17-year-old charged with murder in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shootings

[jj3jordan 2,099]

15 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

Who's more "stupid", or put another way, "unwise?"  I'd say the person attacking a guy who has a gun when you don't.  As they say, if you're gonna take your shot in that situation, you better not miss.  Best thing to do in that situation would be to clear out and get away from him.  

Who's more in the wrong?  It's not even close.  That idiot with the gun had zero business being there at all.  He is not law enforcement.  He is not in the National Guard.  He has not be deputized by any law enforcement agency.  He is not defending his home and family.  Hell, he's not even a citizen of the state he decided to show up and go all Barney Fife on.  And now he's murdered two people and injured a third.  I'd throw the book at him.

The rioting mob also had no business being there. Did you overlook that in your analysis?

[ArgoEagle 1,862]

Last night on Fox News some additional video came out that showed the people who got shot chasing this young man down the street. He does not have his gun drawn and he is running for his life. If I'm in the same situation and I have radicals chasing me down the street, my first thought is they are going to either kill me or do me bodily harm. So my first instinct would be to defend myself through any means necessary.  Liberals show 2 videos, which don't tell the whole story, because they are not interested in the whole story and leave out the crucial facts, which should be brought out before any judgement is cast.

[AUcivE09 582]

So I saw the full video. This is unfortunately what you are going to see more of as people get fed up with the rioters. I do not believe he should be charged with murder when you have fire bombs thrown, kicked, punched, skate board attacked?, and a guy holding a pistol. If anything - he has been way overcharged in this case and the prosecutor is set up for failure. 

[McLoofus 35,182]

4 minutes ago, AUcivE09 said:

So I saw the full video. This is unfortunately what you are going to see more of as people get fed up with the rioters. I do not believe he should be charged with murder when you have fire bombs thrown, kicked, punched, skate board attacked?, and a guy holding a pistol. If anything - he has been way overcharged in this case and the prosecutor is set up for failure. 

And we wonder why so many people die from gunfire in this country. 

[ArgoEagle 1,862]

31 minutes ago, AUcivE09 said:

So I saw the full video. This is unfortunately what you are going to see more of as people get fed up with the rioters. I do not believe he should be charged with murder when you have fire bombs thrown, kicked, punched, skate board attacked?, and a guy holding a pistol. If anything - he has been way overcharged in this case and the prosecutor is set up for failure. 

that's right. Self defense has been in our laws as justified since our laws were established.

[AUDub 11,246]

1 hour ago, ArgoEagle said:

 

...you shourldn't need a gas mask.

 

Never leave home without it. 

 

[AUcivE09 582]

39 minutes ago, McLoofus said:

And we wonder why so many people die from gunfire in this country. 

Oh, I do not wonder at all. A friend of mine once said "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes". Throwing a fire bomb at a guy with a rifle and chasing him down a street to attack him is not a smart game to play.

[McLoofus 35,182]

13 minutes ago, AUcivE09 said:

Oh, I do not wonder at all. A friend of mine once said "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes". Throwing a fire bomb at a guy with a rifle and chasing him down a street to attack him is not a smart game to play.

Yeah. Nothing weird at all about a 17 yr old kid walking into a crowded area with an AR-15.

Nice analogy for our democracy. A very useful and important tool rendered harmful and tragic in the hands of children.

Oh, and yes, that kid has won himself some very stupid prizes. May he continue to reap what he has sown in prison for the rest of his godforsaken life.

Edited August 28, 2020 by McLoofus

[ArgoEagle 1,862]

15 minutes ago, AUDub said:

Never leave home without it. 

 

[wdefromtx 3,159]

2 hours ago, jj3jordan said:

The rioting mob also had no business being there. Did you overlook that in your analysis?

Yeah the people that were there wreaking havoc are just as much a part of the problem as the kid with the gun. The end result is what we got.

[wdefromtx 3,159]

 

1 hour ago, ArgoEagle said:

Last night on Fox News some additional video came out that showed the people who got shot chasing this young man down the street. He does not have his gun drawn and he is running for his life. If I'm in the same situation and I have radicals chasing me down the street, my first thought is they are going to either kill me or do me bodily harm. So my first instinct would be to defend myself through any means necessary.  Liberals show 2 videos, which don't tell the whole story, because they are not interested in the whole story and leave out the crucial facts, which should be brought out before any judgement is cast.

But that doesn't fit the narrative. It won't keep driving that racial divide. If people would take off their party blinders they would realize multiple wrongdoings by both sides led to this. But it doesn't achieve what they want, they are better served by just saying a white kid with an AR opened fire. Had he just been there without a gun and lets say they beat the crap out of him for no reason, the media wouldn't even acknowledge it. Some of the blind idiots would just go along with it because they only go with what is spoon-fed to them by the left.

More and more of this is going to start happening. When you have outlets like CNN reporting on "Peaceful protests" with buildings burning in the background, people are going to start standing up for themselves.

 

 

[homersapien 11,619]

1 hour ago, ArgoEagle said:

that's right. Self defense has been in our laws as justified since our laws were established.

Even if you have to travel across state lines looking for it, huh?

