Yes, in barbaric places like The Wild West, Afghanistan, and The United States of America, it is acceptable to run around in public with deadly weapons. In civilized countries, it is not.
This is actually reminiscent of the “Neighborhood Watch” shooter, George Zimmerman, and the major disconnect in the multiple very long threads we had about it. The people who were all but certain Zimmerman would be convicted, simply couldn’t get past the idea that “it’s not right to patrol a residential suburb with a firearm, and even the official Neighborhood Watch organization says don’t do this”, but from a legal standpoint that doesn’t matter. What matters is whether a) Rittenhouse started some sort of fight as an aggressor, and b) if he didn’t, was he in genuine fear for his life or in fear of grave bodily harm at the time he killed? (If he had precipitated the conflict as the aggressor his right to assert self-defense is less, although situationally you can actually still raise self-defense even as the aggressor in very specific sequence of event circumstances–e.x. say you spit on someone and precipitate a fist fight, which you lose, and the other guy grabs a sledgehammer after knocking you down and is walking over to smash your head with it, and you pull your handgun and kill him–despite being the aggressor you would likely have a viable self-defense claim for the killing, albeit you’d probably have some criminal liability for some other crimes for starting the fight itself.)
Wisconsin does not have a Stand Your Ground law. It does have a Castle Doctrine however. Whether that is pertinent to this case shall be seen.
There are times when force can be used against a retreating subject. For example, a previous aggressor is fleeing from you but running towards someone else while armed. If you can articulate that you reasonably believed that other person was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm you could use force against the fleeing from you subject. Something like that scenario may come up in this trial.
Here’s the thing. You are right about the way the law works in the United States. But in case you haven’t noticed (and I’m sure you have), this has led to, again and again, ‘right-wing asshats’, to use your term, who decide it is their job to grab a gun and place themselves in situations where they’ll be ‘justified’ in using them. George Zimmerman, Rittenhouse, and many others come to mind.
I see very little difference between going out and shooting someone, versus arming yourself and then putting yourself in a position that will ‘require’ you to use deadly force to defend yourself. If I go to the zoo and shoot a lion from the viewing platform, or if I go to the zoo, jump into the exhibit, kick one of the lions to get it angry at me, and THEN I shoot it - in both of those cases, I wanted to shoot a lion; in one, I just did it while in the other I purposefully put myself in a situation in which I’d have no choice BUT to shoot a lion, then did so. “I had no choice” might be true once I was in the cage and had kicked the lion, but there was a series of decisions that I made prior to that moment that any reasonable person could have foreseen would put me in a situation where I’d have to use my gun.
On preview, I see you brought up Zimmerman yourself:
You are right, it doesn’t matter. But that’s because the law is bad, not because it SHOULDN’T matter.
Here’s the problem with this example. It ignores the state of mind of the victim. If you are George Zimmerman or Kyle Rittenhouse, and you point a gun at me - YOU HAVE JUST THREATENED ME WITH DEADLY FORCE. The fact is, if faced by an assailant with a gun - even if so far the assailant hasn’t used his gun - I’m not going to wait for him to do so, because the instant he does, I’m dead.
Spitting on someone isn’t the same as pointing a firearm at them, because spitting at someone cannot hurt them. If I spit on you and you punch me back, you’ve escalated things. If you point a firearm at me, that is ALREADY a threat of deadly force, and the difference between that threat and me being dead is a fraction of a second. So a reasonable person WOULD use deadly force when confronted with a firearm.
Somehow this reasoning is totally fine when a police officer shoots a kid who was pulling up his pants, but if a stranger approaches me with a deadly firearm, I am supposed to pretend that he’s of no threat to me until I’m already dead? Come on, now.
The folks felt so threatened they attacked a guy holding a rifle…
If I felt threatened by a person with a rifle you know what I wouldn’t do? Roll up on him on my skateboard with the rest of my looting mob and attack him. That sort of wisdom is why I still can type this out.
