Volunteer Security for Salt Lake City ‘No Kings’ Protest to Be Charged

During last year’s “No Kings” protest in Salt Lake City, there was a shooting. A leftist standing there with a gun freaked out a leftist “peacekeeper,” who tried to shoot him, only the peacekeeper shot someone else and killed them. Stupidity abounded, to say the least. The shooter wasn’t immediately charged with anything, I guess because someone thought it required more thorough investigation.

Well, they’ve done whatever it is they’re going to do, and the dipstick who freaked out over the sight of a gun is now looking at going to prison for a very long time.

Volunteers for the security team at the June 14, 2025 “No Kings” protest testified about seeing a man they considered as suspicious, learning that man had a gun and then hearing three shots fired.

Those shots came from another volunteer for the security team, according to testimony at Tuesday’s preliminary hearing, and one of them caused the death of Afa Ah Loo.

Matthew Scott Alder was ordered to stand trial on Tuesday for manslaughter, a second-degree felony.

Third District Judge Derek Williams ruled after hearing multiple witnesses testify that there is enough evidence that him firing the gun led to someone else’s death and that he acted recklessly to go to trial. The judge clarified that at this point he is required to take all inferences in favor of the state, and is not supposed to consider whether witnesses or alternate theories are credible.

He said there was evidence there were three or four people between where Alder was firing and where the suspicious man, Arturo Gamboa, was standing.

There is a time and place to shoot when there are people between you. Had Gamboa been pointing the gun at someone, the case could be made that one is considering the lesser of two evils: risking a bystander or risking allowing a gunman to kill dozens. That’s apparently something courts consider, which makes sense.

But Gamboa wasn’t doing anything except following the law. He didn’t have the gun pointed at anyone, he was simply carrying it.

In fact, Gamboa would have been within his rights to return fire and kill Adler, under the circumstances as they’ve been reported to the public.

He didn’t, but that’s beside the point. The point is that Adler acted recklessly, in part because Gamboa wasn’t an active threat. At most, he could have been approached and told to leave without an issue, but that’s not what Adler did.

It’s no wonder that so many leftists seem to think that folks like you and me are willing to go off half-cocked and shoot at the slightest provocation. It seems like that’s their default reaction to literally anything concerning that involves a firearm.

Now, Adler will get his day in court, and we’ll see how the jury rules, because an innocent person is dead, and he shouldn’t be. He was killed because Adler allegedly overreacted to the sight of a firearm, decided that was enough to justify not just lethal force, but shooting between innocent bystanders like he was in some kind of action movie. If the facts as we understand them hold, he’s going to prison. More, he deserves to go to prison.

Stupid should hurt.

It just shouldn’t hurt innocent people.

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