Edited August 28, 2020 by homersapien

[ArgoEagle 1,862]

41 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

 

But that doesn't fit the narrative. It won't keep driving that racial divide. If people would take off their party blinders they would realize multiple wrongdoings by both sides led to this. But it doesn't achieve what they want, they are better served by just saying a white kid with an AR opened fire. Had he just been there without a gun and lets say they beat the crap out of him for no reason, the media wouldn't even acknowledge it. Some of the blind idiots would just go along with it because they only go with what is spoon-fed to them by the left.

More and more of this is going to start happening. When you have outlets like CNN reporting on "Peaceful protests" with buildings burning in the background, people are going to start standing up for themselves.

 

 

I think what it is going to take (and I hope this doesn't happen to anyone on this forum) is that something like this happens to these people who defend the actions of these activists. I think if it actually happens to them, or someone they care about, then they would change their tune and call it what it really is (criminal). I live on a dead end street. If protesters came down my street with signs and stayed in the street and were not too loud, didn't try to destroy my property or harm me or my family, said what they had to say and moved on; I would probably stand on my porch with my shotgun and watch to make sure it stayed peaceful. But make no mistake about it, the moment they became a threat to me, my family, or my property, i would give them 1 warning shot bc I really don't want to harm anyone, but if they kept coming I would not hesitate to fire into the crowd to defend.

[ArgoEagle 1,862]

1 minute ago, homersapien said:

Even when you have to travel across state lines looking for it, huh?

If you're working security like this young man, yes.

[homersapien 11,619]

1 minute ago, ArgoEagle said:

If you're working security like this young man, yes.

Just what we need.  17 year olds with assault rifles "working security".

Man, do you even think about what you are posting?

[wdefromtx 3,159]

1 minute ago, ArgoEagle said:

I think what it is going to take (and I hope this doesn't happen to anyone on this forum) is that something like this happens to these people who defend the actions of these activists. I think if it actually happens to them, or someone they care about, then they would change their tune and call it what it really is (criminal). I live on a dead end street. If protesters came down my street with signs and stayed in the street and were not too loud, didn't try to destroy my property or harm me or my family, said what they had to say and moved on; I would probably stand on my porch with my shotgun and watch to make sure it stayed peaceful. But make no mistake about it, the moment they became a threat to me, my family, or my property, i would give them 1 warning shot bc I really don't want to harm anyone, but if they kept coming I would not hesitate to fire into the crowd to defend.

I don't know about standing outside with my shotgun if things were still peaceful. I would be watching it. If it escalated to violence and destruction of property and I started to see folks enter my property, sorry but I do not believe in warning shots. If imminent danger of my family or property occurred then I would do whatever I needed to do.

[TitanTiger 20,571]

3 hours ago, jj3jordan said:

The rioting mob also had no business being there. Did you overlook that in your analysis?

No I didn't.  But that's what authorized law enforcement is for.  We don't just let every dingbat with a gun start dispensing justice on their own, vigilante style.  When you leave your house with a gun and drive across state lines and shoot things, that's not called self defense or protecting your home and family.  It's called "hunting."

[ArgoEagle 1,862]

19 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

I don't know about standing outside with my shotgun if things were still peaceful. I would be watching it. If it escalated to violence and destruction of property and I started to see folks enter my property, sorry but I do not believe in warning shots. If imminent danger of my family or property occurred then I would do whatever I needed to do.

Agree with everything you said except the warning shot. I would want to fire into the air and see if that did not scare off most of them. But I wouldn't blame you for doing it your way either.

[homersapien 11,619]

I guarantee you Putin is instigating this for all he's worth.  This people think they are patriots but are being led by Putin.

But we'll never know the details until Trump is out of office.

 

U.S. political divide becomes increasingly violent, rattling activists and police

Paul Benson, attending a rally for Democratic candidate Hank Gilbert in Tyler, Tex., is attacked by Blue Lives Matter protesters on July 26. Benson says he was trying to keep counter-protesters back from the speakers when he was attacked. "I didn't expect this," Benson said, "I didn't know what to expect, but I didn't expect this." (Sarah A. Miller/AP)

TYLER, Tex. — The goal of the rally was to oppose the deployment of federal agents to quell protests in American cities — and to register new Democratic voters here in the heart of conservative East Texas.

But it had hardly begun when hundreds of conservative counterprotesters and supporters of President Trump, many with military-style rifles slung over their shoulders, swarmed the town square and began pushing and shoving and yelling obscenities.

One man punched Democrat Nancy Nichols in the chest, she said, and three others pinned her husband against Tyler's war memorial. Other armed men were positioned around the edges of the square in military-style defensive formation, their hands clutching their rifles.

"They were yelling Democrats are f---ing idiots and Democrats are demons," recalled Nichols, 65. "It makes me feel angry that this is allowed and that our police are allowing this kind of hate-filled atmosphere to take over."

Nancy Nichols, a Democratic activist and voter deputy registrar, said she was punched in the chest by a counter protestor at Gilbert’s rally. “It’s honestly made me more hopeful. Let’s bring it all to the surface so it can be healed,” said Nichols, who posed for a portrait at her home in Tyler on Wednesday. (Julia Robinson/For The Washington Post)

The scuffling, which injured a top aide for Democratic congressional candidate Hank Gilbert, is part of a wave of politically tinged violence across the nation in recent weeks after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, rattling communities facing a toxic mix of partisanship and guns ahead of the 2020 election.

