Get ready for another massive national convulsion over race. It will be just like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray. This time, the dead black man is Ahmaud Arbery, age 25. The whites who shot him are Gregory McMichael, age 64, and his son, Travis McMichael, 34.

Ahmaud Arbery

There is no presumption of innocence. Joe Biden tweeted that “Ahmaud Arbery was killed in cold blood.” Elizabeth Warren says that what happened is “sickening.” Ilhan Omar is quite sure that Arbery “was lynched. Killed in cold blood simply for being a Black man in America.” Kamala Harris tweeted that the killing “sickens me to my core.” The president of the Georgia NAACP says, “The modern-day lynching of Mr. Arbery is yet another reminder of the vile and wicked racism that persists in parts of our country.” Even National Review just ran an article called, “The Murder of Ahmaud Arbery.”

The two white men’s addresses are now splashed across the internet and, as this lad notes, “Street gets its revenge always. This guy and his son gone be dead soon enough. And I’ll gladly praise that day.”

So, what happened? Unlike previous celebrated “modern lynchings,” at least some of the police findings are public. Their lives may be ruined, but there is good reason to think that what Gregory and Travis McMichael did was perfectly legal.

The father, Gregory McMichael, is a former police officer and investigator for the district attorney. He lived close to a new building under construction where there had been break-ins and trespassing. Mr. McMichael had reportedly seen surveillance video of a black man trespassing. He says that on February 23, he saw a black man — who turned out to be Arbery — “hauling ass” down the street, and thought he looked like the man in the video. He and his son armed themselves and followed in a pickup truck, hoping to hold him until the police came. A friend named Bryan William followed in a second vehicle and took cellphone video. The McMichaels drove ahead of Arbery and stopped in the street.

What happened next is on this short video, and is consistent with what the McMichaels told police. They shouted at Arbery to stop because they wanted to talk to him. They say Arbery ran around the pickup and attacked Travis, the younger McMichael, who was holding a shotgun. There were three shotgun blasts as Travis and Arbery struggled for the weapon, and Arbery died at the scene.

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