Oh for fucks sake, this is an absurd overly dramatic sense of persecution. He’s not saying we should throw republicans in jail, he’s saying that we may need laws to cover instances in which certain groups try to walk around with guns and intimidate people while technically legal because they’ve been demonstrated to use such tactics to abuse the lack of laws around them.
Here are groups who are trying to use the threat of violence and the presence of guns to intimidate other people (and potentially provoke them and then murder them in “self defense”), and you think the danger here is making a law against that, because hey, the law is targeting the people who are using armed intimidation as a tactic, and those are mainly republicans, so this is basically nazi germany style targeting political opponents.
The law would obviously target armed intimidators of other political groups, too, it’s just that there are few to none of those at this point. What your defense especially amounts to is “hey, that bad behavior is committed almost entirely by republicans, so targeting a law that behavior is obviously the same thing as hunting down your political opponents”
Maybe you should think about whether you’re actually the bad guy. It’s kind of amazing when faced with the situation of “right wing people using guns to intimidate political opponents” vs “a law against allowing people to use guns to intimidate political opponents”, you feel that it’s the latter, not the former, which is like an oppressive banana republic.
I know the answer! We should forbid, upon penalty of punishment too gruesome to name, ownership or possession of dicks! (Ownership and possession of which not being protected by any Amendment that I know of.) We already forbid public display of same in many jurisdictions, so this isn’t such a radical suggestion.
(ETA: In particular, crossing state lines in possession thereof on one’s person.)
I’d say there are already laws about this on the books, but that they aren’t being enforced. I’d also take a good look at why that is and who is most likely to do this in the last few years…it’s not JUST ‘republicans’ who would be going to jail. I’d also say that, in this case, the prosecution tried to make this claim and it didn’t really stand up.
My own question would be…don’t we already have such laws? Why do we need more? Assume we do have them, as I suspect, then the question would be…why aren’t they being enforced? Before we get new laws I’d think we should look into why the ones we have aren’t working first. If we don’t have such laws, then I agree…we should.
I don’t know, specifically. Each state would have its own specific terms of laws that would cover this sort of thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if some states didn’t have laws to this effect, and would instead rely on police to allow/deny the right/wrong people from doing it.
The police as a whole in the US are very sympathetic towards right wing intimidation and violence, so it wouldn’t be surprising at all if restrictions against right wing armed intimidation aren’t enforced. It wouldn’t be surprising at all either if there are no laws specifically governing this situation, because we haven’t really seen this level of widespread political armed intimidation for quite a while, and if there are any laws at all, they were probably originally targeted at non-right wing armed intimidation (like against the black panthers, for example).
A quick Google search (never a good thing) seems to indicate it’s at a minimum a 3rd-degree felony…though I have no idea what that actually means.
You do realize that at a lot of these ‘peaceful protests’ there is plenty of intimidation and such going on, right? This isn’t just or even mainly right-wingers waving guns to intimidate peaceful protesters. In fact, again, the prosecution tried to make this narrative stand and was unsuccessful in this specific case.
I don’t believe there is evidence that the police are sympathetic towards right-wing intimidation, but instead, they seem to be in the mode of just letting whatever happens at these ‘peaceful protests’ happen with minimal intervention. A good question might be…why? I can think of a few, not all very flattering to the police (or their constituents) but I don’t think this has much to do with them sympathizing with right-wingers…or left-wingers either.
Chronos, the judge and jury disagree. Walking down the street in an open carry state with a rifle isn’t sufficient cause for violent rioters to assault you. The assault is what is illegal. That is why he was legally and morally entitled to defend himself. Your argument is inherently contradictory. You can’t advocate armed folks attacking someone pre-emptively as a form of self defense and yet deny that same right of self defense to the one being attacked for any intellectually consistent reason aside from reserving rights to those you are politically/ideologically aligned with.
Of course the mob wasn’t charged. The mobs of the summer were encouraged implicitly and explicitly by leftist governors, mayors, DAs and other left wing politicians. As the response to the Jan 6th events prove, when sufficiently motivated, the state can actually act to prevent and prosecute further unrest. As the summer of 2020 proved, when politically expedient the state will turn a blind eye or be actually complicit.
