Part One: Harlon Carter: the Man Who Militarized the Cops and the NRA

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Matt seb how are you doing today? I'm good man.
I just got married. You did just get married married
Former guest Francesco fi you know, yeah, one of our
favorite guests with our least favorite. Oh shit, how are you?
I'm just being an asshole. We love you. That's why
I've brought you on to read you a twelve thousand

(00:24):
words script about um script. Oh a script. That's right,
Matt um, because because I do love you, we have
such a good time and I wanted to celebrate you.
You have embarked on this new chapter of your life,
making it very sad. Yeah. Actually this is the perfect
palate cleansitor to a weekend of joy, that's right, that's

(00:46):
coming on this podcast and just being just torn to
shreds emotionally because there's gonna be no joy here. Matt. Yeah,
how do you feel? How do you feel? First off,
I guess have you ever heard of a motherfucker named
Lynn Carter Arlen Carter? I don't think so. Okay, okay,
Jimmy Carter's brother, Oh boy, not at all. That would

(01:07):
be Billy Carter. And Billy Carter will be on our
our episode behind the Heroes. Because I thought you were
going to ruin. You know that guy is uh pretty dope.
Can you imagine back when like the biggest scandal a
president had was that like his brother made bad beer.
What a time? What an administration? Yeah, it was just like, hey,

(01:30):
his brother's too cool. Dudes, dudes were not supposed to
rock this much. That was, you know, that was the
biggest This guy out of the White House and put
in a dude who's gonna do part of a genocide anyway. Matt,
how do you feel about the proliferation of firearms in

(01:50):
American society? Um, I'm pro okay. I think you know,
the more guns the better, obviously, Uh nothing. You know,
the only thing that stops a bad guy with a
gun is a good guy with a gun. I think
we all know that. Um, And I think it's nineteen
good guys with guns stacked outside of a classroom for

(02:13):
seventy eight exactly. Dude just kind of sitting around waiting
to be like, I can't wait to be a hero.
I'll just give it another forty five minutes. You've got
a clock in first. So it's interesting. It's fun that
we got to the military, the incompetent militarization of police,
because this is a thing one of the things that's frustrating. Obviously,

(02:37):
you and I may have some slightly different attitudes towards firearms,
but i'm I'm I'm frustrated with American gun culture, which
I think is primarily toxic, and also the culture of
police militarization, which is toxic. Um And the guy we're
going to talk about today, Harlan Carter, is the dude
who started both of those things. He's the guy who

(02:58):
started militarizing the police, and he's the guy who made
the n R a UM. So it is. Sophie's got
a picture of him. He looks like he looks like
who you would cast if you were putting Kingpin, that villain.
He looks like Kingpin, Like he literally looks exactly like
Kingpin and spoiler, I would prefer any gangster too. It's

(03:23):
not even body shaming. He just looks like like his
his neck is the width of his ears. He's like
a literal dick head, Like the most dick had his
head I've ever seen. He is a chowd someone poured
into a suit. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that
this is what Joe Rogan was like I want this.
And then someone has been cutting Joe Rogan's h H

(03:48):
with lemon juice just to try to keep him from
getting too huge. Joe got the amount of h g
H that he intended to shoot into his testicles. This
is how he would look. Yeah, he would look like
this guy his narrow, ben thicker. He's exactly the way
you are picturing him in your mind, listeners. He does
kind of look like because Alex Jones has that thick map,

(04:09):
but he like not that, not smaller, and and Joe
Rogan's got that that big muscle muscle guy head. If
like Joe Rogan and Alex Jones, if you like in
vitro fertilized, like cut their sperm and a half and
like merged him together with the egg from like a
dead California condor, you would get Harlan Carr. Is this

(04:29):
painting of him where he literally looks like Dr Evil?
He does? He does look like Dr Evil who painted him?
I don't know a lot of people. He's a very
important person we would not get drinks with. So we're
going to have to start by discussing the history of
gun control in the United States. And because this is
the United States that also started with white supremacy. I

(04:51):
can yes, like just from uh this is just a guess,
but I bet you gun control laws that have been
an act we're mostly racist. Yeah, It's it's one of
those things when you get these you get these arguments
online where like people will be like gun culture is
white supremacist, and it's like, yeah, an awful lot of
it is. And then folks who are pro gun will

(05:12):
be like, well, gun control is white supremacist, and you're
both right because it's the United States of America. Yeah,
it's like if you try, it's like people talking about like, oh,
well the Democratic Party used to be like was a
white supremacist party for a very long time, and it's like, yeah, yes, yes,
both major US parties are primarily rooted in white supremacy.

(05:34):
And it's always it's always super weird that, you know,
whenever someone is just like no, and it's like what
why are you? You don't need to be so attached
to being a Democrat that you're just gonna refuse to
believe that. It's it just doesn't make an argument one
way or the other about gun control because like you
could say, like zoning laws have a lot of the

(05:55):
rooting in a white supremacy. It doesn't mean zoning shouldn't
exist because fundamentally, yeah, factories maybe shouldn't be in the
same place as apartment complexes. But um, that also that like, yeah, anyway, whatever,
we're gonna do our right, We're doing gun control, We're
doing CRT on this podcast. This is gonna be a
little a little bit. Yeah, we're getting into a lot

(06:16):
of stuff, but we're gonna be talking a shipload about
the border patrol. But first let's talk a little bit
about the history of gun control in the United States. Obviously,
sixteen nineteen thereabouts is when the first African enslaved people
are brought to the United States. Well, it wasn't the
United States then, but you know what I'm saying, right,
the colonies against their will. Um. And not that long after,

(06:39):
in sixteen eighty, which is pretty quick considering how slow
things went back then, the Virginia Assembly passed one of,
if not the earliest gun control laws in the colonies. Um. Now,
this law did not restrict the ability of white people
to be armed. It might even be more accurate to
say it wasn't gun control but weapons control. Um. But
this law, passed in sixteen eighty made it a crime

(06:59):
for any African American to carry a weapon or weapon
like object. Now that last term there is interesting, man,
because you could I mean, I like, as a man, right,
anytime you're out in the world, you think about all
the different things you could use as weapon. Everything's it's
just a thing that happened every room going, what could
I use for self defense? And or if I just

(07:22):
felt like harm on someone? Yeah, if I had to
defend myself against the eighty four year old man next
to me in the post office, how hard could I
hit him with one of these empty cardboard boxes? Seriously,
in the genes of of every dude is just Mark
Wahlberg going, I would have stopped nine eleven if I
had been on that plane, and you know that's that's

(07:42):
all of us. It would have been so funny. It
would have been really funny if he'd, like if he'd
stopped it, but then he'd had to try to land
the plane and had accidentally crashed it into the White House,
Like oh god. Anyway, So as you might guess, the
vagueness around the term weapon like object mean that meant
that the law it didn't just like banned black people

(08:02):
from from carrying guns. Um. It meant that they could
be punished brutally for holding any object if it could
be used to hit somebody. This started what wound up
being like a more than a century long tradition of
elderly black people being banned from having canes. Oh my god,
because you can hit someone with the cane. Right as
Gandolf showed us. You know, yeah, they weren't. They weren't

(08:22):
being fooled by that. In Virginia in sixty Yes, we
will part an old man for this walking stick. I
know a wizard staff when I see the one, you
think I don't know. You're gonna cast a spell now,
this being sixty years after the forced importation of African
slaves to the continent. The sixteen eighty law was aimed

