Billy Cowart is having a good year, and he deserves it.
He’s rallying back from 2016, when Chicago’s draconian gun laws nearly cost him everything.
In June of that year, Billy Cowart was charged with attempted murder after he shot two fellow union members in the leg in the parking lot of United Auto Workers 551.
The 50-year-old said, “They made it seem like I was this villain, I’m shooting up the parking lot willy-nilly. It didn’t happen like that.”
While waiting for his trial, he was fired from Ford after nearly twenty years.
He was under house arrest for a year and a half, which depleted his savings.
And it goes without saying that the man lost his reputation.
The legal system moved so slowly, partially because the first judge, Cook County Judge Joseph Claps, was caught on camera dropping a handgun on the floor in the courthouse.
After the court transferred his case to a new judge, there was finally some relief in Cowart’s sight.
The second judge took one look at the surveillance footage and saw exactly what Cowart had said: one of the men who Cowart shot was intoxicated and can be clearly seen sucker punching Cowart in the face.
The judge ruled that this man was the aggressor, and Cowart was legally defending himself.
But what about Cowart’s life?
He’d lost his savings, his job, and his reputation!
Cowart had been exonerated but was still out of a job.
Well, he didn’t give up.
He reapplied at Ford but, “Ford didn’t want to have anything to do with me,” he said.
In January of this year, he filed a grievance with Ford, and finally won his job back in June of this year.
An arbitrator ruled that Ford fired him without just cause and he should be reinstated with no loss of seniority and a year of back pay.
Cowart says he fought to clear his name for one reason: “For my family, for my son. I’ve got a 19-year-old son I don’t want him to ever think, ‘well, my father did something wrong,’” Cowart said.
This story should outrage every gun owner in the country!
The idea that simply using a gun lets the court system assume you were in the wrong!
The idea that you can be exonerated after saving your own life from a dangerous criminal, but still have lost everything is terrifying.
Gun owners stick together, and stories like this are the reason why: the court of public opinion is not on our side, but we’re turning the tide, one defense story at a time.