Arturo Gamboa, the man shot in June while openly carrying a rifle at Salt Lake City’s No Kings protest, knows that his life will never be the same. His name and face, he said, have been “lambasted” nationally and internationally.
“From the moment that everything happened, I was treated as a psychopathic villain,” Gamboa said, speaking publicly for the first time since he was arrested in June.
Looking to confront Gamboa for his AR-15-style firearm, a safety volunteer fired three shots. Two struck him, and another killed an innocent bystander, Afa Ah Loo. Gamboa was booked into jail, but the volunteer, later identified as Matthew Alder, was not.
The next day, the Salt Lake City Police Department released Gamboa’s name and alleged that he, based on witness testimony, showed up to the protest with a gun, wanting to incite violence. Gamboa blamed the media for playing a role in the narrative that he was the perpetrator.
After a judge ordered his release from jail, Gamboa spent over five months frozen, waiting to hear whether he’d be charged with Ah Loo’s murder. On Dec. 3, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill announced he would charge Alder with manslaughter. Gamboa would not be charged with anything.
Now that the prosecutor's investigation has concluded, Gamboa broke his silence at a Dec. 9 news conference, describing what he’s been through, answering questions and speaking broadly about his views as an activist and changes he’d like to see in society.
“I did not shoot anybody, I did not fire a single shot, I did not have any ammunition in the rifle,” Gamboa told the assembled reporters at one point. “However, the blame was placed squarely on my shoulders.”
When asked about his actions that day, Gamboa said he was “peacefully protesting, utilizing my First and Second Amendment rights under the Constitution.”
As has been reported, Gamboa had repeatedly shown up to protests in the past with his gun and said he never had any incidents.
“This was not a rare occurrence," he said.
He started open-carrying at protests, he said, because he had seen “outside agitators” at demonstrations carrying weapons. He perceived those counter-protests as having “an expressive intent to try and do something against us, and try and agitate people up and create circumstances so that they could use a self-defense justification to fire into a crowd of people.”
If they had a right to do that, Gamboa said, “then I have the right to defend myself.”
When people on the political right exercise their Second Amendment right, he thinks they are not questioned as much as he has been.
"I believe it is the right of every person, without restriction, to utilize their constitutional rights,” he said. “And the Second Amendment right is not restricted to any particular ideology, any particular viewpoint, any particular race, ethnicity, creed, gender.”
Would he open carry at a protest again? Gamboa said it is a possibility under the “right circumstances,” which would depend on the organization hosting the demonstration, one that does not “put the safety of the community at risk.” He also opposed any potential legislation to ban people from carrying long guns at political protests.
While Gamboa spoke, he stood in front of poster-board-sized pictures of his own bullet wounds. Alder’s first shot hit Gamboa in the stomach. The second, he said, hit his gun and finger.
The district attorney did not charge Alder for shooting Gamboa, only for Ah Loo. Gamboa’s attorney, Greg Skordas, said his client is also a victim in this situation, but has instead been treated like a perpetrator.
Gamboa said he was treated like an animal when he was arrested and taken to the Salt Lake County jail, where he stayed for about a week. He called the country’s incarceration system and the way he was treated “judicial slavery.”
“You're treated less than human every step of the way,” he added.
When Skordas said he visited him, Gamboa had cuffs on his hands and legs. His hands were cuffed to his waist, and he was on a leash. The attorney of 43 years said he had never seen that before. For his bullet wounds, Skordas said Gamboa was given two Band-Aids and over-the-counter pain medication.
Both Gamboa and his attorney said they think racial bias played a role. While Alder was the one eventually charged, Gamboa was the one who was jailed. And for someone who did not break the law, Skordas said Gamboa spent too much time in jail.
“I don’t advise carrying guns in this fashion, and I can understand why it caused some concern,” Skordas said. “But what caused some concern in this case wasn’t that Arturo was carrying a gun, so much as a large Hispanic man was carrying a gun.”
Gamboa also publicly expressed condolences to the Ah Loo family. While he has not spoken to them and wants to respect their grieving, he added he hopes to offer his condolences in person in the future.
“I pray for their healing. I pray that God replaces their grief and their pain with remembrance,” Gamboa said. “Afa will be missed.”
After everything that has happened, Gamboa said he feels “lost.” Looking forward, he said he’ll try and “do my absolute best attempt at some sense of normalcy. But the reality of the matter is that that has been stripped from me.”
Gamboa and his attorney did not definitively say whether they will file a lawsuit in the future. Skordas said they don’t want to do anything to hurt the Ah Loo family’s chances of recovering damages and are talking with the family’s legal team.
