Wait. What are we pushing? https://twitter.com/timcast/status/1259463285193261056

First, Daily Wire as an organization has no official position on this tragedy. I don’t agree with @MattWalshBlog’s take, for example. Which one of us is Daily Wire?

What’s clear is that Arbery should be alive today. Whether or not he committed a crime at some point or was ‘just jogging’ may provide some context, but are unlikely to change that simple fact.

His death is clearly the result of a struggle over a weapon. Once that struggle begins, both men are engaged in a fight they must have reasonably assumed was for their very lives. Both have a legitimate self-defense claim at that point.

But that such a lose-lose moment came to be in the first place is the result of the fool-hearty at best, malicious at worst actions of the three men who pursued him.

Murder, particularly a racially motivated murder, seems unlikely, though not impossible because the pursuers themselves filmed the affair and didn’t immediately kill Arbery.

Manslaughter or some other such crime seems more likely. That, by good intention or bad, these men pursued at gunpoint a man who was not in the midst of or immediate aftermath of committing a violent crime and thus created a circumstance that resulted in his untimely demise.

There may well be a time for such a pursuit - I saw a man run out of my house and looked inside to find my wife dead, or something. No claim that rises to that level has been raised here. Whatever Arbery did or didn’t do, it’s hard to imagine how the armed pursuit was merited.

Is it possible race was a factor? Sure, though likely in more subtle ways than the media would insist. Is it possible race wasn’t a factor? Sure, it’s possible.

That we probably can’t finally determine which is one good argument against so-called hate-crime laws.

Was he “lynched?” No. He was not executed. He died, as we can all see, struggling over a weapon. Had that struggle not occurred, he may we’ll have been detained until police arrived. But when you act with reckless abandon, as the pursuers seem to have done, people often get hurt.

It’s even possible that Arbery caused the weapon to fire in the struggle.

Does that possibility, or the fact that he charged the weapon at all make him responsible? Probably not. Who wouldn’t charge a weapon pointed at them by some random men chasing them down a street?

If, however, Arbery was engaged in a crime - however small - that led to the pursuit - however reckless - then he is not wholly free of responsibility for what, in the end, is likely more horrible tragedy than premeditated murder.

But horrible tragedies can have legal consequences. After a more thorough investigation, it may we’ll be determined that the pursuers did have I’ll-intent or violated Georgia law through recklessness. I strongly suspect the later.

If so, the men deserve punishment. If worse is proven - which again seems unlikely - they deserve more severe punishment. If Arbery was committing a crime, he deserved punishment, too. But not this outcome.

Still, to make of this a major race event seems far-fetched.

Cool heads, fair investigation, and an understanding that not every horrible thing is THE horrible thing are required to ascertain the truth - which all parties deserve.

Of course, all of this is my humble opinion, and I am only the lowly god-king of @realDailyWire.

Who can say what we’re out there pushing...