(08:42):
at slaves, obviously, but it applied equally. There were some
freed black people in the colony at this period, and
it applied to them as well. The law was amended
in seventeen twenty three to specify that Africans African Americans
were not allowed to use firearms for any purpose, be
at hunting or self defense, and again seventeen twenty three.
It's kind of important to be able to use a gun,
you know, just if you're living in the Virginia frontier. Yeah,

(09:05):
there's a lot of other people with guns, and it
seems just like you need food and stuff, you know,
and there's bears like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. How
do you catch your food? Yes, if you are not
allowed to use a gun, you can trap. But I
think the purpose here and no one's thinking about like
they're not. They're doing whatever they can to make these

(09:28):
people's lives harder because like they're terrified of the existence
of free black people. UM. And under this law, a
free black person who defended himself from a white person
using a firearm was committing a crime. Um. Technically with
any weapon, like any like any tool they were to
use to defend themselves would be illegal. So gun control
in the early colonies, UM. Most of the time, these

(09:50):
kind of laws in Virginia were sort of the exceptions
of the rule UM because as a rule, like there
were the laws were less kind of specifically banning certain
things and more just kind of generally trying to make
it possible for black people enslaved're free to challenge white
supremacy in any way. Um, So it wasn't just guns.
And in fact that because guns were like not as

(10:12):
good back then, those were less of a focus than
some other objects that might surprise you. Possession of dogs
by black people was heavily regulated in this period. Well,
it was not impossible, but it was very hard. If
you were a black person who wanted to own a
dog in Maryland in the early seventeen hundreds, for example,
you were forced to get a license from the Justice

(10:33):
of the Piece who was going to be a white man. Um.
So it was not easy to get a license from
a Justice of the Piece for this um and if
you managed to get one, you were still restricted to
owning no more than one dog at a time. Mississippi
banned the ownership of dogs for black people under any circumstances,
and even allowed slave patrols to kill dogs found in
the house of a black person. So the police tradition

(10:55):
of shooting people's dogs is very old. Indeed, of course
I should have I I should have known. Of course,
dog control also, uh, you know, ties directly to white supremacy. Well,
and it's one of those that you have to Again,
weapons firearms are a lot less deadly back then. So
like a gun, you get one shot and it's not
easy to reload. Um, I think, but yeah, dog, a dog,

(11:17):
you don't need to reload, right, A dover min will
keep fucking going until yeah. Um, So that's what you know,
white folks were particularly scared of. And again it's also
worth noting obviously the prohibition against black people carrying guns
or their weapons makes sense if you're afraid of a
slave or you know, just an uprising. Right because a
group of people with guns can do an uprising, you

(11:38):
can't really effectively organize a bunch of dudes and their
dogs to do an uprising together. It's hard to I'd
like to see it, though. It would be cool what
they're doing here. They don't want black people to be
able to defend themselves from like mob violence, like individual
and families. They don't want them to have any kind
of defense if like somebody wants to do a murder,

(11:58):
you know, Jesus Christ like inventing inventing laws that are
completely useless, the idea that somehow this is like, oh well,
we can't we can't kill that guy. He lives in
a kennel filled with ravenous dogs surrounding him like he's
fucking Ramsey Bolton, just like ready with hungry dogs if

(12:21):
I'm yeah. So in the late seventeen hundreds spoilers, the
American Revolution broke out. Yeah, and by seven we have
us a constitution. You know, we we get we we
fight them English, we beat him, and then we're like,
oh boy, this first government we tried as a giant
ship show. We should probably like give another shot at this.

(12:44):
And they in a constitution, and eventually this constitution comes
to include a Bill of Rights and the now infamous
Second Amendment. Um, we're gonna be talking a lot about
the changing ways this has been interpreted through time, and
despite what people on tend to say on either side
of them oder an issue, there are a couple of
different ways to interpret how the so called Founding Fathers
intended it to function. And again, as a general rule,

(13:07):
they weren't all in agreement about pretty much anything, um,
but one thing is perfectly clear. They did not see
the right to bear arms is extending to black people. Now,
black people were not categorically forbidden from owning weapons in
the new United States, but in those states where it
was legal for them to own arms, they were always
required to register those weapons with the government. This was

(13:28):
not the case for white people. While there was some
hope during the Revolution among black Americans that independence would
bring about an improvement in their circumstances, um, and that
was not unreasonable. Again, the British Empire allowed slavery too,
So at this stage in time, it's not like it's
perfectly reasonable to hope that like, well, maybe things will
get better when they don't have a king anymore, right, Um,

(13:49):
obviously that doesn't happen. Um. And when that doesn't happen,
there's some uprisings in the New United States. In eighteen eleven,
Louisiana uprising of enslaved persons ailed, and in response to this,
New Orleans made it a crime for black people to
carry weapons. And this was again primarily even more than guns.
Banned them from stuff like canes, um, crutches, wheelchair yeah,

(14:13):
any yeah, definitely with an assault wheelchair. Yeah. Yeah. So,
as we've discussed in our Behind the Police series, many
Southern police departments started as slave patrols, made up of
armed white dudes searching for escaped slaves and using weapons
to keep a boot on the neck. Of even free
black people. In eighty five, Florida gave slave patrols the
right to enter any black person's home and take away firearms, ammunition,

(14:37):
or any other weapons found. And obviously these kinds as
as is the case with no knock raids today, these
often we're basically just pretexts to kill people in their
homes by saying you felt threatened. Yeah. Now, in the
early eighteen sixties, obviously we have US a civil war
over slavery, and broadly speaking, this goes pretty well. Uh,
if you're if you think slavery is bad, US civil

(14:58):
war broadly speaking is a goes all right. Um. Now,
one of the most kind of revolutionary aspects of the
Civil War is that, for the first time in US history,
a shipload of black men are legally carrying guns in
an organized way. A hundred and seventy nine thousand black
people serve in the Union Army, which is roughly ten
percent of its total um. And you suddenly have tens

(15:20):
of thousands of black men with guns marching across the
US South, which really freaks out people in the South. Yeah,
that's got to be the scariest thing. Everything looked at
that and we're like, see, this is what I'm talking about.
This is the scary ship I did not want to happen. Yeah,
this is why we're losing. Started this war that we're losing.
So post Civil War, Um, black people are not immediately

(15:44):
entitled to the same rights as white people. UM. So,
starting in eighteen sixty five, which is the year the
war ends, states like former you know states that had
lost basically start enacting black codes. Um. And these are
kind of okay, these people aren't slaves any more, but
we we want to treat them that way, So let's
just write new Let's just we'll take the old laws

(16:06):
that we had that restricted slaves from doing things in
order to keep them under control, and will replace the
word slave with servant or you know, something similar, so
that we can try to hold them under the same laws.
In Mississippi, black people were still banned from possession weapons
or ammunition. Uh. And if white people turned them in
for this crime, they would be given their firearms as
a reward. And again this is after they've been freed,

(16:28):
so they like should have the right to bear arms
and whatnot. UM. I want to quote now from Honors
thesis by Alexandra Lenzetta from the University of Colorado quote
other Southern states to enact their own set of Black Codes,
where Alabama and Louisiana both states prohibited African Americans, not
including veterans, from owning guns without a license or special permit.
Not surprisingly, these permits and licenses were controlled by white men,

(16:51):
making it virtually impossible for a black man or woman
to legally obtain a gun. This resulted in many blacks
illegally purchasing guns, making the potential penalties of exposure even great.
Punishment for having an unlicensed firearm was a fine and
confiscation of the weapon. Old slave patrols re emerged to
enforce the Black Codes and to terrorize African Americans. This,
along with a combination of great incentives to catch blacks

