Fort Sumner Straw-Man: the Elephant in the Room

One of the most common tactics of a Brushy Believer, when it comes to defending their position, is the immediate hijacking of any relevant argument at hand and the subsequent directing of said argument to the subject of “Pat Garrett Lied.” 

As an example of this tactic, on a recent YouTube video created by Brushy proponent Dan Edwards on December 15, 2023, and released on his channel Alias Billy the Kid / Asocial Media, LLC, entitled “Brushy Bill Roberts: Smoking Gun Evidence Hidden in Plain Sight He Was NOT Oliver Roberts,” a channel member commented, saying he had considered arguments on both sides of the discussion, and shared his hesitation in believing the Brushy story. Dan replied to this comment, saying, in part, “[t]he critics have never to my knowledge ever addressed the STUPEFYING [emphasis in original] amount of inconsistencies of what happened at Fort Sumner I’ve covered in my videos alone for over 4 hours nor do they address anything else legitimately.” 

Again, it’s back to the Straw-Man of Fort Sumner. 

In truth, I know of no person who believes that Billy Bonney was killed at Fort Sumner who accepts Garrett’s or any other account wholecloth. It’s widely acknowledged by everyone that something could easily be amiss in the accounts of Garrett, Poe, Silva, Anaya, and others. What we all agree on, however, is that Billy the Kid in all probability was killed that night. 

There’s even a sliver of a chance that he was not killed that night. But both of these - probabilities and possibilities alike - do not address in any way the claims of Brushy Bill Roberts. 

In the Facebook group called “Brushy Bill Roberts,” user AC Jones says, “why ain’t you questioning the real elephant in the room Garrett’s book?” 

Garrett’s book has never been an elephant in anyone’s room: Nobody with any sense ever accepted Garrett’s book as gospel - not even Garrett. 

This is the common attempt of any bankrupt argument: set up a straw-man you can easily take down. 

Brushy Believers want you to believe that “if you don’t believe Brushy was Billy the Kid then you accept Pat Garrett’s book and story as gospel truth.” 

They’ll quote Walter Noble Burns’ 1926 novel “The Saga of Billy the Kid” as if it were a scholarly tome of history and then deride people for believing it, when nobody does. 

Pat Garrett’s book conforms to the yellow journalism and sensationalism of 1880s America. Walter Noble Burns’ book conforms to the exaggerated, tall-tale nature of 1920s America. 

Neither are respectable, contemporary works of history, and neither comprise the sole foundation for people believing that William H. Bonney was shot and killed by Pat Garrett in July of 1881.