, Travis reported that a 9mm pistol had been stolen from his truck, and less than two weeks earlier, Travis called 911 to report an unidentified black male youth whom he suspected may be armed (because he had his hand stuck down his bands) running into the property at night. When the police arrived, they searched the area with Travis, Greg, and Mr. Perez (who notified Mr. English). Mr. English’s security footage from inside his property, which has been released, shows multiple incidents of trespassing by an unidentified black male youth at night. When Mr. English first notified the authorities of the trespassing, he was put in touch with his neighbor, Greg. “Greg is retired law enforcement and also a retired investigator from the DA’s office,” a police officer text-messaged Mr. English. “He said please call him day or not when you get action on your camera.”
 
In sum, the media class is omitting that the property into which Ahmaud was seen trespassing and from which he fled had been repeatedly trespassed by an unidentified black male youth.
 
Fourth, when Ahmaud began “jogging” away from the English property, Greg went inside and told his son, Travis, that he just saw someone who matched the description of the trespassing suspect “hauling ass” away from that property. “Travis, the guy is running down the street,” shouted Greg. “Let’s go.” They both armed themselves – Gregory with a .357 Magnum and Travis with a shotgun – because they “didn’t know if the male was armed or not.” They pursued Ahmaud in their truck and attempted to carry out a citizen’s arrest, shouting, “Stop, stop, we want to talk to you,” but Ahmaud did not stop. Under Georgia law, it is legal to call the police on a suspected criminal, to attempt to detain that suspect until the police arrive, and to open-carry firearms while doing so – and that is all that happened prior to the shooting.
 
In sum, the media class is omitting that based on what the McMichaels had seen – not just on that day but days, weeks, and months before – they had a reasonable suspicion that Ahmaud had committed a crime and attempted to carry out a legal citizen’s arrest while legally open-carrying firearms.
 
Fifth, Greg and Travis headed off Ahmaud at an intersection, where they parked and got out of their truck to stop him. At this point, Ahmaud “jogged” into Travis, punching him repeatedly and trying to wrestle the shotgun out of his hands. As Ahmaud grappled with Travis and grabbed his shotgun, three shots were fired and Ahmaud staggered away before falling down dead on the street. Greg called 911 while they were parked at the intersection and in the footage of the shooting Greg can be seen putting down the phone as Ahmaud turns and attacks Travis. “Stop that, damn it, stop!” shouted Greg.
 
In sum, the media class is omitting that Ahmaud was not shot and killed as an “unarmed black jogger,” but in a struggle over a shotgun.
 
Sixth, Ahmaud and Greg had a history prior to the shooting. Greg worked as an officer in the Glynn County Police Department and an investigator in the Glynn County District Attorney until he retired in 2019. Ahmaud was a former football player from Brunswick High School and a dropout from South Georgia Technical College. In 2013, Ahmaud brought a firearm to a high-school basketball game and fled from the police when they attempted to arrest him. He was convicted of weapons possession and obstructing an officer, but was sentenced to five-year probation instead of imprisonment. In November, 2017, Ahmaud had an encounter with the police in which he became physically and verbally aggressive with an officer as he checked his license (which was suspended). Ahmaud, who had parked his car on a field in a park, claimed that he was “rapping to instrumentals,” but the police suspected him of drug use given his location. The next month, Ahmaud stole a TV from a Walmart, violating his probation in the process. Greg was a part of the investigation of Ahmaud which resulted in the revocation of his probation. Neither Greg nor his son, Travis, had a criminal record.
 
In sum, the media class is omitting that Greg had investigated Ahmaud in 2018 when he was still working for the Glynn County District Attorney.
 
Officer Brandenberry’s incident report and District Attorney Barnhill’s “evaluation for prosecution” to Cpt. Tom Jump are worth reading in full, as is the cellphone footage of the shooting worth watching in full. There is information in those primary sources which journalists and pundits, acting as if they are Ahmaud’s family’s attorneys, have unacceptably omitted from their coverage and commentary. Perhaps the McMichaels overreacted by pursuing Ahmaud themselves (though what they did was not illegal) and perhaps Travis blundered in getting out of the car with his shotgun when Ahmaud was “jogging” right at them (thought that was not illegal either), but charging them with “murder” and even “hate crimes” is unjustifiable given the evidence. What sort of “lynch mob” calls the police in the midst of its crime? At worst, this was a badly botched citizen’s arrest.

There is also a partisan motive to why this relatively rare incident of white-on-black crime has been exaggerated into a “lynching.” Georgia is a state which, due to suburbanization and diversification, is at the tipping point of turning blue. As Mark Niesse reported for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Rise of Young and Diverse Georgia Voters May Influence 2020 Elections.” The Georgian politician Stacey Abrams (who ran to be Governor in 2018, delivered the Democrats’ “response” to the State of the Union in 2019, and is now lobbying to be Joe Biden’s nominee for Vice President) argues in her “Abrams Playbook” that Georgia is indeed in play politically and that the key to flipping Georgia is to boost voter turnout among non-white racial/ethnic minorities (especially black people, who near-monolithically bloc-vote for the Democrats). Although she lost when she tried this strategy herself, Ms. Abrams explains that since that election (which she alleges was stolen by voter suppression anyway) the demographics of Georgia have continued bluing. According to the Abrams Playbook, while it is true that the non-white racial/ethnic minorities moving to Georgia are all likely to vote Democrat (especially black people), it is also true that everyone who moves to Georgia is almost twice as likely to vote Democrat regardless of race (meaning white liberals). In order to take advantage of these demographic changes, Ms. Abrams has started the “New Georgia Project,” a voter-registration, voter-education, and voter-advocacy group for non-white racial/ethnic minorities (especially black people). Nothing will mobilize/organize black voters in Georgia better than inciting a panic over a “lynching” where they live. If Joe Biden goes even further and nominates Ms. Abrams as his Vice President, as he is likely to do now, then he will be able to nationalize this issue and mobilize/organize black voters nationwide. In the 2016 election, black voter turnout – which is essential for the Democrats – fell by 7%, so boosting those numbers must be a priority for Mr. Biden.
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The death of Ahmaud was a senseless tragedy which could have been avoided if everyone involved had behaved more sensibly – if Ahmaud had not been trespassing and acting suspiciously, if the McMichaels had not overreacted to a property crime by chasing after the suspect, and if Ahmaud had not attacked Travis – but the Black Lives Matter movement’s narrative of “an unarmed black jogger hunted down by two rednecks” is hysteria at best and deceit at worst.