In a spate of exchanges that have spanned from Kalamazoo, Mich., and Bloomington, Ind., to Chicago and Portland, Ore., people on both sides of the United States’ political and cultural divide have been filmed exchanging punches, beating one another with sticks and flagpoles, or standing face-to-face with weapons, often with police appearing to be little more than observers.

On Tuesday night, the violence took an even more ominous turn when a 17-year-old whose Facebook account showed support for the pro-police “Back the Blue” countermovement allegedly shot and killed two people during the unrest in Kenosha, Wis., after police shot a Black man.

“We are sort of at the stage of polarization where there are more and more people who are seeking confrontation, where they are not simply satisfied with disagreeing with the other side or yelling at the other side, but they want to confront,” said Mark Pitcavage, a historian and senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “We are not just a polarized society — we are increasingly a confrontational society now.”

Some of the violence has been linked to pro-gun groups and far-right extremist organizations, though even some previously staid political activists have embraced weapons and face-to-face encounters as they navigate this year’s bitter political divisions.

On Monday in central Pennsylvania, a man marching from Wisconsin to D.C. for this week’s anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington was shot and wounded. Protesters have also been shot, in some cases fatally, in Austin, Portland, Louisville and Albuquerque in recent weeks.

The aggressive actions of some protest groups, including weeks of fires and vandalism in Portland and elsewhere, have led to a pushback. A group of people berated customers at D.C. restaurants this week who refused to raise their fist in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, though the confrontations were nonviolent. But conflicts occasionally have become physical, including a driver beaten unconscious after encountering a protest in Portland earlier this month. He survived with serious injuries.

In some places, police have been on the defensive as left-leaning activists, politicians and faith leaders have accused them of not protecting them, while cozying up to conservatives. Some police leaders say they are struggling to stay ahead of the country’s coarsening divide, which they say is being fueled by rampant misinformation on social media designed to stoke tension.

“It seems like we as a country have moved right past the discussion phase of things and now we just are at the stage of conflict, being at odds, distrust and disbelief,” said Lance Arnold, the police chief in Weatherford, Tex. “This is not who we are, and it’s almost like we are living in a different time and a different place.”

Few of the deaths linked to recent protests are known to have been caused by demonstrators

A series of disturbances in northeastern Texas began on July 25 in the eastern Dallas-Fort Worth exurb of Weatherford, when heavily armed counterprotesters, including members of several far-right Texas-based groups, clashed with demonstrators seeking removal of a Confederate statue from the grounds of the Parker County Courthouse.

The next day, brawls erupted at Gilbert’s campaign event in Tyler, about 100 miles east of Dallas. A week later, police were called to break up a gathering of hundreds of motorists, many flying Trump and Confederate flags, who descended on a historical Black church in Dallas that displays a two-story Black Lives Matter sign.

In all three events, participants on all sides said the chaos has left them concerned that America’s democracy is teetering uncomfortably, rattling their confidence that either the law or neighborly goodwill can prevent even worse confrontations in the weeks ahead.

“This isn’t a politician’s fight — this is a people’s fight,” said Martin Holsome, who sits on the Rusk, Tex., town council and is aligned with several armed Texas groups. “What we have seen over the past six months to a year has conditioned us for what is going to happen, and you can either condition yourself to be prepared for it or you can condition yourself to be subject to it.”

One new group, Take America Back Texas, has been at the center of efforts to challenge left-wing protesters in Tyler and Weatherford. Leader Brian Phebus, 38, said its membership has surged to 10,000 over the past 2½ months, and he vowed that members will keep showing up at protests and other events where they fear there could be violence.

Wendi Rees, the director of public relations for Take Back America Texas, was part of a counter protest at Tyler City Square, which quickly escalated into a violent clash. “I think we have racist people in this country, but this country is not racist,” said Rees, who posed for a portrait at her home in Tyler on August 26. (Julia Robinson/For The Washington Post)

Group member Wendi Rees, a conservative, White suburban mother in Tyler, said: “We believe our country is being taken from us. Our constitutional rights, our Second Amendment rights, our First Amendment are all being threatened. So people like me, we have had enough, and we are not going to sit back it let it happen anymore.”

The country’s hostile political climate has challenged local police departments, especially in small towns unaccustomed to dealing with protests and large crowds of people who hold opposing political views. Police agencies face accusations that they are not doing enough to protect social-justice and anti-brutality protesters.

Tony Crawford, a leader of the Parker County Progressives, said he frequently communicated with the police chief in the days leading up to the July 25 protest in Weatherford, trying to ensure police would protect demonstrators. But when rumors spread on social media that “busloads” of residents from Dallas and Fort Worth would be descending on the town to tear down the Confederate monument, hundreds of predominantly White conservative counterprotesters and members of armed conservative groups descended on the site, many heavily armed.

Clashes erupted, with videos showing counterprotesters charging into Crawford’s group. Crawford, who is Black, began frantically texting Arnold asking why more police were not on hand to keep the two sides separated.

“We are surrounded by guns and people talking about shooting us loudly,” Crawford wrote to Arnold, the police chief, according to a log of his text messages.

“We are briefing now,” Arnold wrote back. “We’ll have units up there in a few.”

