NRA History Pt. 1: The President of the NRA & the Murder of 15 Year Old Ramon Casiano

Harlon Carter. You know his words even if you don’t know his name:

Guns don’t kill People. People do.

These are the bold words of the man that revolutionized the US Border Patrol, reinvented the NRA, and gunned down a 15 year old child in cold blood with a shotgun.

This is the story that the NRA doesn’t want you to know. It has been told and covered-up and retold and buried again for decades. In the light of the NRA’s vicious attacks on the survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, though, it is a story that needs to become synonymous with the National Rifle Association and scarred into the images of everyone that represents it.

The man that transformed the NRA from a sports and hobby organization into a lobbying firm shot and killed a 15 year old child in cold blood.

Harlon Carter murdered a teenage boy for nothing more than hate, rage, and opportunity. He was sentenced to three years in prison, and he was released on a legal technicality after serving only two.

Carter would go on to make a career out of applying armed intimidation and finding technical loopholes to defend it. He would go on to design the foundations of Operation Wetback. He would orchestrate the overthrow of the NRA’s Old Guard. And he would play a key role in the radicalization of the Republican Party itself.

Harlon Carter would go on to design legal arguments that would eventually be used to upend the Second Amendment and flood the streets with firearms, including the AR-15 that was used in the devastating mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School.

And he would go on to do all of this after he murdered a boy no older than a high school sophomore by putting a two inch hole in his chest with a shot gun at close range for one reason and one reason only: his target was Mexican.

That boy’s name was Ramon Casiano.

The Takeover at Laredo

Harlon Cater was from a border town in Texas called Laredo. 90% of the residents were of Mexican heritage and at the time, local law enforcement was run by local Mexican elites. That all changed when a Border Patrol Inspector by the name of Clifford Perkins came into town.

Perkins was a proud and open white supremacist and deeply connected to the Texas Rangers. Seeking territory for himself and his men, he made Laredo his primary target and launched what he called a “full-scale housecleaning” of the Border Patrol. This included a cleansing of Mexicans in positions of authority and resulted in over half of the Laredo area Border Patrol being forced out and replaced with white men.

Among the most numerous and active new leaders of Laredo were veterans of the Texas Rangers — a group of militants that prided themselves on their ability to brutalize and murder Mexican people. While he was not himself a Texas Ranger, one of the armed patrol men that spent their days intimidating, incarcerating, and gunning down Mexicans in the name of white supremacy and national purity was none other than Harlon Carter’s father, Horace.

Horace was on patrol when Harlon arrived home to find his mother, Ila, upset.

The Murder of Ramon Casiano

At a time when lynching was on the rise, there were few places more dangerous for a brown person to live than Laredo. Any white cry of discontent, whether sincere or fabricated, could set into motion a series of events that could lead to the assault or murder of a person of color.

It was the cry of Harlon’s mother that set in motion the process that would lead to Ramon Casiano’s death.

Ila had felt threatened because three young Mexican boys between the ages of 12 and 15 (again, in a town with a 90% Mexican population) were walking around the neighborhood earlier that day. She was suspicious of people of color in general, but she had become increasingly hostile since the family’s car had been stolen three weeks earlier.

Ila was furious that Mexican children were anywhere near her and her home, and was convinced that they had been up to no good. She believed, without any evidence whatsoever, that the children had either taken her car, or they knew who did. Unfortunately, her husband was not there to protect her or her family from this imagined threat.

Armed with a shotgun and a fictional call to defend his family, Harlon went in search of the children his mother had seen playing near the home. His primary objective was to hunt the boys down and force them back to his family’s property. His plan was to kidnap the boys and make them “come to the house and talk to [his mother].’’

This was confirmed by the prosecution’s chief witness, 12 year old boy named Salvador Pena. According to a New York Times report:

“…Salvador…testified that he was returning with Ramon and two others from a nearby swimming hole when…Mr. Carter, ‘asked us to go up to his house.’

‘’We asked him why,’ Salvador remembered, ‘and he said, ‘Oh, go to my house.’ ‘ According to other witnesses, Ramon…replied, ‘’Hell, no, we won’t go to your house and you can’t make us.’

According to the transcript, 12-year-old Salvador testified: ‘Ramon took out his knife and asked him, ‘Do you want to fight me?’ The American began to curse and Ramon also cursed back at him. Then the American aimed at Ramon, towards the breast or bosom. Ramon told him not to do it and put aside the rifle with his hand. Then Ramon stood about half a pace backwards and laughed. Then the American asked him if he thought that he was not going to use the rifle and fired at him.’”

The life left 15 year old Ramon Casiano’s body instantly.

Harlon Carter was arrested, tried, and convicted of murder without malice or forethought. Although he claimed self-defense, the jury was instructed to proceed with the understanding that, “There is no evidence that defendant had any lawful authority to require deceased to go to his house for questioning, and if defendant was trying to make deceased go there for that purpose at the time of the killing, he was acting without authority of law, and the law of self-defense does not apply.”

Harlon Carter was sentenced to just three years in prison for the murder of 15 year old Ramon Casiano. He served only two.

The Release of a Murderer

In the Carter family, gunning down people of color was a family enterprise, and it came with family benefits. Harlon’s father had countless connections in both the political arena and the court system through his work with the Texas Rangers and the Border Patrol.

It is speculated that Horace Carter was able to tap these resources in order to articulate a legal appeal for his son and secure a judge that would overturn Harlon’s conviction. Truth was not on Carter’s side, but that didn’t matter in Laredo, Texas. White privilege and family influence were fine replacements.

Harlon had hunted down three children. He tried to kidnap them. He pulled a shotgun and pointed it at Ramon Casiano. Casiano attempted to diffuse the situation. And Harlon Carter, future head of the NRA shot him dead.

In a Texas appeals court, though, the defense argued that Harlon Carter was falsely convicted of murder because “trial judge’s jury instructions had been incomplete,” and Harlon’s conviction was overturned on the basis that the jury was improperly instructed on the meaning of self-defense.

Two years of prison did nothing to separate Carter from his love of guns and his hatred of Mexican people.

Shortly after his release, Harlon Carter followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Border Patrol. He rose quickly through the ranks, became the head of the southwest US Border Patrol, and evolved into one of the nation’s most violent and feared agents. From his position of leadership, he designed and implemented Operation Cloudburst — the pilot run for Operation Wetback.

Hiding behind the rhetoric of patriotism and exploiting inherently racist notions of self-defense, Harlon Carter would use the murder of a teenager to launch his career as a professional armed threat to Mexicans in the United States before going on to become the head of the NRA. Once at the helm, he weaponized the NRA to become the far-right entity that it is today. He would also break the legal levees that allowed the streets of the United States to become flooded with firearms.

Bullethead — as Carter would come to be known — has a simple philosophy: “We can win it on a simple concept — No compromise. No gun legislation.” And as the success of this strategy grew, so did interest in the man promoting it.

By 1981, all eyes were on this new hard-lined far right group that was armed with guns, white power rhetoric, and powerful allies in the Republican Party. Eventually, these eyes stumbled on the murder of Ramon Casiano. At first Carter and the NRA tried to deny the accusations. When that became impossible, Carter was forced to admit that he, in fact, had murdered a 15 year old boy.

The story gained little traction, though, and Carter was allowed to continue his work at the NRA. In this way, the man that murdered 15 year old Ramon Casiano would go on to pave the way for the murders of 17 children at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The next article in this series will continue to elaborate on these connections.

To learn more about Dr. GS Potter and the Strategic Institute for Intersectional Policy (SIIP), visit: http://strategycampsite.org/v2/