Garrett Foster was murdered in the street while exercising both his First and Second Amendment rights. (It’s OK for him, or for the Mike Ramos Brigade, to call it murder; journalists have to be more circumspect.) We should – and, in this issue, have tried to – document and grieve his death for exactly what it was and remember Foster as exactly who he was, and not too promptly get caught up in what this horrible event symbolizes and in creating narratives. But in our mediated age, the search for meaning and the production of narrative began immediately. By Sunday morning, 12 hours after Garrett Foster died, the divergent storylines were clearly set and, powered by predispositions, outran the verified facts. To thousands around the world, Garrett Foster clearly deserved to die; to thousands more, he had clearly been assassinated by agents or allies of the state. The first of these narratives has been weakened, now that we know that Foster did not fire the rifle he was carrying and probably didn’t even raise it. The second has been strengthened by APD’s cavalier handling of the still-unidentified person who killed Foster, whom they ludicrously claim they lacked probable cause to arrest. We don’t know yet if the killer was a cop, or a cop’s kid, or if the cops kept EMS from reaching Foster in time, or many other things that have been alleged and that the Chronicle continues to investigate. But we do know the killer is walking free. It’s easy to classify these narratives as “right-wing” and “left-wing,” but Garrett Foster himself confounds this neat sorting of political beliefs. Where do white, ex-military, anti-government, open-carry guys who are also explicitly anti-racist and who lose their lives defending – literally – Black lives fit into the discourse? Foster was not the only one, as you could see at the vigil in his memory and at the marches since, as a volunteer corps of mostly white guys with guns has arisen to protect the Mike Ramos Brigade. But even if we just focus our attention on guns, what played out on Congress Avenue Saturday night is not just an outcome of “too many guns” in the abstract, a fatal case of what many view as a public health crisis, an epidemic just like COVID-19. That’s the framing of the movement for gun safety that aims to be centrist, nonpartisan, even apolitical – that’s typified by the “reasonable measures” promoted by Mike Bloom­berg’s Everytown groups and approved by Democrats in Congress.  [full article]