But Crawford and other anti-Confederate demonstrators said police protection never arrived, even as counterprotesters threw water bottles, spit on them and chased protesters back to their vehicles.

“Y’all abandoned us chief,” Crawford texted a few hours later. “You let us get dragged and attacked while you did nothing.”

In an interview, Arnold said that city and county law enforcement agencies did not have enough manpower to properly police the event. He attributed that to poor communication among police agencies that day as well as limited intelligence on how many counterprotesters were planning to show up.

Arnold said the event also highlights the struggle that police departments throughout the country now face amid the supercharged emotions surrounding political and cultural debates. He has identified several heavily armed counterprotesters and far-right groups that he believes had members involved in recent conflicts in Weatherford, including the Oath Keepers and the Texas Freedom Fighters.

After online warnings, armed civilians bring threat of violence to protests in Kenosha and elsewhere

Arnold said the numbers of counterprotesters are being swelled by “a bunch of ordinary individuals” who are now physically engaging protesters and activists whose politics they do not agree with. Large crowds are being mobilized online after inflammatory and often false information is posted online by what Arnold described as “fake social media accounts.”

“They are accounts that have been created within the last month or so, do not have a picture or other identifiers that you could use to believe they are more legitimate accounts,” Arnold.

The social media posts are quickly spread, including by self-described militias and more-mainstream conservative groups, and they often give the impression that a specific community faces imminent danger or the potential for violence, Arnold said.

They often use images from past protests or riots in other cities combined with phrases such as, “This is happening in Weatherford right now,” he said. Other social memes falsely claimed that police were asking residents to “come assist us,” Arnold added.

“It’s extremely worrisome, because it creates a level of fear,” Arnold said, adding that he is working with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the FBI to identify who is creating the misinformation. “And it creates an environment that is rife for violence between various groups.”

For some conservatives, the images of looting and violence in American cities after Floyd’s death have became a rallying cry. Those scenes prompted Phebus, an Air Force veteran, to help start Take America Back Texas in June, because he believes armed civilians are needed to back law enforcement and protect local property owners from civil disturbances. Phebus said the group now has members in most of Texas’s 254 counties, all of whom stand ready to deploy.

“If anything goes on, anywhere in Texas we can pop up,” said Phebus, adding, “When we show up, [violence] usually doesn’t happen, because of the presence of guns.”

Rees, 50, serves as the group’s leader in Smith County, which includes Tyler, a city named after the only U.S. president to have served in the Confederacy.

A Christian missionary and longtime antiabortion activist, Rees said she became involved in Take America Back Texas after seeing viral videos of the protests that erupted nationwide this summer. She said she believes groups such as Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters plan to one day take over cities such as Tyler, undermining the conservative values that she home-schooled to her four children.

In particular, Rees seethed with fear and anger after she saw a video clip of protesters in Seattle suggesting that homeowners should give up their properties. She also accuses the news media of having a double standard by mentioning the race of police officers involved in deadly shootings, while appearing to downplay it in other crimes, including the death of Cannon Hinnant, a White 5-year-old boy in North Carolina who was allegedly killed by his Black neighbor.

So when Rees heard about Gilbert’s rally in Tyler, she mobilized Take America Back Texas members to show up wearing patriotic clothing, or blue shirts in support of law enforcement. She also wrapped orange tape around their arms and torsos, thinking that would make it easier for police to identify the “patriots,” as Rees and Phebus refer to themselves and others in their groups.

Armed men push a crowd back after a fight broke out in downtown square in Tyler, Tex., whoen two opposing groups clashed on July 26. (Sarah A. Miller/AP)

But Rees said more than 100 other counterprotesters not affiliated with her group also showed up, including supporters of Gilbert’s opponent, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.). Others have self-identified as members of Texas militia groups. Jimmy Toler, the chief of the Tyler Police Department, also suspects some members of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white-supremacist group, took part.

As the counterprotesters swarmed the square, some local Democratic leaders who showed up to support Gilbert said they were scared to get out of their vehicles. Others said the sight of so many armed people gave them flashbacks to a war zone or the square’s dark history of racial injustice, including public lynchings that persisted here into the 1900s.

“There were these guys with long-arm weapons that were standing up on top of things, guarding things, much like when we had guard duty overseas,” said Shirley McKeller, a Black retired Army nurse who served in Iraq. “I had to sit there and collect myself. . . . I am accustomed of seeing lots and lots of weapons, but to see them on the square in downtown Tyler, it was devastating to me.”

As Gilbert tried to begin his campaign remarks, counterprotesters blew air horns while shouting and jeering over him, he said. Another counterprotester then pulled the plug on Gilbert’s sound system mid-speech.

Then the shoving and punching began.

“I was circled by five different people, and they were telling me, ‘You need to get out of here,’ ” said Ryan Miller, 21, who works for Gilbert’s campaign. “I looked over at one of my friends and said, ‘Help.’ As soon as I did that, I was immediately punched in the face several times. . . . And then I turned around and saw someone take a swing at my mom.”

Another man, wearing a Trump hat, was filmed with his hands around the neck of a Democratic supporter.

Rees said her group’s members were not responsible for the violence, but she conceded that more needs to be done to keep opposing sides separated at political rallies and protests.