(17:11):
with weapons and a hatred over their new found freedom,
created a white frenzy, making it extremely difficult to hide
a gun as an African American. White frenzy is the
worst frenzy. It's and it's it's it's the most common
frenzy to in this country. It's it's it's the most
traditional American frenzy. But it is not is not a
fun law. We do love us a frenzy. Friends, we

(17:34):
love a good frenzy. We love a bad frenzy. Um. So,
eighteen sixty five, right, bunch of bunch of black codes
come into effect to basically try and keep black people
in similar positions to how they've been during slavery even
though the war was over. So in eighteen sixty six,
the US Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, um, which
this is like there's a big old fight over this,

(17:56):
and this is the this is the law that basically says, hey,
you actually have to these people have the same rights
that white people have, right, Like that's what that does,
you know? Um, And you know, things do get a
lot better for a while. You know, at that point
was like, look, do you ever just like read up
on reconstruction and go like, holy sh it for a

(18:17):
hot second there we seem to be on a good
track from on a good track, like it seemed like
it was gonna like workd out. Think things made a
lot better for a while, and then there's a violent
reaction from the reactionaries. Um, and they do an insurgency
which is kind of centered around the KKK. We have
talked about this in other episodes. It ends with a

(18:38):
series of demeaning, bigoted laws aimed at maintaining white supremacy
in the former Confederacy. Uh. These are you know Jim
Crown laws, right, and and these these come into place
alongside a wave of lynchings which kill at least like
five thousand Black Americans. Obviously there's no way of knowing
the actual total. Good chance it was significantly more, but
at least five thousand. Um. So in response, black people

(19:02):
do what you would expect. They form malicious you know,
they start carrying guns for what. I don't think I
need to explain the logic here, right, Um, and they
organized to stop lynchings. This culminates in Louisiana in eighteen
seventy six, where a bunch of klansmen who are also
government officials, These are like elected leaders in Louisiana who
are also in the KKK, are charged with conspiring to

(19:23):
disarm a meeting of Black Americans. Basically, like one of
these groups of black folks had gotten together with guns
to like figure out how to protect their community, and
these state officials like trying to take their weapons away. Um,
a bunch of courtship happens. It goes to the Supreme
Court who rules in favor of the Ku Klux Klan,
saying that the state had the legal right to disarm

(19:45):
this meeting to protect the common good. UM. And you know,
in this period of time, there's also one of the
things that's happening during the lynching period is sometimes lynchings
get stopped because the person who was attempted to be
lynched has a gun and they shoot the people trying
a lynch them. When that happens, a number of laws
are passed in different towns and states to ban the
carrying of concealed firearms. And in fact, those are some

(20:07):
of the first specific laws against the carrying of concealed handguns. Now,
this is an area where like the kind of the
anti gun control people tend to focus entirely on this stuff.
It's very much worth noting all gun control in the
United States in this period is not based in white supremacy,
in part because a lot of it is put in
areas where like most of the population is white. UM.

(20:28):
And there was it's worth noting significantly more gun control
in portions of the like the so called wild West. UM.
Then there are in a lot of those same states today. UM.
In places like the Dakotas and whatnot. It was common
for the open carrying of firearms to be restricted in
many towns. If a visitor came into town, they would
be expected to leave their guns with the local police

(20:49):
before entering. They'd get like a little card or something. Um,
you weren't supposed to like like there were it's it's
it's and there's you know, a lot to be said
about like why this is being done, but in general,
it's being done because they see that it's it's perfectly
reasonable to say that, like, well, there should be restrictions
on what you can do in town with a firearm,
right with a gun seems uh, I don't know, Yeah,

(21:13):
they certainly don't want you doing it openly. And then
like there's a bunch of there's laws about carrying concealed
and those kind of vary from place to place. But
it's worth noting that the infamous gunfight at the Okay
Corral actually occurred because a guy like it was over
gun control, right, like a guy was openly carrying his
guns in the city. Um, and you know there was
as far as I'm aware, like everyone involved in that,

(21:35):
I'm pretty sure it was like a white dude. So
I don't think there's anything particularly racist in the Gunfighter.
You could talk about it, be it involving like police overreach,
which people will make the case that like this was
this was a case of like a fucking early cop
going bug funk on some people. Um, but don't tread
on me. And yes, people, did you see this whole time?
I I didn't know that that was a real gunfight

(21:57):
at the ok. Yeah, oh no, no, no, it's a
pretty cool story as as it perfectly accurately described in
the documentary Tombstone. It's a great starring Val Kilmer. Yeah. Yeah,
I thought the reason was, you know, like a card
game got lost or something, or someone had like extra
aces up their sleeve. But it turns out gun control. No,

(22:19):
that would be the that would be the documentary ship
was it, Maverick, what's the documentary card guy who gets
like the Yeah, yeah, yeah, I need to rewatch that. That
That was a good fucking that's a good movie. My
other guest was going to be a giant metal spider.
Yes over my third favorite documentary, and this is what
brought about the famous US law against the carrying of
gigantic metal spiders, which I consider to be the civil

(22:43):
rights era of the day. I think, of course, I
think access to giant metal spiders should be democratized. I mean,
that's just the only thing that stops a bad guy
with a giant metal spider is a good guy with
a would argue that you can't be a bad guy
with a giant metal spider, because look, no matter what
it's doing, if I get to see a giant metal
spider trumping around town, my day has improved. Like okay,
but that spiders. Everyone feels safe and everybody feels better

(23:06):
with a giant metal spider. So this podcast is brought
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Giant Metal Spider get yours today, Actually right on time
because that time, well, look, everybody's talking a lot about
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(23:27):
R fifteen A metal spider spider the size of the
Chrysler building. Uh that is scary. Yeah, yeah, we're back,
so you have you know again the Wild West, how

(23:50):
common gunfights and stuff were, especially in like cities and
towns is exaggerated. Um, but also there was a lot
of like there were a lot of robbery. There were
a lot of crimes like and and it's it's the
same as it is today. Like the gunfights that have
kind of come down to history were like the ones
that the media went nuts on in the day, like
the gunfight of the Okay Corral um. But broadly speaking,

(24:13):
by the end of the eighteen hundreds, most places in
the United States had banned the concealed carrying of handguns.
Um although open carrying remained legal in a lot of places.
We'll talk about when that ended. Uh. In eighteen ninety three,
the government of Texas said that quote the mission of
the concealed deadly weapon as murder to check it as
the duty of every self respecting law abiding man. And

(24:36):
again he was probably saying that primarily because he didn't
want black people to have concealed guns. This is the
governor of Texas in three, so do keep that in mind.
But um u s gun control in this period was
at least deeply preoccupied with the specter of armed black people,
and even where laws were perfectly reasonable, they were often
used specifically to enforce white supremacy, even if that hadn't

(24:58):
been the initial intent of the Lenzetta writes quote. Another
example of discrimination is found in legal proceedings during the
Jim Crow era involved in eleven year old black boy
with a toy gun and St. Louis and nineteen hundred,
it was illegal to fire a gun within city limits,
and the boy was charged for violating this law. However,
when his case was being reviewed by a judge to
determine his guilt, it was discovered that the gun was fake.

