Lauren Boebert’s Story She Carries a Gun Because of a Murder Isn’t True, Washington Post Fact Check Finds
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Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) political origin story is more fiction than fact, according to a Washington Post report.
Boebert, a strong supporter of gun rights who went viral after releasing a campaign-style video vowing to “carry my Glock to Congress,” often tells the story of a man who was beaten to death outside of her restaurant.
She claimed that after witnessing the man’s killing, she wondered how she could protect herself and her patrons, eventually allowing her staff at Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado to serve customers with open-carry firearms.
Boebert told the story again on the House floor Wednesday during a debate on a bill that might expand background checks on those purchasing guns.
“There was an altercation outside my restaurant where a man was physically beat to death, there were no weapons involved, he was beat to death by another man’s hands,” she said, referring to the 2013 incident outside her restaurant, later adding, “I have a lot of young girls who work in my restaurant and we needed an equalizer.”
After looking at raw investigative files provided to The Fact Checker by the Rifle Police Department, The Post’s Glenn Kessler discovered that although a man, Anthony Green, had died after being involved in a fight near Shooters Grill, the autopsy report concluded that the cause of death was “methamphetamine intoxication.”
In the report, forensic pathologist Robert Kurtzman wrote that “postmortem examination of the decedent revealed superficial abrasions consistent with a fall. The abrasions were not associated with any internal injury,” while “methamphetamine is known to cause sudden death and abnormal behavior.”
Kurtzman further determined that the death was accidental, due to the “unintentional consequence of habitual drug abuse.”
“So Boebert is wrong to claim that the man was beaten to death,” wrote Kessler. “If anything, Green appears to have been throwing most of the punches. Then he died of a drug overdose.”
