quite the mess indeed 
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Of course not, but it also shows that it’s a whole lot more complicated than people are making it out to be. The simplistic version is that Gaige was raising his hands in a surrender posture when he was shot. That was his story before the trial. The reality, as came out during the trial, is that he was aiming a pistol at Kyle when Kyle shot him. I’d say that’s pretty significant, wouldn’t you?
Certainly it is. It makes it plain that the right of Self Defence doesn’t seem to be evenly distributed. Some people have it and some people just don’t and should let children with AR-15s shoot them.
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I’d say going on and on about what a victim allegedly lied about is “victim blaming”
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On the next, Tom the Dancing Bug.
Bystander A: Oh no, that psychopath is shooting people with a high-powered rifle! We’ve got to stop him!
Bystander B: Wait! If we try to stop him, he will be within his rights to shoot us in self-defense.
Bystander A: You’re right. Better wait until he’s already pointing his gun at us so we can use our self-defense rights.
Bystander B: You fool! He’s a young white man. The media would demonize our corpses.
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I don’t think it is very complicated if you begin a bit earlier.
“Hey, I think I will borrow someone’s assault rifle and catch a ride to another state so I can stand around in a riot and protect the stores of people I don’t know and who haven’t asked anyone to do so.”
I guess there are optimists who think someone could have that train of thought, without the train pulling up into “and when they mess with me I will shoot them” station, but that ain’t me. To me, it stinks of premeditation and I would lock them up and throw away the key.
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The short version of the lesson of this trial is that only white male fascist street fighters can successfully claim self defense in our justice system; those opposing them not so much. The zentrum (now including chin-stroking “free”-market fundies who pronounce from the lofty heights of supposed political independence) will always support that rubric as much as the conservative economic elites do. I’m sure that there was plenty of whataboutism masked by “it’s more complicated than you think” back in the Weimar days too.
Absent actual witnesses to history*, the majority of people seem unable to heed its warnings.
[* …yelling “Are you nuts!? You’re making excuses for a bloody Nazi!”]
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Indeed. Brandishing a weapon is a threat. And is itself illegal.
He wasn’t deputized - so he had no authority to try and assume police powers over other citizens. The sheriff refused those requests several times in Kenosha. Additionally- there is no citizens arrest law in Wisconsin.
He was a vigilante who was armed and threatening others by brandishing an assault rifle. The police should have arrested him. But acting against him was self defense.
But now the question has been answered about when can we start killing “them”. As a trans person- who is most definitely considered one of them by right wingnuts - and has been assaulted on the street and shot at - it leaves me with the choice of either getting a weapon and defending myself first before an asshole like him decides to fire upon me - or dying.
I’m not going to die.
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When you’re a woman or a person of color. Which didn’t happen in this case, but you asked.
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Yep. At the risk of repeating myself:
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If any case at all can be made that Rittenhouse’s actions are allowed by current laws (which, to be clear, I am not making that case), the very next sentence should be, “holy fuck, these laws need to change.”
The fact that jurors were instructed to put themselves in Rittenhouse’s place as a 17 yo on that night, at that very moment, but not allowed to consider (or even hear about) any of the several decisions he made to put himself in that position at that point strikes me as unjust, for one minor example.
After shooting a person to death, the fact that someone tried to stop him should not be justification for then shooting that person.
The judge showed his disdain for the proceedings. Why would one, during a fraught and heavily covered trial, leave their phone on? Why did he even have his phone while hearing the case?
This was a travesty of justice. Whether or not it was “against the laws” is semantics. We all know it was wrong, and if it wasn’t against the laws, those laws NEED TO CHANGE.
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Way to leave out that Rittenhouse pointed his AR at his first victim before everything else went down.
Stop trying to gaslight us. Rittenhouse murdered someone. After that, he doesn’t get some kind of reset that pretends it didn’t happen. After that, everyone who was trying to stop him was justified in using force to do so. Rittenhouse’s responsibility was to turn himself in. Full stop.
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If, you know, the person has been threatening people. Like with a gun. As Rittenhouse was doing. (Having a gun is an implicit threat. Pointing a gun at people is an explicit threat. You. Do. Not. Do. That. Unless you intend to shoot them. Which Rittenhouse previously openly fantasized about doing.)
Rittenhouse created the whole situation by having a gun, pointing it at people and then escalated by shooting unarmed people. If Rittenhouse had a self-defense right, then so did everyone else - but Rittenhouse, as the instigator, was in the wrong.
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Everyone who tried to stop him was a hero. And deserves the kind of praise the right wing gives the killer.
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There was absolutely no evidence presented for this at trial. The only known time he pointed his rifle at his first assailant was after he was already being chased.