“I think what is happening at these rallies is you have people that are so angry . . . because of what is shown on the news,” Rees said, referring to images of unrest across the country. “So they think they can show up, get their violence out and knock the crap out of somebody and not have accountability.”

Toler said officers initially held back from the town square because they did not want to “escalate the situation,” a tactic that he said they began utilizing when Black Lives Matter protests first erupted in the town in late May.

“We want to give people a little room to breathe so we don’t become the target and we don’t escalate the situation,” said Toler, adding that Tyler police moved to break up the rally once the violence began.

Tyler police have since filed assault charges against three individuals who showed up to protest Gilbert, including a prominent local businessman and his daughter.

But increasingly, both Arnold and Toler said, police are having a difficult time determining whether individuals who show up at counterprotests are there to peacefully assemble or to cause problems. And with so many people showing up armed, including growing numbers of left-wing ­social-justice activists, police are warning people that they need to understand the risks associated with modern-day protests and political activity.

“We want everyone to exercise their right to express themselves,” Toler said. “But you have got to understand there are other individuals out there that have other interests and have other motives.”

Holsome, the town councilman who is aligned with the Texas Freedom Fighters and the Oath Keepers, showed up at Gilbert’s Tyler event armed with his AR-15 and .45-caliber pistol, with six or so other guns stored away in his logging truck that he parked nearby.

Holsome, who is biracial and identifies as White and Black, said he believes Black Lives Matter protesters have been infiltrated by anarchists who are a determined to destabilize small towns in Texas. He also worries that liberals are planning to unfairly steal the election away from Trump.

When Holsome shows up at events, he said, he is continually on guard for any potential hazard that could require him to use his weapons.

“A frozen water bottle will bust your head wide open. A brick will kill you. A two-by-four that is being thrown 20 yards away can kill you,” said Holsome, 41, who has been attending up to six protest events a month this summer. “If I feel like my life is in imminent danger, I am going to use force.”

Pitcavage, from the Anti-Defamation League, said that sentiment is why he fears that the coming months could prove to be especially dangerous as the stress of the pandemic collides with an acrimonious presidential election.

“The fields are fertile for people to come out of the woodwork and show up to these sorts of things,” Pitcavage said.

Despite that danger, Nichols, the Democrat who said she was punched at the Gilbert rally, vows she will keep showing up at events — with her voting registration forms.

“But when I go to rallies now,” she said, “if I see the presence of these goons, I will immediately call the police, the constables, the sheriff, the county judge and anyone else I can think of to make sure there is protection there for everyone,” Nichols said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/protests-violence/2020/08/27/3f232e66-e578-11ea-970a-64c73a1c2392_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_protestviolence-630am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

[wdefromtx 3,159]

9 minutes ago, ArgoEagle said:

Agree with everything you said except the warning shot. I would want to fire into the air and see if that did not scare off most of them. But I wouldn't blame you for doing it your way either.

In TX, I would most likely get in trouble for the warning shot under the Castle Doctrine. Either way, it would be a long legal battle. I have my whole family covered with TX Law-Shield insurance. So if anyone of us use a gun, bat, knife or car etc. to defend ourselves we have legal representation to cover all the court costs.

[I_M4_AU 8,139]

1 hour ago, TitanTiger said:

No I didn't.  But that's what authorized law enforcement is for.  We don't just let every dingbat with a gun start dispensing justice on their own, vigilante style.  When you leave your house with a gun and drive across state lines and shoot things, that's not called self defense or protecting your home and family.  It's called "hunting."

And some people want 16 year olds to vote.

[homersapien 11,619]

The Conservative Defense of Kyle Rittenhouse Is Dangerous Nonsense

White Americans’ most heinous acts of violence can always be justified by their ideological allies.

On Tuesday night, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly shot three people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, with an AR-15-style rifle, killing two. Videos of the event tell us an incomplete story of what, exactly, happened that night. But they appear to clearly show this much: Rittenhouse traveled to the protests in illegal possession of an assault weapon to act as a vigilante. He placed himself at the center of the violence, then escalated it by shooting a man in the head. Minutes later, he shot two more people who appeared to be trying to disarm him, then fled across state lines. For this bloody spree, prosecutors charged Rittenhouse with first-degree intentional homicide. In short, a teenager obsessed with law enforcement decided to play the role of a cop and wound up, according to law enforcement, committing murder.

Some on the right, however, see Rittenhouse differently. As footage of the incident emerged, conservative media figures began crafting a counternarrative in which the teenager is not a delusional vigilante but a well-intentioned if overzealous patriot who shot two violent assailants in self-defense. Rittenhouse, they suggest, is essentially a martyr who took action because Democrats would not let police do their jobs. This narrative rests on a racist belief, deeply rooted in American history, that white people must sometimes break the law to enforce it. The near-instant rehabilitation of Rittenhouse on the right should remind us that white Americans’ most heinous acts of violence can always be justified by their ideological allies.

Kenosha’s protests began on Sunday after Officer Rusten Sheskey, who is white, repeatedly shot Jacob Blake, who is Black, in the back in front of his children. Video indicates that Blake was walking away from Sheskey when the officer began shooting. He appeared to pose no threat. Blake is alive, but is reportedly paralyzed from the waist down. A mix of peaceful protests and riots broke out across the city, which is majority white but has a sizable Black community. By Tuesday, men carrying firearms who identified as members of a private militia stood outside local businesses, allegedly to protect them. A video shows Kenosha police handing water to these gunmen—including Rittenhouse—telling them: “We appreciate you guys, we really do.”

