It was dumb luck – not righteousness, valor, honor, revolutionary spirit or class identity – that saved, acquitted and enshrined Rittenhouse.
Posted by: vk | Nov 20 2021 15:44 utc | 301
…….
Looked to me like it was some damned niffty marksmanship that decided the outcome actually.
The agility, ability and coolheadness demonstrated by young Mr Rittenhouse on the night in question was clearly superior to that of the criminal gang of armed fascists who decided to attack him.

Posted by: LOL | Nov 20 2021 15:50 utc | 303

@ Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Nov 20 2021 15:49 utc | 302
Read the article. After the first shot, whoever would’ve killed in that scenario would get away with self defense.
The author also talks about other recent and ongoing cases, and why the American concept of self defense always favors the killer.

Posted by: vk | Nov 20 2021 16:03 utc | 305

Posted by: LOL | Nov 20 2021 15:40 utc | 300
This is how divide and conquer works of playing dumb reactionaries against each other refusing to discuss objectively of their problems each harden to just listen to their own bubble and see only the devil of those they perceived as enemies.
I have written my take above in detail and if you still insists on painting me as those woketards inside your own head then well…
We have no discussion and you should just go on listen to yourself and the bubble you agreed with.
Back in discussion the main cause of this divide again
-Deadly violent Militarized Police force that shun transparency in their standard of conduct even when victims start pilling by their door and,
-Partisanship media that each doesn’t intent to objectively inform but instead is willing to whitewash each of their own ‘party’ crimes whilst highlighting the other sides.
-That the protestors/rioters could’ve find the reason to turn to the street is Police fault.
-That the criminal activity during their demonstrations are whitewashed by media emboldened opportunistic criminals.
-That the toxic work environment that media had pinned to Police force discourage them doing their jobs.
-That the police force that doesn’t do enough would’ve led to reactionaries creating their own vigilante militants.

Posted by: Lucci | Nov 20 2021 16:12 utc | 307

For all you “across state lines” loons: Don’t fret when ruefully contemplating your current complete inabilty to process something as simple as reality……
I want you all to know that you are not alone. Fret not, dear loons:
Like some kind of demented horde of mass-hypnotics, the MSM’s got your back…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY1eoY_MMco

Posted by: LOL | Nov 20 2021 16:13 utc | 309

@ Posted by: JPC | Nov 20 2021 16:04 utc | 307
The profile of the victim is immaterial to the application of self defense in the USA.
Again, read the article I linked. The author also explains why Travis McMichael (for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery) will also probably be acquitted.
Long story short, the 2nd Amendment’s modern interpretation gave carrying a fire weapon special status. The only way to disprove a shooter didn’t act in self defense is if you prove he committed a chain of previously illegal actions which culminated in the shooting. If the penultimate action the shooter took was legal, then he can claim self defense, even if the penultimate and so on actions were all illegal. That’s because the shooter has the privilege to claim he psychologically perceived the shot was a threat, without the need for any material evidence to prove that – the burden of proof is on the victim or prosecution.
Indeed, an important aspect of Rittenhouse’s defense was that he was legally carrying the AR-15. Wisconsin’s law forbids anyone below 18 to carry any fire weapon. However, there’s another obscure law that allows people aged 16-17 to carry rifles (it was created with the intent to allow them to hunt). The judge accepted this loophole argument by the defense. With that, the chain of legal events was established, and the prosecution simply had no means to prove beyond reasonable doubt it wasn’t self defense.

Posted by: vk | Nov 20 2021 16:19 utc | 311

Statistically!
The chance of him engaging with Three felons with their conviction sheets.
Simultaneously!
Pretty amazing!
Posted by: JPC | Nov 20 2021 16:04 utc | 307
……
FOUR actually.
The first person to attack him as he was knocked to the groud in the process of retreating having sucessfully defended himself from the rage-filled Rosenbaum, was “Jump Kick Guy”.
“Jump Kick Guy” has been identified and, lo and behold and who’da thunk it, it turns out that Mr “Jump Kick Guy” too has a verifiable history of violent criminal convictions, stretching over several years of adulthood.
Amazing coincidence that all 4 that attacked him from the crowd of “mostly peaceful innocent protestors” just happen to all have an obvious and proven propensity for violent criminality

Posted by: LOL | Nov 20 2021 16:21 utc | 313

Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Nov 20 2021 16:13 utc | 30
Rittenhouse carry bigger firearms with clear on the record intention of what he brings them for. If there’s no video evidence everything would’ve became grey and the guy with just a handgun would’ve been acquitted off murder of course if there’s no strong witness and evidences against his defense.
That Rittenhouse has clear video records of what happened coupled with the profile of his victim make him clear in the white. His clear restraints during the violent scuffle is rather remarkable but again it could’ve gone badly with him shooting random people in confusion.
The bottom line is he’s not supposed to be there doing the works of the police.