There’s plenty of evidence that police are more sympathetic towards right-wing intimidation. I think this is obvious too and I’m having a hard time believing you really hold this view. Right wing protests are handled with kid gloves (look at Jan 6, the Bundy holdout situation, plenty of others) versus left wing protests which are often violently cracked down upon even when they’re peaceful - look at all of the police brutality BLM footage when they were shooting people in the face with less lethal rounds (including journalists) when those people were doing nothing at all except existing at a rally that the police didn’t like.
There’s no doubt that police are right wing in the US - the amount of overlap between extremist right wing groups like the proud boys and the people who work in police forces is pretty high.
No, I don’t think so. There are many people who view weapons as effective deterrents without the need or desire to use them. Pretty much any armed police presence, for example, is meant to be a deterrent for crime, not an opportunity for cops to shoot people. I imagine Rittenhouse fancied himself an extension of the police. Somewhere in the back of his mind, I reckon he thought he might have to use his gun in an extreme situation, but he failed to realize that just by openly carrying the weapon, he was increasing the likelihood such an extreme situation would occur.
I think it’s unlikely Rosenbaum would attack him unprovoked, so the most logical conclusion is that they were both talking shit to each other and it got way out of hand. He was probably acting like a giant douchebag, okay? And that, combined with him openly carrying a serious weapon, could have easily been read as a threat. The compelling need people have to paint this guy as an innocent victim is just as bizarre to me as the vilification of a seventeen year old boy. He was doing what seventeen year olds do best - stupid shit.
And not just recently. See also: Chicago riots at the Democratic Convention of 1968. (Admittedly, they weren’t all that peaceful. But police were literally cracking skulls, and their own parents were good with that!)
ETA: Oh, and there was that little incident at Kent State in 1970.
It makes no sense at all that Rosenbaum thought that, based on his actions or the way he behaved. If you think someone with a gun is a threat you don’t chase them as they run away from you.
Except it is 100% part of the legal justification if someone is assaulting you and attempting to illegally take your gun. I’m sorry that you don’t like that, but that doesn’t change the law.
I realize you mean this to be one of the presumably many cites demonstrating this, but I’m not convinced. And, yes…I am NOT convinced. I’m not sure what implication you are making towards me, but I assure you that this is a view I ‘really hold’. Since I work a lot with local and state law enforcement, it’s based as much on my own experience as anything. I know what they complain about and what they are concerned with…and I’ve never seen any evidence that they have a great love for right-wing intimidation, or are willing to hand wave it away. With the caveat that they seem reluctant to engage a lot of things relating to ‘peaceful protest’, even when it turns violent as it often does these days. And mainly, it’s not ‘right-wingers’ who are either doing these protests or turning them violent, at least from what I can tell.
I think there is doubt about that, personally. I think by trying to imply that all or even most police are this way is incorrect.
At any rate, this has little to do with the OP, so going to leave it here. Feel free to respond, but going to focus on not hijacking this thread with the side discussion.
I have thought about it, and you are correct. Rosenbaum behaved in this scenario in a completely bizarre and unpredictable way. He must have been one crazy SOB.
You keep on making these factually incorrect statements about anti-police-brutality protestors and associated rioters and looters being given a pass on committing illegal acts. This is not true.
Because right-wing vigilantes who kill people get more press coverage than left-wing rioters who break windows, you don’t tend to hear as much about law-enforcement consequences for the latter. So in your mind that becomes the fantasy that they’re all getting away with crimes scot-free because of all the “leftist” local and state politicians turning a blind eye. But your fantasy is arrant nonsense.
I agree. Rittenhouse didn’t just happen to find himself in a situation where he had to shoot somebody in order to defend himself. He traveled some distance looking for a situation in which he could shoot some people.
Except they are victims, and that is victim blaming or shaming, which nowadays we think is wrong.
Rittenhouse isa perpetrator, not a victim. He certainly did kill two men. Now, yes, he raised a valid self-defense defense, and it worked. But he is not the victim here.
