Something tells me all that malarkey is strictly for fundraising/grifting purposes for “Christian” rubes with more money than sense.
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I have no problem with hateful people being fleeced for their money by grifters, as long as their ultimate goals fail.
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that seems exceedingly unlikely as the number of people killed by black lives matter demonstrators is… checks notes… zero.
( yes, yes. in 2016 a man did specifically target and kill police officers in dallas. it was notable at least in part because nothing before or since has happened like it. this is not that. )
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It’s worse than that. The fundamental schism between Northern and Southern Baptists was over slavery. (Here I use ‘Southern’ in the technical sense of the congregations that identified themselves at the time as ‘Southern Baptist’ - don’t pile on me over the word, please!) The Southern Baptists believed that dark skin was the mark that God put on the descendants of Cain, who were cursed in perpetuity - and that this justified slavery as part of the moral order. The Southern Baptist Convention did not reject this doctrine formally until 1995.
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People who are staunch 2A advocates often seem to couch their weak arguments that way, because they fear any significant change in gun control will inconvenience them personally.
The killer was never “forced” to kill; he actively chose to.
As previously stated up-thread; he could have fired a shot into the ground if he was truly in fear for his life, and that would have scattered the crowd around him… not that he should have even been armed in the first place.
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now see, there’s a theological argument…
i guess he could just claim to be a calvinist
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If I roll my eyes any harder, they are going to bang into my spine and make me kick the wall.
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christianist.
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Demonstrations, no. Adjacent events from the rioting and violence afterwards? Some. I won’t excuse those just like I won’t excuse cops who murder. But these events should not be tied directly to the overall BLM movement.
According to the NYT, he was being “pursued” by people and someone fired a gun into the air. Whether one considers his actions after that self defense I will let the jury decide.
After that, the 2nd set of shots were after two people tried to stop him moving down the street afterwards. From their point of view they were trying to stop a guy who just killed someone. From his point of view he was shooting at people attacking him. But at the risk of being accused of victim blaming - he put himself in that position by multiple bad decisions.
Then we get what the most stark black and white example of white privilege. I posted this multiple times last week.
When people are confused as to WTF the problem is in society and WTF people are angry about and WTF is the issue - the video of the dude walking towards the police after the shooting shows everything in a nut shell.
Cops are responding to shots fired. You have a white dude with a gun and arms up. They ignore him. They ignore him. Why? Because he doesn’t fit the primed example in their head that they are looking for. He doesn’t fit in their minds “the problem”.
Had it been a black dude dressed and acting the same way with a firearm and hands up been ignored by the cops? No. We all know the answer is no.
And yet even when presented with this stark example of what is wrong in society, some people are still twisting their heads in the mirror so they don’t have to look at themselves like a dog does.
I don’t know if has been confirmed, but at one point there was a report he was loaned the AR-15. If so, that person should also be culpable for his actions.
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He went though one hell of a lot of extreme effort to put himself into that position. Broke several laws to bring an illegal mass-murder weapon to a distant place where he knew people he hates were going to be. There is no way to wave it away as not being premeditated. He went there for the express purpose of committing mass murder, and terrorizing the locals. He is, by definition, a terrorist.
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Agreed. This doesn’t even describe all American Evangelicals, though. It’s a vocal minority who has aligned themselves with the far right to achieve their ends, which is the creation of a white, “Christian” nation. That’s why they celebrate this guy, because they see the violence he perpetrated as furthering their own ends.
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Cult of Moloch, the Gun.
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Read the Criminal complaint I linked above. It takes into account multiple videos and eyewitness accounts.
- The kid was pointing his gun at people at random. An eyewitness (McGuinness) scolded him and went into his car. (Reckless endangering safety charge)
- Victim #1 Rosenbaum approached the kid to try to get him to stop pointing his gun at people. He was killed at a distance with several shots fired. Witnessed by McGuinness from his car (Reckless Murder charge)
- At that point we see the “pursuit”. People shouting someone’s been shot/killed. Victim # 2, Huber tried to subdue him with a skateboard. He was shot and killed for his efforts (Intentional homicide).
- Then we get to Victim #3 whose name I can’t spell right. He may or may not have had a pistol (there is a doctored photo floating about there which the prosecution referenced) However this victim was shot with his hands in the air. (Attempted murder).
Self defense won’t factor into any of it. He instigated dangerous violent behavior, had opportunity to retreat and was not threatened with deadly force.
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”A Second American Revolution against Tyranny has begun”
Was his next tweet:
“And my client has chosen the side of Tyranny!” Maybe?
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“What truly breaks my heart is seeing the Christians who come to the rabid defense of gun violence, who twist Biblical verses with such fervent zeal in order to retroactively rewrite continuity to justify killing”
Nobody can fake being a good guy more than the evil itself. There is an awfully high pencentage of religious people who are nothing but evil beings who worship their god (or pretend to, but I’m sure most of them are actually convinced they’re sincere believers) just so that they feel being justified when they take extreme measures to follow, or believe to follow, their god’s will. The difference between these people and the talibans is absolutely nil: both are mentally fucked up bastards with weapons.
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(2) Mitigating circumstances. The following are affirmative defenses to prosecution under this section which mitigate the offense to 2nd-degree intentional homicide under s. 940.05:
(a) Adequate provocation. Death was caused under the influence of adequate provocation as defined in s. 939.44.
(b) Unnecessary defensive force. Death was caused because the actor believed he or she or another was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and that the force used was necessary to defend the endangered person, if either belief was unreasonable.
(c) Prevention of felony. Death was caused because the actor believed that the force used was necessary in the exercise of the privilege to prevent or terminate the commission of a felony, if that belief was unreasonable.
(d) Coercion; necessity. Death was caused in the exercise of a privilege under s. 939.45 (1).
sometimes the criminal law is best thought of as the license the state gives itself to punish someone, and not as a statement of what is just and unjust
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Your honor, my client was clearly acting in self-defense. Also he as trying to foment an insurrection. Whichever you think is less murder-y?
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Like there’s any surprise to this.
But query: I watched the clips the Times assembled and… I didn’t see any sign of any serious threat to Rittenhouse let alone that the people he shot were armed. Am I missing something??
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