Had Oregon had common sense laws that barred people with concealed-carry permits from carrying guns while drinking, Barry Washington might still be alive.
In the wake of the verdict and now sentencing of Ian Cranston for the killing of Barry Washington outside a bar in Bend in September 2021, Cranston has become a martyr of sorts among the people who believe that he was simply “a white man defending himself” against a purportedly stronger (and outnumbered) Black man who dared to compliment Cranston’s girlfriend. The case has caused aggrieved white people to hop onto forums as far-flung as Alex Jones’ Infowars, somehow making a leap in their minds that a fistfight where three people—Cranston, his friend and Cranston’s girlfriend—stood against one was not enough for Cranston to prove his point—that only death should have been the sentence for Washington’s sin of persistent flirting…