Rittenhouse, who traveled to Kenosha from Illinois, initially joined this putative militia but later peeled off. A video later in the evening showed him being chased by a group of Black and white protesters into a parking lot. Someone else fired a gun into the air, and Joseph Rosenbaum lunged at the armed teenager. Rittenhouse responded by firing four times, shooting Rosenbaum in the head and killing him. He then fled the scene. Protesters pursued him as one shouted, “That’s the shooter!” Rittenhouse tripped, and multiple people made an apparent attempt to disarm him. He fired four shots. One bullet hit Anthony Huber in the chest, killing him; he was wielding a skateboard, which he seemed to use to try to subdue Rittenhouse. The other bullet hit Gaige Grosskreutz in the arm; he was holding a handgun, though not aiming it at anyone. Rittenhouse then walked past a group of police officers—the beginning of his flight back to Illinois. They did not stop him.

It is almost dizzying to count all the ways Rittenhouse appears to have broken the law on Tuesday. He allegedly twice drove across state lines carrying a firearm he was not legally permitted to possess. He then illegally brandished this firearm in the streets. He violated the Kenosha curfew that provided the basis for police to arrest protesters. He fled out of state after shooting three people. And, most obviously, he killed two protesters. The footage indicates that two—and possibly all three—of Rittenhouse’s victims were trying to disarm him.

And yet, almost as soon as video of the shootings emerged, conservative media began to defend Rittenhouse. They mocked Huber for using a skateboard to “attack a man packing a rifle.” Erick Erickson said Rittenhouse was “not the bad guy” because he “was firing on people who were attacking him.” Fox News guests asserted that Rittenhouse effected “vigilante justice” because he filled “a void” left by police. And all these claims built toward the inevitable conclusion: Rittenhouse didn’t commit first-degree intentional homicide; he didn’t even commit murder at all. He was merely defending himself against a pack of thugs hellbent on beating him, possibly to death, because he tried to keep the peace. In Tucker Carlson’s words: “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”

This narrative transforms Rittenhouse from an unstable killer to a Second Amendment hero. And you need only accept a few fictions to buy into it. First, you must believe that the protesters chasing down Rittenhouse and attempting to wrest his gun away were not trying to prevent further bloodshed, but simply to brutalize him. Second, you must agree that even if these protesters were trying to confiscate Rittenhouse’s gun, they were wrong to do so, because they were the vicious lawbreakers and he was the vulnerable peacekeeper. Third, you must embrace a definition of self-defense so capacious that it allows a gunman to legally shoot a civilian dead when that civilian is trying to seize a weapon the gunman has used to kill someone. Or, as the New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie put it, “if someone is trying to stop you after you killed someone, you can continue shooting and killing in ‘self-defense.’ ”

It is much easier to accept the first two propositions if you are predisposed to believe that white people are more likely to uphold the law and Black people are more likely to break it. Like many protesters in Kenosha, Rittenhouse’s victims were white. But they were part of a diverse group that pursued the 17-year-old in an apparent effort to stop him from shooting more people. That group included many Black people, who were also imperiled when Rittenhouse tripped and fired his weapon indiscriminately. The claim that these protesters had a malign plan to assault or kill Rittenhouse, rather than disarm him, rests on the racist assumption that a white vigilante’s motives must be purer than a racially diverse group of demonstrators.

The third proposition—that the gunman was merely defending himself—rests on a chilling vision of self-defense that would excuse homicide and limit civilians’ ability to forestall future shootings. Wisconsin law only licensed Rittenhouse to shoot his pursuers to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. The video of the second shooting makes it quite clear this did not happen. While the circumstances surrounding the first shooting remain murky, it is evident from the footage that Rittenhouse ran away carrying his rifle, pursued by protesters who rightly believed he might shoot more people. When he tripped, his pursuers immediately tried to seize his gun. These are not the actions of thugs eager to inflict bodily harm, but of good Samaritans trying to stop what looked like the beginning of a mass shooting.

Indeed, the argument for self-defense boils down to this: If civilians try to seize a weapon from a gunman who just shot somebody in the head, that gunman has a right to shoot them. If this theory were legally correct—thankfully, it isn’t—then a person who tries to grab a mass shooter’s gun may be legally killed by the shooter himself. Rittenhouse ultimately proved to be a mass shooter, one in illegal possession of a firearm, a gun that police allowed him to carry even after he had apparently shot three people a block in front of their squad cars. The cops who ordered protesters to disperse for violating curfew did not order an obviously underage teen to put down his assault weapon. Tucker Carlson got it backward; the question here is why anyone is shocked that protesters tried to disarm a vigilante when law enforcement refused.

After all, as University of Washington professor Dan Berger pointed out after the Charlottesville, Virginia, catastrophe, police have a lengthy history of complicity with right-wing insurgents. American law enforcement have viewed far-right paramilitary groups as allies in the fight against true subversives and radicals, such as the civil rights demonstrators of the 1960s. They assume that white gunmen toting assault weapons who speak favorably of law enforcement are more trustworthy and peaceable than racially diverse protesters who criticize the cops.

