I am reading this thread in utter amazement: I reckon you cannot imagine how bizarre this whole Rittenhouse story reads for me, just as I cannot imagine that this all seems normal to you. From legally carrying weapons openly in the street during a riot to trying to take that weapon away by force and you explaining to each other that the reason for this or that is that there is such and such a law here (but not there) so that it is almost reasonable. I am shaking my head so much that I am getting dizzy.
Is this source credible? Because we know how righties enjoy victim-smearing.
There’s a number of factual mistakes in it (which is common when you just crib from far right sources), but in this case the gist is absolutely true, the two deceased have long and bad criminal records.
My assumption has always been that the bigger gun looks more intimidating. I will leave the implications of that to others.
The first two appear to be correct. Grosskreuz has been arrested multiple times for various things but was only convicted on misdemeanors so he was not prohibited from possessing the gun he had that night. I would give it a mostly true.
Sorry I thought I posted it to that forum; that was my intent at least.
It’s all what you are used to. I’m often amazed by various laws and customs in other countries too. I’m assuming you are from Europe (France maybe?) and so this is all particularly weird to you, no doubt. It’s weird to many Americans too, especially the ones who are in more gun restrictive states verse those in less restrictive states.
In states with open carry it is indeed legal to carry a gun openly, and thus trying to take away someone’s gun without reason would be a crime. Just like if I tried to take their cell phone or anything else. Of course, it depends on where in the timeline of this all was. After Rittenhouse had shot the first person, there probably would be justification to attempt to take the gun away, though I certainly wouldn’t be the one trying to do that, unless the person doing this was just randomly shooting people and I felt that it might save lives by trying. This wasn’t that situation, and the folks who were confronting Rittenhouse weren’t good samaritans trying to save lives, at least from what I’ve been able to piece together in this cluster fuck.
To paraphrase from a song, there weren’t no good guys, there weren’t no bad guys…
Germany. I am aware that it depends on what you are used to, I just wonder how you got used to that. What happened could not have happened in the same way in any country I know, and I know some.
We didn’t ‘get used to it’…it’s been this way since the founding of the country if you are talking about the right to keep and bear arms. As I said, it varies from state to state…some states are more restrictive, some less, but the overall right is there for everyone and has been for a long, long time in the US. I can definitely see how someone from Germany (or really, anywhere in western Europe at least) would feel this is very strange. Like I said, even in the US there are plenty of folks who feel the same way, even though it’s always been this way here and the right to keep and bear arms has been with us longer than any of us has been alive. Hell, longer than any of our parents or even grandparents have been alive.
Thank ghod for Rittenhouse’s wonderful ability to read minds, right?
I believe you are over-simplifying a bit, but I don’t want to hijack this thread, so I’ll limit myself to the observation that arms is a wide concept. I don’t believe by arms the Founding Fathers™ meant assault rifles, amoung other things, because they were not invented yet back then. There is a process here, and it seems to me that something went very wrong along the way. But this should probably be discussed elsewhere.
Even in open carry states it is still very unusual to see anyone (outside of people like cops, who are required as part of the job) openly carrying a weapon. There are some wilderness areas in, say, Alaska where you’d see people doing that on a regular basis, but those are areas with wildlife that regard humans as food.
You are correct there is a dizzy-inducing array of laws. But that applies to a lot of things in the US, not just weapons so it’s something we adapt to. Keep in mind the size of some US states - think more of going from, say, Belgium to France - it’s a comparable distance and the laws do change as you travel in Europe. Texas, for example, is just one of 50 states but it has a greater area than France - you don’t find it puzzling that the laws of France differ from those of its neighbors, right? Likewise, Texas law covers an area comparable to the entirety of France. Most of us don’t have to deal with a lot of changing laws as we go about our daily lives. Sure, some of us live near a border (I’m within walking distance of a border between US states) but even there you’d just have to deal with two sets of laws, not 50+ across the entire US.
In the more specific case of gun laws between my state (Indiana) and the next one over (Illinois) it’s pretty simple: Indiana recognizes gun permits from every other state except Vermont (why Vermont? I don’t know) so if someone is licensed to carry in Illinois they are OK to carry in Indiana. Illinois does not return the favor, though, so an Indiana license is not valid in Illinois - Hoosiers leave your guns at home if you’re going to Illinois.
(“Hoosier” is the name for a resident of Indiana. Why? No one knows. But it is.)
There are a bunch of nuances that would happily keep a bunch of lawyers employed, and there are rules for transporting firearms when you’re passing through a state or taking an airplane someone (usually involving them unloaded, locked up, and not readily accessible) but for the average person the above serves well enough.
The responses I’ve seen so far bring up the points I was wondering about…
There are a few videos of police losing their weapon and the bad guy getting it. And yes they do whatever they can to safely get close enough to grab it and then go bat-shit life or death struggle. The video posted above looks like someone with training who disarmed a not-very-serious kid. These examples are of trained people, usually doing a job of some sort.
