291–300 of 442 posts
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He took a gun to a small business at the owner's request, per police investigation, photo and video evidence, and the sworn testimony of numerous witnesses. The riot came to him.
Uhhhh, why is a teenager who isn’t legally allowed to drink in charge of armed protection of capital? It’s fine, you can say out loud that you don’t value the lives of people you disagree with.
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I am not American and I didn’t follow these events but sorry for me after watching that video it’s still complicated: the self-defense seems justified, but the initial issue of protecting property with guns is not: material possession and private property is not on the same level as human life. I understand a law allows it in that state hence the jury logical decision, but that doesn’t make it right, just legal. Had…
Also being not an American, I'm puzzled as to how there is apparently no requirement to report self-defense killings to the police. I guess when they find dead bodies in the street, they just assume it was self defense?
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I had followed the case since the beginning. Having watched the videos, it was plainly obvious that in each case, Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense. (Intriguingly, many pro-Rittenhouse voices were arguing that he was guilty of the gun charge, though some were a bit more eagle-eyed and read the statute the way the judge ultimately did when he dismissed it.) The interesting thing about Rittenhouse is that even des…
Rittenhouse shot and killed 2 people, and shot and injured a third. Both of the men Rittenhouse killed were unarmed. I accept that every shot Rittenhouse fired fell within the framework of self-defence under the law. I also accept that he did have a legal right to be in Kenosha. Whether he had a legal right to be carrying the gun or not is a little more contentious. Although his possession of the gun was in line with…
All of the people Rittenhouse shot at were armed. Multiple witnesses including the state's testified to the fact that Rosenbaum, the pedophile screaming the N-word repeatedly that night (and he was white in case you're wondering) who was shot first, was lunging and trying to grab the gun. A person becomes armed when he attempts to take another person's weapon.
The second man shot at, "jump kick man," was using his feet as weapons when he was shot at. When we use even our bodies in a violent manner, they become weapons.
The second man shot was in the act of wielding his skateboard as a weapon, and also grabbed the gun. He became armed when he started using the skateboard as a weapon, and further when he grabbed the gun.
The final person shot was literally armed with an illegally-possessed handgun. He was not shot until he approached Rittenhouse and pointed it at Rittenhouse's head.
All armed.
> Whether he had a legal right to be carrying the gun or not is a little more contentious. Although his possession of the gun was in line with the letter of the law, it seems likely from the wording that the exception was intended to apply to minors hunting and is poorly written, rather than an intentional decision to allow 17 year olds to carry AR-15s. Poorly worded laws are read in favour of the defence, which is why the gun charge was dropped. He likely would not have been allowed to buy or possess the gun in his home state.
It seems to me that banning sixteen and seventeen year olds from possessing sawed-off shotguns and pistols makes sense outside of a hunting context. I personally didn't find the law particularly strangely worded, unless we're going in with the expectation that it will nail a kid.
FWIW, Rittenhouse testified on the stand that he had asked police for advice before his friend bought the rifle, and was told their arrangement complied with the law. That may not be a real legal defense, but I mean, sheesh. Hard to fault anyone who takes pains to comply with the law.
> But whatever the legality, I don't think it's right that a guy can go tooled up to another city, kill two unarmed people, and pose for celebratory photos with white supremacists afterwards.
His father and grandmother live in Kenosha. He had a job there. He had in fact been photographed cleaning graffiti from the walls of a Kenosha high school earlier that same day. It was "his city" as much as anyone else's.
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Am I understanding correctly that you believe because the two people attacking him were unarmed, he did not have the right to shoot them? You say you "accept" it was lawful, but it doesn't seem like you believe it should be. I wonder if two "unarmed" people were attacking you, would you just let them beat you to death? I can't understand this train of thought at all.
I think that's an overly reductive expression of my opinion, which is perhaps why you're struggling to follow. I think it is incredibly likely that if Rittenhouse did not have a gun, then the two people he killed would still be alive, and I find it unlikely that Rittenhouse would be dead today. You are correct that I don't believe that these specific circumstances that led to these deaths should be legal. I don't bel…
There’s a case (I think it might still be pending) about a drunk guy who hits someone one time and kills them. I’ve seen a video of a kid hitting his friend and killing them. In fact, a lot of people have died from being hit just one time the wrong way.
Even if he weren’t armed, Rosenbaum still chases him down. Rosenbaum’s buddy Zaminski had a gun too. If they’d pinned him down, they might have shot him given all the trouble they went through to ambush him.
Also, Grosskreutz is interesting. He ran down Rittenhouse while pulling a gun. At the same time, he testified he had no reason to believe Rittenhouse had shot anyone.
Mob mentality is crazy. Loads of people have died at the hands of unarmed mobs. Any individual would never hurt anyone else, but together, the mob mentality results in something terrible happens.
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Grosskreutz shouldn't have had a gun either (his concealed carry permit had expired), but at the end of the day he didn't kill anyone, which sort of sets him apart. I'm not trying to say that the people Rittenhouse shot at were angels. But none of them killed anyone.