When officers thanked Kenosha’s militia while threatening to arrest protesters—even though the militia and the protesters were both violating curfew—they carried on this tradition. When Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis blamed protesters for their own deaths because they broke curfew, he carried on this tradition. When officers let Rittenhouse walk past them, illegally armed with a gun he had just used to kill two men and injure another, and drive back to Illinois, they carried on this tradition, too. These officers perceived a racially diverse group of demonstrators to be more of a threat than a cadre of heavily armed white men. It is not difficult to guess why.

After Jacob Blake’s shooting, conservative media hunted for evidence that might exonerate the officer, fixating on the presence of a knife in Blake’s car. After Rittenhouse shot three protesters, the right hunted for evidence that might exonerate the shooter, settling on the fantasy that those protesters were the real vigilantes who got what was coming to them. The lesson here is simple: A white man with a gun is innocent until proved guilty; his victims are guilty until proved innocent. It is a lesson tragically embedded in American history, and one that racist far-right militias around the country will surely take to heart this week.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/conservatives-defend-kenosha-shooter-kyle-rittenhouse.html?via=recirc_engaged

 

[wdefromtx 3,159]

7 minutes ago, homersapien said:

The Conservative Defense of Kyle Rittenhouse Is Dangerous Nonsense

White Americans’ most heinous acts of violence can always be justified by their ideological allies.

On Tuesday night, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly shot three people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, with an AR-15-style rifle, killing two. Videos of the event tell us an incomplete story of what, exactly, happened that night. But they appear to clearly show this much: Rittenhouse traveled to the protests in illegal possession of an assault weapon to act as a vigilante. He placed himself at the center of the violence, then escalated it by shooting a man in the head. Minutes later, he shot two more people who appeared to be trying to disarm him, then fled across state lines. For this bloody spree, prosecutors charged Rittenhouse with first-degree intentional homicide. In short, a teenager obsessed with law enforcement decided to play the role of a cop and wound up, according to law enforcement, committing murder.

Some on the right, however, see Rittenhouse differently. As footage of the incident emerged, conservative media figures began crafting a counternarrative in which the teenager is not a delusional vigilante but a well-intentioned if overzealous patriot who shot two violent assailants in self-defense. Rittenhouse, they suggest, is essentially a martyr who took action because Democrats would not let police do their jobs. This narrative rests on a racist belief, deeply rooted in American history, that white people must sometimes break the law to enforce it. The near-instant rehabilitation of Rittenhouse on the right should remind us that white Americans’ most heinous acts of violence can always be justified by their ideological allies.

Kenosha’s protests began on Sunday after Officer Rusten Sheskey, who is white, repeatedly shot Jacob Blake, who is Black, in the back in front of his children. Video indicates that Blake was walking away from Sheskey when the officer began shooting. He appeared to pose no threat. Blake is alive, but is reportedly paralyzed from the waist down. A mix of peaceful protests and riots broke out across the city, which is majority white but has a sizable Black community. By Tuesday, men carrying firearms who identified as members of a private militia stood outside local businesses, allegedly to protect them. A video shows Kenosha police handing water to these gunmen—including Rittenhouse—telling them: “We appreciate you guys, we really do.”

Rittenhouse, who traveled to Kenosha from Illinois, initially joined this putative militia but later peeled off. A video later in the evening showed him being chased by a group of Black and white protesters into a parking lot. Someone else fired a gun into the air, and Joseph Rosenbaum lunged at the armed teenager. Rittenhouse responded by firing four times, shooting Rosenbaum in the head and killing him. He then fled the scene. Protesters pursued him as one shouted, “That’s the shooter!” Rittenhouse tripped, and multiple people made an apparent attempt to disarm him. He fired four shots. One bullet hit Anthony Huber in the chest, killing him; he was wielding a skateboard, which he seemed to use to try to subdue Rittenhouse. The other bullet hit Gaige Grosskreutz in the arm; he was holding a handgun, though not aiming it at anyone. Rittenhouse then walked past a group of police officers—the beginning of his flight back to Illinois. They did not stop him.

It is almost dizzying to count all the ways Rittenhouse appears to have broken the law on Tuesday. He allegedly twice drove across state lines carrying a firearm he was not legally permitted to possess. He then illegally brandished this firearm in the streets. He violated the Kenosha curfew that provided the basis for police to arrest protesters. He fled out of state after shooting three people. And, most obviously, he killed two protesters. The footage indicates that two—and possibly all three—of Rittenhouse’s victims were trying to disarm him.