What I don’t know is what happens when untrained people happen upon a bad situation on their personal time in an unorganized street setting. They get lucky and yank or knock the gun from someone’s hands. I’m thinking there’s a good chance they won’t want to pick it up because:
a) they may not know how to handle it
b) didn’t go out that night wanting to hold someone at gunpoint (not mentally prepared)
c) don’t want to be seen as the new gunman and get attacked by randoms themselves, or
d) don’t want to put themselves in the situation where the original gun holder now has a motive to use over the top or even lethal force against them to get the gun back (think the cop who’s gun you took).
But I’m pretty sure someone will grab the gun. Who’s likely to do that what would they do?
Secondly, yes as pointed out in this situation it seems the people who actually approached Rittenhouse and got shot had the “I-don’t-care-hulk-smash” aggression going on; you need to be in a pretty serious mental place to chase down an armed person who’s already shot at people. I don’t think they would have been cool and calm if the rifle went flying across the street.
The question is in such crazy situations do the more sensible people in the crowd just stand back at a safe distance and watch the wilder people duke or shoot it out? Will the majority of sensible people swarm in and separate the fighting people like happens in a school yard, or is such behavior only seen in a school yard (sometimes)?
I think after the first guy was shot there was going to be at least one more person badly injured… this wasn’t going to end well. The question of what would happen if the first guy didn’t get shot and the gun somehow ended up on the ground is interesting. Would he have left it while Rittenhouse ran away, or picked it up and used it?
It is a hijack, but you are making a false statement…Rittenhouse didn’t have an ‘assault rifle’, which is generally a military-grade rifle that has select-fire capabilities (i.e. it can do burst fire, fully auto or semi-auto). What he had wasn’t illegal in the US. It would have been restricted IF it was a fully automatic weapon, but it wasn’t.
I definitely won’t get into what the FF(tm…arr) did or didn’t think, as that would definitely be a hijack, I’ll just say I disagree with you and leave it at that. It’s really a moot point anyway since the FF(tm…arr) wanted the Constitution to be a living document so that it grows and changes with society, and the present interpretation IS what the law is. As will be the interpretation 20 years from now, which may or may not differ from today. We could even, using the process, get rid of the entire 2nd Amendment if we collectively chose too…and that would be the law as well.
I didn’t even know it was a right wing source. I was actually looking for the source documents (arrest records, etc), and this cite links to them. Everything I posted came straight out of the court records. You can go read them youreelf.
Read the thread title. I brought it up to answer the question of what would likely have happened to him if they had taken the rifle away.
People sat on a train recently and watched a woman get raped in front of them, and the most they did was film it with their camera phones.
I have seen people being beaten by groups in both video and real life, and I have NEVER seen random members of the public swarm in to stop it. I don’t want to link to violent videos, but you can find lots of examples of people being caught by an angry mob. It almost always ends very badly for that person.
This is why you don’t let riots develop and violent mobs form. Because once they do they take on a life of their own and become unpredictable and very dangerous. People will do things in a mob situation they would never do by themselves, even if they DO like strangling their lovers and raping children.
Exactly. Mobs have a mentality and mind of their own, and it’s pretty rare when they are restrained in dealing with anyone who they think is against them. Hell, they often turn on themselves and on anyone anything in their path. They are very dangerous things, and so I don’t think it’s a high probability that the folks in question would have just disarmed Rittenhouse and then held him until the police showed up. I actually think that’s the least probable outcome.
My initial question/s actually seem rather well answered… With the back drop of who was there and why, it’s not likely those particular people would have calmly taken the gun and then had a chat to all chill out and debrief together. Once the violence got started, looks like it wasn’t going to end until one or more people got taken out in some form. The general mob-rules and mind set of those who chose to get into this situation kinda excluded a good outcome of any kind.
Since there’s still no verdict, maybe I can hijack my own question and ask this:
It seems that Rittenthouse got separated from the group of other armed guys he was with (I’ll admit I’m less sure of those details). Is it likely that him being alone and young/baby-faced led to those particularly bold people to start the chase on him alone? AFAIK nobody got physical with the other armed people (who seemed to stick together).
The Founding Fathers are not immortal Gods of the past. The Second Amendment only has a moderate intersection with cases like that (the 2nd is Federal law and while there are some Supreme Court cases pending, much of gun law is still done at the State level.) In many states laws on gun carry are relatively recent (in the last 50 years), we elect legislatures for our states, they pass laws. The Federal government largely has no role in gun control at the individual level (there are some Federal gun laws and they relate to the legality of manufacturing for civilian use, sell for civilian use, and transport of certain special classes of weapon.)
There is nothing magical or mysterious about the fact you’re allowed to own and carry guns in the United States–voters have elected politicians who pass laws for this, that’s how representative democracy works.