(25:20):
Knowing this new information, the judge should have dropped all charges,
given that it is not possible to fire a fake gun,
but this was not the case. Instead, the boy was
found guilty and the judge find him ten dollars almost
three and ten dollars today, which is interesting. I did again.
Another thing that goes back very far is black kids
being penalized for having toy guns exactly quite quite far back. Yeah,

(25:43):
I mean it's literally just these are like rulings. It's like, well,
you scared me. Yeah, that's that's the entire thing that
has been the I believe the explanation for the deaths
of countless, countless black people. Well, and it's also just
like this, I was scare Perhaps we don't like, perhaps
were fundamentally frightened by the concept, even if it's a

(26:04):
toy of like black people having guns, because that's how
we maintain our power over them. Right, Which is again,
even in these areas where concealed carrying or open carrying
is illegal, it's generally not illegal for white people to
do if they're being vigilantes. Right. This is a key
aspect of this period, and this brings us back to

(26:25):
the glorious state of Texas. Like much of the South,
after the Civil Rights Act, legislators had to at least
pretend that their laws meant to disarm black people were
not motivated by racism. Brendon Rivas from Texas Christian University
Rights quote. The post eighteen sixty five laws, however, used
race neutral language to accomplish a racially motivated goal. Most
of these laws attempted to disarm black Texans, but some

(26:46):
from the eighteen seventies stopped to curb the racial violence
of the Ku Klux Klan by disarming everyone. For instance,
a part of the Texas Slave Code prohibited slaves from
carrying a gun without written permission from a master or overseer,
and a law of past in eighteen sixty six prohibited
laborers from carrying firearms onto a plantation without the owner's consent.
In racial neutral and race neutral language at the eighteen

(27:06):
sixty six law achieved the same result as the Slave
Code without specifically declaring that African Americans should be disarmed.
Their arming was conditional, subject to the authorization of an
interested white party. Similarly, the state's first comprehensive weapons control
law did not use racially charged language, but left enforcement
in the hands of local officials who could apply it
selectively against uppity blacks or white vigilantes, depending on which

(27:28):
political party controlled those local offices. And you can guess
which of those happens more often. And this is the
state of affairs legally in the state of Texas. When
Harlan Bronson Carter is born on August tenth, nineteen thirteen,
in Granbury, Texas, UM. Now, at the time, Granberry's primary

(27:50):
claim to fame was that it was the home of
Davy Crockett for a little while. Um, and every town
in Texas was Davy Crockett's home for a little while.
Not super impressive, UM, and every town is just he
stayed at a motel here for two weeks. Yeah, and
he's talking all our hookers. He's he's like a celebrated

(28:10):
hunter and frontier guy. And Harlan certainly like I I
heard god knows how many fucking stories about David fucking
Crockett when I was a kid in my mandatory Texas
history class. I am going to guess, in like nineteen twenty, young,
young Harlan Carter is growing up and learning even more
of these stories. Um. And obviously he's also in mention

(28:33):
the local gun culture of the time. Um. Pretty much
everywhere is semi rural. So he's you know, he does
a lot of hunting, he does a lot of target shooting. Uh.
He becomes an excellent shot from an early age, and
he he develops an intense affinity for firearms, shall we say. So.
When he's young, the family moves to Laredo, and Laredo

(28:54):
is a border town, right um, And his father they
moved to Laredo because his father is a Border patrol
agent um, and in fact is one of the very
first border patrol agents. So the year that they moved
to Laredo is n Harlan's fourteen, um. And it's the
same year that a Border Patrol inspector named Clifford Perkins
makes a trip to the town and expresses in an

(29:16):
official document, has shocked to find that quote Laredo was
strictly a Mexican town. Probably nine of the people were
either Mexican or of Mexican descent. He adds with horror,
the only Anglo on the police force was the chief himself.
And this is an interest like Laredo at this point
because it's it's so heavily Mexican. Is not a town
controlled by white people and the police are not a

(29:38):
white force, right. You know that quote I read earlier
states that like kind of the laws against gun control
were usually mainly like uh, put into force against like
armed black people, but depending on politics, could be used
to try to stop white vigilantes. Well, this is one
of those towns where maybe that's more likely because the
police force is not white. Um so the border for

(29:59):
t however, is not happy with the idea of a
town where Mexican folks are running things, right that does
not thrill them. Yeah, so you know they'll start inviting
other Mexicans to live here and they won't stop the border.
I mean, I love the idea of these like people
going to a town right on the border of Mexico

(30:21):
in Texas which used to be Mexico, and being like,
what the hell are all these Mexicans don't Yeah, these
communities that had been there for decades before a state
of Texas was a thing that anyone had thought of,
being like, these people are going to change the nature
of Texas. Yeah, this is not the Texas I know
that we invented about twenty years Yeah, that we invented

(30:42):
when I was fifteen. Exactly. So this inspector guy Perkins
again as exactly as racist as you might expect, and
he decides that Laredo's immigration cops are not going to
be able to enforce US immigration restrictions, which are again
geared towards enforcing white supremacy if the state of Affairs
and Laredo remains the way that it is. So he

(31:03):
carries out what he describes as a quote full scale
house cleaning. Now in the wonderful book Migra, Kelly Hernandez writes, quote,
he charged local officials, the chief Patrol inspector and Border
patrol officers in the Laredo station with immigrants smuggling and
forced just under half of Laredo's twenty eight Border Patrol
inspectors and the Chief Patrol Inspector to quit or be fired.

(31:23):
Perkins then transferred select Border patrolman who had all been
Texas Rangers into the Laredo sector because all were experienced,
well disciplined fighters who knew the country well. Detailing former
Texas Rangers to Laredo was a strategy used to divorce
the Border Patrol station from the local Mexican American political elite.
Tension quickly mounted between the X Rangers in the Laredo community,
particularly the Laredo Police Department, while the Border Patrol enjoyed

(31:46):
close relations with the local police in most borderland communities.
In nine several officers of the Laredo Border Patrol got
in their Model T automobiles and spent about half an
hour circling and shooting up the police station. A holy
fucked so he clean's house, brings in a bunch of
Texas Rangers, which is like the most racist police force
in the United States at this period, and has them

(32:08):
shoot up the police station. Fucking A. I mean like,
on the one hand, a cab Yeah, it's like on
the one hand, but on the other hand, I don't
think it's a I think it's just these particular cabs,
you know what I mean, they're going after specifically an

(32:30):
armed group of Mexican Americans. It's also probably worth noting
but that in this period, if you're being a fucking being,
a being a Mexican American police officer in Laredo in
nineteen is a bit different from being a police officer
pretty much anywhere in the United States at this point,
which is part of like why the Border Patrol is

(32:50):
purging them, because he's like, you, guys, they're not stopping
they're not stopping immigration. They're not like violently cracking down
on people who aren't white. They're not in saying white supremacy.
So we had to get rid of them with guns. Um.
And they get rid of they do get rid of
the Laredo police force with guns. Um. So only time
in American history that police have been able to be fired. Yes, yeah,

(33:14):
this is the this is the one time it happened.
This is what it took one time. UM. So it's
safe to say that Laredo was a pretty wild place
when Harlan Carter was an adolescent. His father Horace, was
among the first cohort of Border Patrol agents hired in
n um and he was transferred to Laredo in n
is part of this process. It's entirely possible that Horace

(33:35):
Carter was one of the guys shooting that police station.
Um and And in this period of time, Harland's father
would have seen his job as explicitly to use violence
to assert white supremacy in a place where most people
were not white quote from Migra. Although most local stations
developed their own strategies, policies, and procedures, the Laredo station
was exempt until the men and the infamously brutal racial

(33:57):
violence of the Texas Rangers slashed away at the bonds
between the Laredo Border Patrol and local Mexican American leadership.
The cleanup transformed the Laredo Border Patrol into a refuge
for white violence within Mexican dominated Laredo. So they've turned
the Border Patrol prior to this, and they're all like
local guys, right, so they don't really care about like

(34:19):
Mexican America, like Mexicans coming into America because like that's
how they got there, right, that's their family everybody, like,
and again they also probably don't see the border as
this solid thing because they relatives have lived here for forever.
It used to not be like a thing to cross. Um,
but this is the period where the border is really
is becoming a thing in a way it hadn't been before.