Posted by: Lucci | Nov 20 2021 16:24 utc | 315

The bottom line is he’s not supposed to be there doing the works of the police.
Posted by: Lucci | Nov 20 2021 16:24 utc | 316
He was not doing the work of the police. It is not the work of the police to go around killing people for nothing.

Posted by: BM | Nov 20 2021 16:27 utc | 317

Posted by: Lucci | Nov 20 2021 16:24 utc | 316
However, your last bit that it “could have gone badly if …”. That is also true, but he was self controlled, more so than his attackers, there wasn’t any “if”.

Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Nov 20 2021 16:34 utc | 319

Vk – I can’t believe you’re still spam commenting on this with layer upon layer of drivel. Re this latest nonsense, posted from an article that conveniently does not agree with any reasonable principle of self defense is as unconvincing as the rest of the nonsense.
No, the four who attacked KR would not be entitled to self defense had they shot first. The obvious reason for that is because they attacked KR, not the other way around. They ran up to him, he was running away. Attempting to get away and being stopped entitles you to self defense as your last resort. Approaching someone, attacking him with a skateboard, running at him waving a handgun, etc. does not.
Re some of the rest of the commentary, it seems they’d prefer to live (and many I assume do) in a country where the citizenry are disarmed and “good” standup citizens like the three shot here can riot and maim and destroy to their hearts content, as long as it’s not your house or business you’ve spent decades building up, I assume. I for one am happy to live in one where the ability to riot and destroy is occasionally contested.

Posted by: Caliman | Nov 20 2021 16:37 utc | 321

I didn’t follow any of this discussion (which I will now read), but I saw that it took the jury a long time to come to this ‘unanimous’ decision. I would attribute that to the circumstance of a teenager being armed with a military weapon and placing himself in a provocative situation. The fact that the decision was ultimatley what it was comes down to the legality of the issue.
To my mind this trumps any recriminations against the jury per se. Rather, it is an indictment of the law itself. This does not bode well for the stability of the citizenry in a crowd situation. It smacks rather of the horrors of school shootings and attacks on churches, along with other crimes perpetrated by minors. And it puts further reservations into the minds of those who would join in any protest, which is the participatory right of any citizen.
It isn’t a decision to be happy about, though it could serve a good purpose if law givers and makers would set about closing the loopholes that allow this action to be legal.

Posted by: juliania | Nov 20 2021 16:42 utc | 323

Sorry, ‘ultimately.’

Posted by: juliania | Nov 20 2021 16:44 utc | 325

Posted by: juliania | Nov 20 2021 16:42 utc | 324
It took a while, I suspect, because the jurors were doing their due dilligence. The drone camera seemed to be important to them and they seemed to want to get it right. They also seemed to want to get the law understood correctly, asking for extra copies of the Judge’s guidance, probably to aid discussion.

Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Nov 20 2021 16:52 utc | 327

@ Posted by: Caliman | Nov 20 2021 16:37 utc | 322
Except that your opinion does not reflect what really happened on the trial. Moral righteousness was never used by Rittenhouse’s defense.
The lax application of self defense when it comes to fire weapons in the USA guarantees that the defense of the shooter can always presume guilty of the shot person (doesn’t matter if killed or not). That’s because a psychological claim (perceived threat) is enough. That guarantees, in the chain of events, that the last action of the victim was presumably illegal (because the victim is presumed as a threat from the very beginning of the trial). Indeed, that was the exact line of argument of Rittenhouse’s defense: they merely gave a psychological interpretation of the events portrayed by the video; the video doesn’t prove Rittenhouse’s defense – but it casts reasonable doubt because it also doesn’t disprove it (in a criminal trial, there can be no reasonable doubt for a condemnation).
In no moment Rittenhouse’s defense based their case on emotional, moral or societal factors. They merely described that every mechanical action made by the three victims configured an objective threat in Rittenhouse’s mind, therefore they prefigured themselves as victims before they even knew it. It is a retroactive concept of self defense: self defense happened because the shooter was able to shoot.
The only way to disprove self defense in this case was for the prosecution to prove Rittenhouse’s previous action before shooting was illegal. If someone commits an illegal act, he/she is a threat, thus reversing the self defense card on the shooter. The only way the prosecution had to do that was by proving his weapon was illegally carried – which was not possible, because of Wisconsin’s loophole on rifles.
Had one of his victims managed to disarm Rittenhouse and kill him, Rittenhouse would have been converted into a threat, the shooter being the one in self defense. That’s because the shooter could have claimed Rittenhouse was a threat in his mind, and the only way for the prosecution to disprove the case would be by some kind of bizarre argument that he stole the gun from Rittenhouse (therefore configuring a penultimate illegal action).
This bizarre “hot potato” interpretation of self defense is certainly a legal chimera born from the modern interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. The American justice system simply has to guarantee all of its citizens the right to bear arms, and they must accommodate for its correspondent change of cultural habits. The collateral effect of this is that it gives the bearer of arms power of jury and executioner: one mere spook, one bad eye, one verbal provocation can be a death sentence.

