FBI: No firearms were confiscated from Capitol rioters on Jan 6. So what we have is an unarmed insurrection lasting about 3 hours – the first unarmed insurrection in history. The only shot fired that day was fired by a Capitol Police officer into Ashli Babbitt, killing her. She was 35 years old, diminutive in stature, and a 14-year Air Force veteran who had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. She was shot while attempting to climb through the shattered glass of door, fell back, and bled to death on the floor while those around her tried to help.
Reportedly the officer who shot her was in plain clothes. Did she see him, much less know he was a cop? She was threatening no one, had no weapon of any sort, was not starting a fire – that is, was a trespasser. There is no report that police ordered her to stop, much less that she could hear such an order over the noise of the crowd.
If someone comes into my home uninvited in the daytime, I can order him to leave. If he refuses, I can call police and use reasonable force to eject him. Unless he threatens me or others, I can’t shoot him. If I do, I’m up on manslaughter charges, not to mention civil suits that could take my house and bankrupt me.
It is an exaggeration to say that Ashli Babbitt has been forgotten by most Americans. They never heard of her in the first place. The mainstream media saw to that. Unlike George Floyd, she has an exemplary record, not a criminal one. Unlike Floyd, she did not have a lethal level of fentanyl in her blood, or any other drug as far as we know. Unlike him, she was not resisting arrest, because she was not under arrest. Unlike him, she was not refusing a lawful order, because she had received none. Unlike him, her first contact with police was feeling the impact of the .40 S&W caliber bullet.
So of course, Floyd became a civil-rights icon, while Ashli was forgotten – but not by her husband, her family, her Air Force buddies, her dog – and not by us.