(34:39):
And part of how they do that is they clean house,
bringing a bunch of white people and have them shoot
anybody who disagrees, right, Like, that's that's how the border
becomes real in Laredo, the American way, and it's how
borders are enforced everywhere. Yeah, um, borders are bad, yep, yep.
Although today, I mean there's a long conversation to be
had about the fact that the border patrol today is

(35:01):
extremely diverse. Like one of the things people on the
left particularly have gotten wrong about Vivaldi is like the
assertion that like, well, they probably didn't go in because
those kids were Hispanic. And it's like, have you seen
the pictures of the Valdi police. A lot of them
are Mexican American it's and the border patrol guy like
it's it's it's the whole thing. Like if you go
down to border communities, you'll see it's not that. Yeah,

(35:23):
as always as like superficial and simple as it as
it seems. Yeah. Um. So in nineteen thirty, Harlan, aged sixteen,
joins the National Rifle Association, and again the n r
A is rightfully again, I'm I'm more pro gun than
most people on the left tend to be. Um, But

(35:43):
the n r A is like, undoubtedly for we'll be
spending hours talking about this incredibly toxic. It's not at
this point, right, it's not. There's nothing wrong with the
n r A at this stage, really, um. And in fact,
the n r A has its roots on the correct
side of the Civil War. Um. There's these two Union
gym rules who were like because again civil War one
of the things early on the South is doing pretty well.

(36:05):
And part of why they're doing pretty well is that
like all the boys who like wind up fighting in
the Confederacy's military like their country boys, right, they've grown
up shooting and hunting. They're like and and using guns
to enforce white supremacy. They're good with firearms, whereas most
of the northern boys who get drafted are like city kids,
and many of them had never had any chance to

(36:26):
to use firearms. So they're like they suck with them, right, Um.
And these two Union generals are like, boy, our soldiers
are really bad at shooting, and it takes a long
time to train them up. Maybe if we should get
ready for the next war by having an organization where
boys who grew up in urban areas can like go
in and learn how to shoot, you know, like that

(36:46):
seems like a good thing to encourage. Um. So that's
in the n r A up until the early twentieth century,
is like a sportsman's association. You're doing it for target shooting,
you're doing it for hunting. Um. Now, it is worth
noting that like from the beginning and who was not
seen as problematic at all at the time. There's a
military aspect to it as well. It's not like a
military organization, but part of the purpose of the n

(37:07):
r A is to prepare people to be part of
the military if necessary. And this is also the military
is a really different thing in this period. You know,
we have a big standing army during the Civil War,
but we hadn't before and we don't quickly afterwards. Right,
Like this is again, when World War One happens, they
have to like make an army. When World War two happens,
they have to like make an army in a way
that like it had not hugely existed prior to this.

(37:30):
So there's this understanding that like, if there's an emergency,
we're going to need to activate all of these civilians
and they need to be ready to like fight and
and and whatnot. Um So, Yeah, the U. S. Defense
Department would regularly hand over old weapons and other equipment
to the n r A, which would sell them to
members quite cheaply. This is used to be able to
get like World War Two guns like Garran's for really

(37:53):
cheap from the n r A. It was a bunch
of stuff they did like that. Um So. In February
nineteen thirty one, the Carter family's car is olan from
in front of their house. Right, um now, they have
no idea who does this? The origin story of so
many racists go on, Oh boy, Matt so again, as
far as I know, it was never figured out who

(38:13):
had done this. But a couple of weeks after their
car has stolen. In March third, nineteen thirty one, while
Horace Carter is out at work, Harlan's mother sees three
Hispanic boys quote unquote loitering out in front of the house. Now,
she says loitering. We have no idea. It's they may
have just been like walking around or like even if
they're loitering, it doesn't justify this. But like racist white

(38:33):
lady sees people who are not white vaguely close to
her house and she decides that, like, these boys must
have been who stole my car? The earliest recorded incident
of Karen. Yeah, so Karen Carter calls the cops. Karen Carter, Well,
you can't really call. It's nineteen one. Some people do
have phones. I don't know if they do. It's not

(38:55):
easy to call. It's not as easy to call the cops.
They send age in or whatever. Those those guys. No,
her son winds up taking this into his own hands.
That's right. I'm going to quote from a write up
in Timeline here. The elder Carter was at work and
likely wouldn't be home for hours, so the Sun picked
up his shotgun and walked out the door. It didn't
take him long to find the boys, who were between

(39:16):
the ages of fifteen and twelve, at a swimming hole nearby.
He demanded they come home with him. When they asked why,
he wouldn't say. Fifteen year old Raymon Cassiano responded, Hell, no,
we won't go to your house, and you can't make us.
Carter and Cassiano started swearing at each other. Cassiano pulled
out a knife and asked if he wanted to fight.
Carter lifted his shotgun to Ramon's chest. According to testimony

(39:37):
from that time, Ramon told him not to do it
and pushed the shotgun aside. Then he took a step
back and laughed. Annoyed by Ramon's lack of fear, Carter
asked if he thought he wasn't going to shoot, then
he did. Cassiano lay dying on the ground with a
two inch shotgun wound in his chest. So that sounds familiar, right,
There's there's shades of written House, There's shades of of

(39:59):
of Zimmerman, you know, like this is again not and
obviously I'm sure like if we had been around at
the time and paying attention to the news would say, oh,
there's shades of like this thing that happened in like
nineteen twenty and this thing right like the most recent incidents. Yeah,
you know, this is a very familiar incident, right, and
you can imagine even if this happened today, it would

(40:19):
be a massive culture wars. Well, he had a knife,
what was kids supposed he was just defending his family
and YadA YadA. Um. So it's worth noting talking about
why Harlan felt comfortable leaving the home carrying a shotgun,
which there's some like obviously it's not entirely legal to
carry shotguns because people go out and hunt and stuff,
but this is you're not supposed to like walk out

(40:40):
to try and solve the robbery of your car with
a twelve gage shotgun, like that's not explicitly legal. Um.
But there's a long history of vigilante violence by white
people and so whether or not this actually is legal
is going to come down heavily on the local courts,
right and so the fact because this is happening in Laredo.
If this had happened in like Dallas, you out the

(41:00):
city of Hate, perhaps it would never have been even
an issue. But because it's happening in Laredo, this is
going to be a problem for Harlan called Dallas the
city of hate, that's literally its nickname. What yeah, that's
the nickname of Dallas, Texas is the city we killed JFK.
I mean, good point bullish. It the city of brotherly hate.