Posted by: vk | Nov 20 2021 16:58 utc | 329

Interesting read.

Every step of the way, a subset of journalists and commentators have done everything they could to paint Rittenhouse in as negative a light as possible, even when doing so has involved distortion or selective forgetting. Take the endlessly regurgitated claim that he “crossed state lines” to get to Kenosha. First of all, this is geographically trivial: Rittenhouse lived with his mother in Antioch, Illinois at the time. Antioch borders Wisconsin, meaning that Antioch residents can “cross state lines” to grab a cup of coffee.
Second, the whole point of that language is to make the gun charge sound more serious, to portray Rittenhouse as an outsider seeking carnage, or both—but all of this was debunked many months ago. Rittenhouse didn’t bring his rifle across state lines, full-stop. A friend bought it for him and kept it at his (the friend’s) stepfather’s house in Kenosha. And those few journalists who did deep reporting into the case—Charles Homans of the New York Times Magazine (a former colleague of mine at Washington Monthly) and Paige Williams of The New Yorker both deserve plaudits for their work—quickly established that Rittenhouse had many ties to Kenosha, where he worked as a lifeguard and where his father, grandmother, aunt, uncle and a cousin all lived.
The overall effect of all this bad journalism and irresponsible, inflammatory punditry was the creation of an entirely separate version of events that bore almost no resemblance to what really happened that awful night in Kenosha. It was “fake news” in the same sense progressives often use that term: the creation of alternate realities as a result of partisan outlets and journalists more interested in narrative-promotion and ideological point-scoring than in fact-checking.

The Rittenhouse Verdict Shouldn’t Have Been a Surprise

Posted by: Down South | Nov 20 2021 17:02 utc | 331

@BM @juliania
“A delinquent juvenile psycho itching to play Rambo and itching to shoot people takes a semi-automatic killing machine that he is by law prohibited from carrying on his own at his age, travels across state boundaries to meddle in other peoples affairs just for the sake of seeking out trouble and thrills of killing, and as a result of his delinquent behaviour kills and injures several people. He is taken to court, and triumphantly cleared of all charges, sending a clear message to other delinquent rightwing white supremacist Rambo psychos that they can go out wilfully and recklessly looking for trouble, kill numerous people, get off scott free, and be hailed as heroes.”
This is true point of concerns. They’re too desensitized of murders and from such a young age and easy access to deadly firearms.
That said Kyle Rittenhouse victims each has criminal records which gives him points well into white area in his defense. This is a fact.
Frankly they should quickly draft laws banning vigilantism and militancy.

Posted by: Lucci | Nov 20 2021 17:04 utc | 333

@ 325 I don’t think your Russia/China analogy works very well. If protests become riots and arson they send in the police or the army. Private citizens stay out of it.

Posted by: dh | Nov 20 2021 17:06 utc | 335

I don’t think your Russia/China analogy works very well. If protests become riots and arson they send in the police or the army. Private citizens stay out of it.
Posted by: dh | Nov 20 2021 17:06 utc | 336
As they should be as well in the US. Kyle Rittenhouse aren’t supposed to be there.

Posted by: Lucci | Nov 20 2021 17:09 utc | 337

ıf the three had not been criminally inclined in the first place, they most likely would not have been chasing him trying to kill him to begin with and this whole sorry tragedy would not have happened.
Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Nov 20 2021 17:09 utc | 337
Exactly. Which is why it gives points to Rittenhouse defense since victims has previous offences that fits their profile as the aggressors in the scuffle. Coupled that with the video evidence you are well in the white area where judges and jury can’t overturned them without destroying their credibility.
But i believe this will be subject for review sooner rather than later.

Posted by: Lucci | Nov 20 2021 17:16 utc | 339

Lucci @296: “Let’s say these protestors/rioters now bring armed militants open carry semi automatic weapons and all dubbing them “protecting protestors””
They did, and nobody attacked them, so they never had to defend themselves.
You didn’t know that, did you? Aren’t you at all curious as to why you didn’t know that?