Leaving aside whether it’s legal to jump into the exhibit, I’m with you on the analogy until you put in the bit about the kick, which is what seems to be doing the heavy lifting.
You say this, I assume, sarcastically, but yes, if someone was pointing a rifle at me with hostile intent, I’d do my best to kill him before he kills me or my loved ones.
Seriously: WTF? Now people fighting back is just worth eyerolls?
I used the kick analogy because it is a clear and imminent threat to the lion. If you point a firearm at me, I consider that a clear and imminent threat to me. I’d have used the same example for the lion, but of course a lion would not understand what it means to have a firearm pointed at them.
This whole post seems like a reasonable summary of what we know so far. And I agree that there are parallels to the Zimmerman shooting.
I think the frustrating thing in cases like this, and I said this in many of the Zimmerman threads as well, is that there’s no penalty for being wrong. Like, yeah, Rittenhouse was being chased across a parking lot by an unarmed guy who threw a plastic bag at him. Generally that’s not a situation that warrants lethal force. There was a gunshot… but Rosenbaum wasn’t armed and the gunshot didn’t come from him. And I’m not really sold on the “reaching for his weapon” bit, as you can see from the videos that Rittenhouse opens fire as soon as Rosenbaum catches up to him. There just wasn’t enough time for Rittenhouse to differentiate, say, his weapon being taken from him from someone just putting a hand out to try and turn the muzzle away.
Rittenhouse read that situation wrong in so many ways. He thought that him being there in the first place would be helpful. He thought his life was in danger when it wasn’t; the only means of him being seriously injured or killed in that moment is if he lost control of the weapon he brought into the situation.
But none of that matters from a legal perspective. He was wrong about the need for lethal force, but you’re allowed to be wrong as long as you’re “reasonable,” and I don’t think a jury is going to decide that he wasn’t reasonable at that particular moment.
I dunno, I’d like to see the bar be higher for people who introduce guns into situations and then have to use them. Like, you’d better be damn well sure you’re right before you pull the trigger, and I wouldn’t mind the legal system having a way to figure that out in order to discourage this sort of vigilante nonsense. But that’s an argument for another day.
It’s really simple. Don’t attack people. Don’t attack people with or without a rifle.
The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to run away, it’s not your fight. You shouldn’t be attacking people with a gun anyway.
I’ll call the NRA, this new slogan is gold!
Yup, here we go again. Zimmerman all over again. Even though this fuck had to travel to Wisconsin to make it happen. At least he got his shots in, he got his kills. It’s what he wanted.
So you are in favor of attacking people who are apparently exercising their rights? Well don’t be shocked when they defend themselves. Those fools would have been free to loot and riot with no problem if they didn’t attack Rittenhouse. They made a poor choice.
By your logic, if Rosenbaum WAS armed and, when he saw Rittenhouse waving his rifle around, he took this as imminent threat and blew Rittenhouse’s head off, he’d be in the clear.
In fact, if he and Rittenhouse saw each other and in a wild west style shootout both tried to kill each other, whoever survived would be in the clear.
FWIW, I agree that that’s about right for our legal system. I’m just trying to point out that this is the sign of a shitty legal system.
No, I actually agree. I don’t think “good guys with guns” should confront active shooters either. Rosenbaum should have run away. He’d still be alive.
I think we are on the same page.
Aren’t rights supposed to come with responsibilities? I think “not shooting unarmed people” is a pretty basic responsibility.
Complicated by the fact that one of the victims was also carrying a gun.
I’m more than a bit out of my element with this case. Wisconsin is open carry. My state is about as far from that as possible. Here Rittenhouse would have been shot by police while walking around with a gun like that. At this point I’m thinking they might have enough reasonable doubt to get an acquittal
Yep. I mean, Rosenbaum heard the same gunshot Rittenhouse did. Except he knew Rittenhouse had a gun. If he’d shot him in the head there, the situation would be exactly the same.
O.K. Corral, USA