(41:23):
That's um, I mean not anymore, but like that is
that is the nickname of Dallas, Texas. Like, um, yeah,
so because this happens in Laredo, the law is not
as on his side um as you might expect if
it had happened in some other parts of Texas. Harlan
Carter is arrested, he has tried, and he is convicted

(41:45):
of murder. Um. He's sentenced to three years in prison. Again,
you can say, like he should have been sentenced to more.
I I'm mixed because he was a child, right, Like
this is bad, but also like I think you have
to if you believe children are culpable in the way
that adult. But anyway, this is academic because he only
serves two years um. His family appeals the judgment um,

(42:09):
and they complain for about a number of things. They
say the judge is related to the prosecutor, uh, that
that self defense had not been adequately explained to the jury,
that one of the witnesses was like a criminal himself
and wasn't trustworthy, A bunch of racist ship. Yeah yeah,
they're like, well, the judge failed to consider that the
victim was no angel like that. That's based Yeah, although

(42:33):
they focused more on like the the kid who watched
his friend to get his brother or whatever get murdered,
was no angels. There was also no angel. Um. So
if it's legally allowed to kill no, that's right. That's
from the Bible. That's right. That's why anytime I see
a bunch of floating eyes, I just start shooting. That
was a biblical angel joke. Sure was so. Eventually, a

(42:57):
judge with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals UM agrees
that like the case was bad and he overturns Harlan
Carter's conviction on these grounds and because quotes several of
the material witnesses for the state have been discredited having
been convicted of infamous crimes UM, it does not seem
accurate that they were convicted of infamous crimes UM. But

(43:19):
you know, it's also worth noting that like Harlan's dad
helped run law enforcement in Laredo. UM, it's impossible that
some of the people who had witnessed the shooting were
like targeted by the police to provide plausible deniability for
his kid um and if not likely, so Harlan gets
let out of prison, his conviction is overturned, and he
proceeds with life now as a young adult as a freeman. Uh.

(43:42):
He enrolls in the University of Texas, but he changes
his name. So his original name had been Harlan h
A r l A N, and he swaps out the
A for an O UM. And he does this basically
under the understanding that like, well, this will make it
hard if people go looking for Harlan Carter this criminal
record they find anything. Wait, so he changed it to

(44:02):
hor Land or har l O N as supposed to
h R L A N. Right, and again it's it's
a marker of like how different the time is that,
Like this works perfectly for him for decades. Like people are,
well they swapped an A with an oh with another
we can do Yeah. I was like, well the search
engine doesn't do other letters. So so easy to get

(44:26):
away with crimes back in the thirties, My god, was
it easy speaking you keep getting away with crimes if
you walked fast, Like, if you could walk pretty fast,
you could get away with a crime. Oh man, those
are the days. Those we're the days. Let's bring him back.
Who else gets away with crimes? The corporation when they

(44:47):
hired those mercenaries to gun down union organizers in Latin
America was mob and you took it. I'm very proud
of you. Yeah, drink Ah, we're back and I'm just
gonna have a nice refreshing sip of Oh it's a

(45:07):
classic drink. You know. That's like locking a bunch of
nuns and you organizers in a church and lighting it
on fire. God, that's good stuff. Love it. So again,
it's one of those things. If this had kind of
been the end of Harlan Carter's story, I'd say, like, well,
that was a fucked up thing that happened. But I

(45:28):
guess I don't believe a sixteen year old should be
locked in prison for their whole life. Um So, but
that's not the end of the story. It sucks that,
Like there are yeah, like cases where I'm like, it
would be sick if he It's like with Kyle Rittenhouse.
I don't think the right thing was to throw him
in a hole for forever. Certainly the right thing is

(45:50):
not to turn him into a celebrity, and given billions
of dollars, that's maybe even worse. But like I I
think fundamentally you have to believe that, like, well, if
a child does something, even if it's heinous, you have
to be extra focused on the possibility of rehabilitation because
otherwise you don't actually believe that children are less responsible

(46:10):
than adults. And anytime you like try to set up,
any time you you know, try to be more punitive. Uh,
it always affects you know, uh, brown people and people
of color way more. And obviously, yeah, like Raymond Casiano
suffers even more for you know, whatever, however questionable you
want to think his call to pull a knife might

(46:32):
have been, although again you could argue justified because the
other kid had a fucking gun. Anyway, it's like it's
it's one of the problems with guns in America is
how often angry teenage boys get ahold of them. And
this is again quite an old story. But regardless of
like what you think of should be done when kids

(46:54):
commit murder, Harland definitely committed murder. That's not self defense. Uh,
And anyone who says otherwise is probably racist. Um. But
it's worth noting that even modern sources, and this is
something this is where things get really income, even modern
sources that are like very pro gun control very anti
Harlan Carter, who will attack Harlan for his later work
with the n r A tend to tell the story

(47:16):
of what happened with him in in Raymond Casiano in
ways that sometimes subtly reinforced Harland's claims of self defense.
This is a very strange thing I've noticed in a
couple of sources. I've read a lot of articles about
this guy and his his actions can be framed in
fascinating ways. I want to highlight, particularly a passage from
the book Gunfight by Adam Winkler. And Gunfight, there's actually

(47:38):
like five books titled Gunfight. UM. I think one of
them is like seemed to be slightly griffy. It's like
a former gun industry lobbyists who like does an anti
gun book because I think maybe that's where the money was.
I don't know. I'm not gonna go in today because
I haven't read it. I haven't I haven't read it.
But like, there's a bunch of books with this title.
The good one, the one that you would actually be
worth reading, is Winkler's Gunfight. He's a he's a U. C.

(48:00):
L A professor UM and Gunfight is a critical history
of the battle over the Second Amendment in US politics.
That has a lot of really useful context, including some
of what I went over about, like the early racism
and gun control. It's it's a good and again very
much anti n r A. But here's how Winkler describes
what happened between Harlan Carter and Raymond Casciano, which I

(48:20):
find very peculiar. Quote. Carter loved guns from childhood. He
was an excellent shot and would go on to win
two national shooting titles and set forty four national shooting
records during his lifetimes. His most infamous shot, however, came
at the age of seventeen, when in defense of his mother,
he unloaded a shotgun into the chest of a knife
wielding Mexican teenager. That's a weird way to describe that.

(48:42):
That's not what happened at all. That's such a weird
way for and again Winkler is like he's a professor
of law at u c l A, Like he's all
over the New York Times writing about this kind of stuff.
It's like really weird that he describes it that way.
Maybe it was just like, oh, man, I've done all
this other research I'm just not gonna I'm just gonna

(49:03):
go with the autobiography that he wrote this it's just
like it's like calling Ramon Casiano a knife wielding Mexican teenagers,
like an unsettling way to choose to strange. It was
just like people forget that Casciano was guilty because he
had had a knife. You're bringing a knife to a gunfight.
It is Yeah, it's again, the book is not at

(49:26):
all right wing or reactionary. There's a lot of good
stuff in there. The fact that he describes Cassiano's murder
in this way that makes me question some stuff that
like maybe I missed in vetting this thing because it's
it's a really weird passage. Now, let's compare that to
this right up by a right wing dude, Dave Coppell,
from an article he wrote explicitly defending Harlan Carter's legacy. Now,

(49:47):
in this article, he's critiquing a fundraising letter from a
gun control organization that acts accurately noted quote. Fifty years ago,
Carter shot and killed a fifteen year old boy and
was convicted of murder. Arguing against this, cople writes the
or admitted the fact that Carter was defending his mother's
ranch against a gang of intruders led by the boy,
and that the boy was menacing Carter with a knife. Um. Again,

(50:08):
this is also not true. He was not defending his
mother's ranch. They were swimming, swimming and having a good
time and being accused of doing her crime. That they
I mean, did they do the crime even I don't
think there's ever been any evidence that they did it.
Kind Of again, this is a little murky, but it

(50:28):
kind of seems like what happened is their car was stolen.
A couple of weeks later, she sees some Mexican kids
walk past their house towards the swimming hole and six
her son on them. Right, that kind of seems like
what happened. And it's it's weird because Winkler and Copel
could not be more apart ideologically. Um, but their description
of this murder is very similar in way, Like I