> But none of them killed anyone. They attempted to kill Kyle, but he defended himself. The reason Kyle wasn't murdered is not due to their sense of morals but instead their incompetence as combatants. It seems the rioters had more experience assaulting women and children and were ill equiped to assault a young man.
Again, not trying to paint these guys as angels, but it does not seem that this is correct:
- the 'mob' chasing Rittenhouse that led eventually to him opening fire on Rosenbaum were shouting 'get him', and may even have shouted 'kill him'. We know that at least one of these people had a gun, but this gun was fired up into the air, rather than at Rittenhouse, and Rosenbaum threw a bag of clothes at Rittenhouse. Yes, Rosenbaum was approaching Rittenhouse, and Rittenhouse was probably scared, but it doesn't look like Rosenbaum was about to kill him.
- Huber's half-hearted hit with the skateboard hardly seems like the kind of force he could have mustered if his intent were to smash Rittenhouse's head in (it also seems from the video as though Huber was already moving away from Rittenhouse by the time Rittenhouse shot him)
- Grosskreutz approached Rittenhouse with his pistol drawn and pointed at Rittenhouse, but did not fire at him, instead opting to try to disarm him. If he'd been trying to kill him, he'd have had the chance to do so.
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Am I understanding correctly that you believe because the two people attacking him were unarmed, he did not have the right to shoot them? You say you "accept" it was lawful, but it doesn't seem like you believe it should be. I wonder if two "unarmed" people were attacking you, would you just let them beat you to death? I can't understand this train of thought at all.
I think that's an overly reductive expression of my opinion, which is perhaps why you're struggling to follow. I think it is incredibly likely that if Rittenhouse did not have a gun, then the two people he killed would still be alive, and I find it unlikely that Rittenhouse would be dead today. You are correct that I don't believe that these specific circumstances that led to these deaths should be legal. I don't bel…
All of this just leads me to believe that no one of "good quality" shows up to those events with the idea of causing excess trouble (outside of peacefully demonstrating). How else could it be that the three people who he shot had vast criminal back grounds (which don't apply to his self defense because he did not know about the criminal history when he was shooting them) being that of a child molester and domestic abusers and Kyle himself was on video beating up some girl.
When bad situations happen amongst a crowd of people, the "good quality" people see themselves out and try to leave while the "bad quality" people get hype and try to instigate further.
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I think that's an overly reductive expression of my opinion, which is perhaps why you're struggling to follow. I think it is incredibly likely that if Rittenhouse did not have a gun, then the two people he killed would still be alive, and I find it unlikely that Rittenhouse would be dead today. You are correct that I don't believe that these specific circumstances that led to these deaths should be legal. I don't bel…
Let’s say you carry a gun. Someone attempts to rape you. Nobody is likely to die. Your argument says that you should just be raped. There’s a case (I think it might still be pending) about a drunk guy who hits someone one time and kills them. I’ve seen a video of a kid hitting his friend and killing them. In fact, a lot of people have died from being hit just one time the wrong way. Even if he weren’t armed, Rosenbau…
> I don't believe all attempts to defend oneself are wrong, nor do I believe that it's inherently wrong to use 'unbalanced' force in the context of self-defence (ie: just because someone is unarmed does not mean that you should never use deadly force against them).
Your other points are all good and interesting - one in particular caught my eye:
> If they’d pinned him down, they might have shot him
That's true, but they might not have. You can't just go around shooting people because you're afraid that their friend might come and shoot you.
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> But none of them killed anyone. They attempted to kill Kyle, but he defended himself. The reason Kyle wasn't murdered is not due to their sense of morals but instead their incompetence as combatants. It seems the rioters had more experience assaulting women and children and were ill equiped to assault a young man.
> They attempted to kill Kyle, but he defended himself. Again, not trying to paint these guys as angels, but it does not seem that this is correct: - the 'mob' chasing Rittenhouse that led eventually to him opening fire on Rosenbaum were shouting 'get him', and may even have shouted 'kill him'. We know that at least one of these people had a gun, but this gun was fired up into the air, rather than at Rittenhouse, and…
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I mean I agree with you on the technicality, but the uniquely American view that someone can take a gun to a protest and not be looking for trouble is a very interesting one.
"Protest" is an incomplete characterization. The night he was there was the second night of wanton destruction. It was something between a riot and a protest. I have a hard time grasping the racial justice achieved by destroying property owned by people of color.
When the destruction starts, it stops being a protest, and there is no between.
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the only thing 230 does is make it so “platforms” CAN moderate speech and exercise control, without having to take on the legal liability like a newspaper publisher. Before 230, there was already effectively a distinction in that, if you ran a forum and did absolutely no moderation, you were never liable for the content - but then you also couldn’t remove any content that was vulgar, racist, hateful to other users, e…
Are "moderate" and "editorialize" treated equally in 230? I take moderate to mean, delete entirely, silence, ban. I have always assumed maybe incorrectly? that editorializing something such as adding or removing content or context is publishing content?
> that editorializing something such as [...] removing content or context
I suppose it would be permissible to draw a line where you could delete all or none of a users content, but not some, since that does sound content neutral. I don't believe anyone has drawn such a line though in law (and it would be quite the strange line to draw).