And yet, almost as soon as video of the shootings emerged, conservative media began to defend Rittenhouse. They mocked Huber for using a skateboard to “attack a man packing a rifle.” Erick Erickson said Rittenhouse was “not the bad guy” because he “was firing on people who were attacking him.” Fox News guests asserted that Rittenhouse effected “vigilante justice” because he filled “a void” left by police. And all these claims built toward the inevitable conclusion: Rittenhouse didn’t commit first-degree intentional homicide; he didn’t even commit murder at all. He was merely defending himself against a pack of thugs hellbent on beating him, possibly to death, because he tried to keep the peace. In Tucker Carlson’s words: “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”

This narrative transforms Rittenhouse from an unstable killer to a Second Amendment hero. And you need only accept a few fictions to buy into it. First, you must believe that the protesters chasing down Rittenhouse and attempting to wrest his gun away were not trying to prevent further bloodshed, but simply to brutalize him. Second, you must agree that even if these protesters were trying to confiscate Rittenhouse’s gun, they were wrong to do so, because they were the vicious lawbreakers and he was the vulnerable peacekeeper. Third, you must embrace a definition of self-defense so capacious that it allows a gunman to legally shoot a civilian dead when that civilian is trying to seize a weapon the gunman has used to kill someone. Or, as the New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie put it, “if someone is trying to stop you after you killed someone, you can continue shooting and killing in ‘self-defense.’ ”

It is much easier to accept the first two propositions if you are predisposed to believe that white people are more likely to uphold the law and Black people are more likely to break it. Like many protesters in Kenosha, Rittenhouse’s victims were white. But they were part of a diverse group that pursued the 17-year-old in an apparent effort to stop him from shooting more people. That group included many Black people, who were also imperiled when Rittenhouse tripped and fired his weapon indiscriminately. The claim that these protesters had a malign plan to assault or kill Rittenhouse, rather than disarm him, rests on the racist assumption that a white vigilante’s motives must be purer than a racially diverse group of demonstrators.

The third proposition—that the gunman was merely defending himself—rests on a chilling vision of self-defense that would excuse homicide and limit civilians’ ability to forestall future shootings. Wisconsin law only licensed Rittenhouse to shoot his pursuers to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. The video of the second shooting makes it quite clear this did not happen. While the circumstances surrounding the first shooting remain murky, it is evident from the footage that Rittenhouse ran away carrying his rifle, pursued by protesters who rightly believed he might shoot more people. When he tripped, his pursuers immediately tried to seize his gun. These are not the actions of thugs eager to inflict bodily harm, but of good Samaritans trying to stop what looked like the beginning of a mass shooting.

Indeed, the argument for self-defense boils down to this: If civilians try to seize a weapon from a gunman who just shot somebody in the head, that gunman has a right to shoot them. If this theory were legally correct—thankfully, it isn’t—then a person who tries to grab a mass shooter’s gun may be legally killed by the shooter himself. Rittenhouse ultimately proved to be a mass shooter, one in illegal possession of a firearm, a gun that police allowed him to carry even after he had apparently shot three people a block in front of their squad cars. The cops who ordered protesters to disperse for violating curfew did not order an obviously underage teen to put down his assault weapon. Tucker Carlson got it backward; the question here is why anyone is shocked that protesters tried to disarm a vigilante when law enforcement refused.

After all, as University of Washington professor Dan Berger pointed out after the Charlottesville, Virginia, catastrophe, police have a lengthy history of complicity with right-wing insurgents. American law enforcement have viewed far-right paramilitary groups as allies in the fight against true subversives and radicals, such as the civil rights demonstrators of the 1960s. They assume that white gunmen toting assault weapons who speak favorably of law enforcement are more trustworthy and peaceable than racially diverse protesters who criticize the cops.

When officers thanked Kenosha’s militia while threatening to arrest protesters—even though the militia and the protesters were both violating curfew—they carried on this tradition. When Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis blamed protesters for their own deaths because they broke curfew, he carried on this tradition. When officers let Rittenhouse walk past them, illegally armed with a gun he had just used to kill two men and injure another, and drive back to Illinois, they carried on this tradition, too. These officers perceived a racially diverse group of demonstrators to be more of a threat than a cadre of heavily armed white men. It is not difficult to guess why.

After Jacob Blake’s shooting, conservative media hunted for evidence that might exonerate the officer, fixating on the presence of a knife in Blake’s car. After Rittenhouse shot three protesters, the right hunted for evidence that might exonerate the shooter, settling on the fantasy that those protesters were the real vigilantes who got what was coming to them. The lesson here is simple: A white man with a gun is innocent until proved guilty; his victims are guilty until proved innocent. It is a lesson tragically embedded in American history, and one that racist far-right militias around the country will surely take to heart this week.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/conservatives-defend-kenosha-shooter-kyle-rittenhouse.html?via=recirc_engaged

 

So shots were fired (not by Rittenhouse) the crowd thinks it is him so they rush towards him he panics thinking he's being attacked and shoots the first guy, tries running away and trips and thinks he's being attacked panics yet again and shoots the second guy injures a third and then gets away and goes home. There's many moving parts here. This is what happens when people try to take justice into their own hands.

[McLoofus 35,182]

Kid showed up in a crowded area with a deadly weapon for no reason and people died because of that. May he be punished to the full extent of the law and may this inch us closer to sensible gun laws in this country. 

[IronMan70 3,277]

6 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

So shots were fired (not by Rittenhouse) the crowd thinks it is him so they rush towards him he panics thinking he's being attacked and shoots the first guy, tries running away and trips and thinks he's being attacked panics yet again and shoots the second guy injures a third and then gets away and goes home. There's many moving parts here. This is what happens when people try to take justice into their own hands.

That's right and that's what matters at the moment of the incident. He was in the situation he was in, was being attacked just as you describe and responded accordingly to save his life. Contrary to panic, he actually displayed considerable presence of mind and discipline by eliminating only the immediate specific threats.