(50:50):
just it's I don't want to harp too much on this,
but it's like really weird to me that that happened. Yeah,
do you have any like inkling as that may be
or they're just the most people don't dwell too much
on it. Took me a while actually to find good
specific details about what happened that day. Um, And I

(51:14):
think most people take the attitude that just like, uh,
well he said he was defending his mom and like
that that's the I don't know. I I think in part,
you know, Winklers covering a lot of ground, right, because
his book is a whole is not it's not focused
on Carter. It's a whole history of like kind of
the how the Second Amendment has been interpreted and ruled

(51:34):
on and whatnot over a couple of centuries. So he
does have a lot of ground to cover. It's just
very and I guess that one of the things he
did was just kind of brush over what happened there.
It's like the way I would do it, right, because
it's perfectly reasonable if you're covering a broad history to
not go into detail. But I would have just said
something like, uh, he confronted you know, another teenager over

(51:58):
like you know, something his mother said, and like or
you could he just confronted another teenager and shot him
under suspicious even that would be better, right, And also
this is you know, you do a podcast, this guy's yeah,
it's just it's again I don't want to like shoot
on him too much because it's like, there's a lot
of good stuff in the book. It's it's just that part.
I don't get it. I don't get why you would

(52:20):
write about it that anyway. Um. So, Harlon Carter commits murder,
does two years in prison, goes to college, um, and
then he decides to follow in his father's footsteps and
join the Border Patrol. He becomes an agent in nineteen
thirty six, three years after leaving prison. Carter's rise was rapid,
if not meteorc So he joins in thirty six, having

(52:41):
been in prison two years earlier. In nineteen fifty, he's
running the entire Border Patrol. Now again, border patrols a
lot smaller back then, it's a lot newer. It's easier
to become a head of the Border Patrol. And also
his murder was definitely something on his resume, you know
what I mean, Like, I probably unlike the secret. I
don't think he put it on his paper resume. But

(53:03):
because he's known in Laredo is like, I'm sure the
guy's giving him his first gigs. All know about it
and think it's bad, right, Yeah, Um, but he also
he does keep it a secret publicly, right, Like he
doesn't rag about it in public. Again, when he's hanging
out with his buddies, I'm certain it comes up fucking constantly. Um,
but it's not like a part of his public persona

(53:24):
as a uh you know, once you're the head of
the Border Patrol. That is like a political position, you know. Um,
it's not like today in which that would be something
he would be celebrated for and talk about on you know. Yeah,
he would get like the shotgun that he used to
kill Raymond Casiano of an auctioned off for tens of
thousands of dollars and he used it to buy an
F three fifty with give him his own column whole Yeah, yeah,

(53:49):
he'd be making documentaries with Matt Walsh. Um, times were
a lot more chill back then. It is it is
when we talk, we're talking about the story of this
guy who does like a racist murder as a teenage boy,
and like, wow, he really was less proud of it
than he would be today. Yeah, that's where we're at,

(54:10):
where we're like, oh wow, he didn't make that like
his whole brand weird wild. Um, So the Border Patrol
had shifted at this point from being geared mainly towards
policing the border to being a force for policing Mexican
Americans inside the United States on the pretext of them
being potentially undocumented migrants. As a result, their work strayed

(54:31):
further and further from the border and increasingly into American cities, factories, farms,
and anywhere expected of harboring illegals. Some Border Patrol agents
had difficulty with this, right, This was not a lot
of the folks who had signed up earlier. This was
not like the thing that they had signed up for. Specifically.
Um Harlan, though, is hugely supportive of this change, and

(54:51):
in fact, he wanted to expand the Border Patrol's purview
even further and use it to eliminate Mexicans from the
country entirely. This was justified in his mind by the
fact that a large number of undocumented migrants were living
and working, or this was justified publicly. Right. So, Harland,
there's like a racial motivation, but you can't use that
like as we talked about earlier, right, like you have

(55:12):
to hide when your laws are racially motivated. So the
justification is that a large number of undocumented migrants are
living and working on ranches and other businesses in the borderlands,
often under nightmarish slave like conditions. Now, this is a
real problem that's happened, right, like the absolutely as it
is today, right. Um, And yeah, there's this like suggestion
of a new thing called the Burcero program that will

(55:35):
provide kind of like a legal way for these people
to like work, but they'll have you know, there will
be more control over the conditions that they can work in. Um,
which obviously the people who would be hiring them don't like. Um,
it's it's a whole thing. Uh. Just so, which way
for from the perspective of Harland Carter, though, this is

(55:55):
primarily a humanitarian pretext for carrying out like a purging
of Mexican Americans and from like the border lands. And
I'm gonna quote from Migra again. Carter had convened a
meeting to request the assistance of the US military and
the National Guard to purge the nation of undocumented Mexican
nationals and seal the US Mexico border. The Border Patrol's

(56:15):
proposal was titled Operation Cloudburst and consisted of three basic steps. First,
an anti infiltration operation on or near the border would
seal the border with the assistance of two thousand, one
hundred and eighty military troops. In addition to stationing troops
along the borderline, the Border Patrol plan to build fences
along the areas of heaviest illegal traffic to metal picket
barbed wire fences eight feet high and eight feet apart,

(56:38):
with rolls of concertina wire in between, and one roll
of concertina wire on top of the fence nearest Mexico
built several miles along the border would form the fence,
but previous experience that taught the Border Patrol that fenced
areas still needed additional security. Therefore, the concertina fence would
be reinforced by officers and jeeps who will be directed
to the scene of any attempted fence or canal crossing

(56:58):
by observers in radio whipped towers. So this is the
first modern this is the wall, right, This is the
start of it. This is the beginning of that. Not
that there hadn't been like fences and stuff in different
areas before then. This is the first time someone's like,
we need to build a wall and has like a
concerted vision of that and specifically a vision of using

(57:18):
the of the wall as a system of violence in
order to keep the border lands white. Right, That's that's
what he's doing here. And he he convinced that ship.
You know, he's like the Thomas Edison of making racist borders.
That's right. Yeah, he's the He's the Elon Musk of

(57:39):
border racism. Um. Yes, so, uh to continue that quote,
I want, I want, yeah, good, good, good work. Yeah,
So I'm going to continue that quote. Second, a containment
operation would maintain roadblocks on all major roads leading from
the south West to the interior of the United States.

(58:02):
These roadblocks would be used to inspect traffic, including railroad traffic,
for the purpose of detecting illegal entrants, and to maintain
safety patrols around the checkpoints. The roadblocks were planned for
strategic locations that would prevent aliens from fleeing to the
interior of the nation when the mopping up operations, the
third phase began. The mopping up operations would be conducted
in northern areas such as San Francisco, where the task

(58:23):
forces would raid designated locations such as migrant camps or
places of business. So San Francisco, I don't know if
you've ever been Matt, not super close to the border,
like well, I guess close to like a sea border
right now, but yeah, exactly. I mean those are the
other aliens that they also want to put a fence around.
Watch out for all those turtles and fucking you know,

(58:47):
don't worry, we'll get rid of those in a couple
of decades. Exactly. Just put a few more of those
soda you know, fucking soda rings in the water. But yeah, no,
not close to the board. I lived in San Francisco,
and I'll tell you it was are to get pretty
far north exactly. Um. So the primary downside to his plan, right,

(59:08):
this is a pretty good idea if you're a white supremacist, right, uh,
solid plan. The only problem with it is that it
is wildly unconstitutional. So there's this thing, right, uh, this law,
um that that kind of gets in the way of this.
So right at this point in time, nowadays, the border patrol,

(59:28):
like you see those guys fucking walking around and they
look like soldiers, right, They've got their plate carriers and
they're they're a R fifteens and all their fucking cool
tactical gear. Uh. At this point, the border patrol is
like slightly better armed than a modern boy scout troop,
you know, Like they're not they're not. They're not packing
that much heat compared to what they're going to be packing.