Posted by: William Gruff | Nov 20 2021 17:31 utc | 341

@ Posted by: Caliman | Nov 20 2021 17:39 utc | 343
You agreed with me. The benefit of the doubt is always with the shooter. That’s what I’m saying.
It had nothing to do with Rittenhouse allegedly being some kind of proletarian/anti-communist hero. That was not the argument of his defense.
And you cannot deduce that the trial was “easy peasy”. Nor could the owner of this blog. To say that is objectively to deny what really, in fact happened in the trial.
–//–
@ Posted by: William Gruff | Nov 20 2021 17:31 utc | 342
You speak nonsense because the trial is for murder, not self defense. Self defense is the argument you use to be acquitted for murder, not the cause of the trial.

Posted by: vk | Nov 20 2021 17:50 utc | 343

Razer Ray 17
Rittenhouse had as much right to be there as the protesters, and more right that the rioters.
Posted by: figleaf23 | Nov 19 2021 19:49 utc | 35
Interesting to see the comments. Some all emotion, others based on facts and reason.
Emotion is nothing more than a whine and not to be respected.
A pound of iron and a pound of feathers are both a pound no matter how anyone feels about one or the other.
If this post upsets you, you are the problem with society.
Posted by: Slat1 | Nov 19 2021 19:53 utc | 36
Well put!
You both nailed the most important aspects of the story.

Posted by: JPC | Nov 20 2021 18:11 utc | 345

What if we take firearms out of the equation, for the sake of argument, and presume that the scenario unfolded in much the same way as it did, only without any triggers being pulled. Let’s give our imaginary Rittenhouse the physique of a body-builder and the martial proficiency of a cage fighter, so that his muscular form presents a clearly visible threat potential and each punch or kick that he lands on a scrawny opponent might prove fatal. The scenario thus having been constructed as such that it’s reasonable for it to play out exactly the way it did, what could you reasonably expect to change about the course of events and what, if anything, would change in your assessment of it?
I read somewhere in this thread several comments to the tone that the verdict sets a precedent for future protests, legitimizing armed disruption by vigilantes. Implied therein is the surrealist notion that a guilty verdict would in some way prevent or discourage such behavior. A guilty verdict also wouldn’t resurrect the dead or heal the injured, in case there was any uncertainty about that. The law cannot protect people from physical harm, only sort through the remains and formally attribute blame after the fact. Protests, like any large public gathering of people, attract unstable individuals of all stripes and are inherently dangerous. Riots are essentially warzones.
If this saga is illustrative of anything, it’s the value of police protection and austere procedures during civil unrest. Naturally, civil society is right in questioning and criticizing the application of such mechanisms to keep the proportionality of legitimate force application under control. But when you think back to cases where police wash their hands of the situation or are restrained by political considerations, you may find yourself in situations like Kiev 2014 with all the subsequent ramifications. Furthermore, if you strip people of protection by legitimate authorities and strip them of political representation, you may find them grouping together to form civilian self-defense initiatives, like what happened in Eastern Ukraine. One-sided media coverage or outright media suppression and manipulation played no small part in widening that rift, to a point where discussions became futile due to the creation of parallel realities. Central authorities cannot abide losing their monopoly on violence any more than rioting hooligans — doubly so if the two groups are politically intertwined — which puts the state on a course to civil war.
The more I think about it, the more familiar it smells. I certainly wouldn’t expect the US to devolve into civil war over the likes of Rittenhouse or Floyd, but then again I wouldn’t have expected some Auto-Maidan business highway blockade to result in civil war in the Ukraine either. There’s always the opportunity created by public discontent for someone to hijack a movement and take it for a wild ride with an uncertain destination, and I believe the US has been ripe for something along those lines for quite some time now.

Posted by: Skiffer | Nov 20 2021 18:22 utc | 347

Vk – you persist on calling it the benefit of the doubt … in reality, it is simply the facts of any case: is it self defense or is it attack? We are permitted to defend ourselves from imminent danger by lethal force as appropriate to the actual case. This is not controversial in the US. I am amazed it is considered controversial elsewhere but to each his own.

Posted by: Caliman | Nov 20 2021 18:23 utc | 349

Lucci @296: “Let’s say these protestors/rioters now bring armed militants open carry semi automatic weapons and all dubbing them “protecting protestors””
They did, and nobody attacked them, so they never had to defend themselves.
You didn’t know that, did you? Aren’t you at all curious as to why you didn’t know that?
Posted by: William Gruff | Nov 20 2021 17:31 utc | 342

Posted by: LOL | Nov 20 2021 18:37 utc | 351