(59:48):
And they have a lot of merit badges. They have
a lot of merit badges in racism, but there's not
a ton of them, right, So they're not. They can't
do this without the U. S. Military, And in fact,
the military is going to wind up being a significant
poor should of the effort if they try to do this.
But here's the problem. There's this stupid fucking bullshits eighty
eight law called posse coomatatis right, and that means you

(01:00:10):
can't use the military to enforce domestic laws without Congress's approval.
Oh yeah, I know, we all hate possecomatatis um. I
for one, think the military should enforce all of the laws,
particularly jay walking, exactly, they're the best at it. You
don't want to, You don't want a bunch of you know,

(01:00:30):
boy scout border patrols getting a merit badge for walking
Mexican old lady across the board should have zones making
sure watching for people to cross the street illegally and
we should have MLRS rocket systems barred the area if
they crossed the street, not at a crosswalk. Exactly, dude,
we want more robocops them absolutely, yeah. Yeah, reinstate the

(01:00:56):
draft and use it to stop jaywalking and littering. Yeah.
Someone absolutely, someone like cuts you off, someone's speeding agent
orange immediately. Absolutely absolutely. So this this fucking law posse
comitatus really really grinds Harlan's gears. Um. So obviously I

(01:01:17):
should also note here that like the fact that it's
the military is not supposed to be used to enforce
the law doesn't mean it isn't right. If you casually
googled the Watts riots, you know, the government has a
way of finding out figure making it being able to
use soldiers to do cop shit when it needs to. Um.
But in this case, the government wasn't willing to like
push things that far right. Uh. And the general who's like,

(01:01:39):
job it is to like basically the general who's liaising
with Carter is this guy named Swing who really wants
to do this, like he's a racist too. Um. But
he's like, hey, we can't make this work legally right now,
but we could do it if the president issued a proclamation. Um,
like it's not impossible to do, but like it's you'd
have to get Eisenhower on board. So Harlan Carter gets

(01:02:00):
in touch with Eisenhower's people and he tries desperately to
get approval. But Eisenhower isn't quite willing to deploy troops. Now.
He again not to give Ike any credit. He agrees
with Harlan's basic goals. He just this, like using the
army in this way is a little too far for him.
But again he's not against this. So in May of

(01:02:21):
nineteen fifty four, Eisenhower appoints General Joseph Swing to be
Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Right, I N S.
We don't have I N S anymore now we've got whatever.
But like these guys are in so he's basically now
he's Carter's boss. Essentially. This like General and Swing had
a long history of commanding troops in battle from Mexico
to Korea. Um, obviously you can see the fact that

(01:02:44):
now a general is in charge of Ian s as
like the start of the militarization of the border patrol
and Swings a bastard in his own own right. But
this is really happening in part because of like what
Carter is pushing to turn the Border Patrol into. Right,
this is this is not just the start of the
laturization of the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol is going
to become the first large police agency to militarize. Right.

(01:03:06):
This happens decades before. You know, we talked about the
Watts riots, which happened like a decade or so from now,
um and then the l A riots, which were a
big you know, decades later, which we're a big pusher.
This happens way before all of that. This is nineteen
fifty four. So this is like, in a lot of ways,
the beginning of police militarization happens because Harlan Carter and

(01:03:27):
General Joseph Swing want to cleanse the border lands of
of of Mexican Americans um quote. As promised. One month
after joining i N, Swing announced that he would lead
the U. S Border Patrol in an intensive, innovative and
paramilitary law enforcement campaign designed to end the problem of
illegal Mexican immigration along the US Mexico border. No one

(01:03:48):
questioned how in four short weeks he had prepared the
officers of the Border Patrol for such a massive campaign.
I mean at this point to what was even the
the like, what were the migration numbers, Like, was it
even that? I mean, certainly it's not as much as
it was now. But I'm thinking about like what nineteen fifties,

(01:04:11):
nineteen fifties Mexico was, what they had, you know, the
civil wars not that long ended. Yeah, the p r
eyes and power. It's isn't it fairly stable? At this point?
I feel like yeah, So it's like it's like what
they were doing this pretense of like, oh, we gotta
stop the illegals. I mean, we're not even talking about

(01:04:33):
like you know, uh, we're not talking about modern uh
Latin American immigration that we have today, which is used
as a pretext for all sorts of racist laws against
um Latin Americans. Here. Legally, we're talking about like, yeah,
labor stuff that's taught, and again they have to like
do moral panic and stuff about the treatment of migrants.

(01:04:55):
But like, this is all very messy because like some
of the biggest people using the government doing this crackdown
are these different ranchers and other employers who are like
to exploit. It's not there's a lot that's that's going
on overall in this issue. But when it comes to
Harlan Carter, it's pretty simple, right. He's he's a racist.

(01:05:16):
You know, he's trying to do a racial purge under
the pretext of like, oh man, you know they're not
paying fair wages, and it's you know, he's he's also
like starting the process of of justifying, figuring out ways
to justify uh this and that are like palatable to

(01:05:37):
large chunks of Americans. Um. And yeah, that's uh, that's
what's happening in this period of time. Um. And you
know what else is happening right now? What I'm gonna
ask you for your plug doubles hell yeah, um, so
my plug doubles are. I just finished, um, the entire

(01:06:00):
series The Sopranos. Pot Yourself a Gun is a podcast
that I do with Vince Mancini, and we just did
our very last episode. We watched all of it. We
watched all the Sopranos. Uh, and you can listen to
the series finale wherever you get your podcast. I check
that out and also follow me on Instagram because uh,

(01:06:20):
you know, I feel like that's where all the like
cool kids hang out. So yeah, you know, hit me up,
hit me up there, and also be be excited because
me and Vince our next show, we're gonna be talking
about the Wire. That's right, twenty years after the wires
come out, finally two white men will break down the

(01:06:41):
wire because someone's got to do it. I mean, that
is the right group to break down the wire. Season two,
for sure, for sure, very excited. You got to make
sure at least one of you's a pole. Oh yeah,
we're gonna get some. We got some poles that were
gonna come on. We got a bunch of Greek Baltimore friends.
We're gonna come on. It's gonna be great. But yeah,

(01:07:02):
look look look for that coming uh probably when you
pod through the Garden, uh you know, which you know
kind of continues our tradition of having a really bad
title for a TV rewatch podcast. Um. Yeah, so check
it out whenever that comes out. But for now, listen

(01:07:22):
to pod yourself a gun. You can go back listen
to the whole thing your friends character on the Wire was. Um,
I mean I relate the most to Bubbles because I
used to love Heroin. Um. But other than that ship
probably Clay Davis. Clay Davis is cool. He's a he's

(01:07:43):
the state senator who says yeah, who says ship a
lot she she You know, for a show that is
like lifted lifted up as one of the greatest TV
shows of all time, They're sure certainly are a lot
of catchphrases. It's a weirdly catchphrase heavy show for something
that is incredibly serious. You know what the fund did

(01:08:03):
I do? You got? You know, you got a proposition?
Joe is like, I got a proposition for It's like,
this is a serious show, but they love catchphrases. Anyways,
I'm excited me too. Vodka Behind the Bastards is a
production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool zone Media,

(01:08:25):
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: Harlon Carter: the Man Who Militarized the Cops and the NRA